Dinner tonight was HW and her husband JW and P’s parents BD and SD. HW has an abdominal cancer. I’m not really sure exactly where it is located. I think it is ‘worse’ than mine, not that speaking about betterness or worseness has that much value, as it is all statistics, and it is all so random. anyway, I think I was told once, but I forget. or maybe i forgot. as a coping method.
HW was my first grade teacher. She is BD’s best friend, though BD lives in Napa now and doesn’t get to see her much. HW asked me how my week had been, and i made a hand motion for a wave that started low, got high, and ended low. She said “We must remember to cherish the good moments.” One can never be too old to learn from their first grade teacher.
HW found out about her cancer at around the same time I did. Maybe right before. Maybe right after. I can’t remember. (Or again, maybe I forgot as a coping mechanism — my memory has been so unreliable through all this.) She was my first grade teacher. It feels so strange to talk about Infusion procedures, and trade cancer stories with your first grade teacher. It is both a testament to how amazing she is, and also how young I am. Its one of the few kinds of things that make me say “this is not fair” and feel like crying.
She seems heroic. like, more heroic than me. I’m not sure why. Maybe because she is more likely to die. Or I am less likely to die. I’m not sure which of those sentences is the right phrasing. Or maybe because she has lost her hair.
Sometimes I wish my treatments would make my hair go away. People are constantly saying “you look so good” and I wish they understood how much I cry. and how fucked up my body is inside. and how hard this drug regimen is. I wish there was some external marker. I have two really big scars. but one is in my groin, so not so easy to flash people (i’m actually grinning a little bit right now.). The other is on my calf. When I am riding on my bicycle, I actually imagine what it would look like from behind. I wear it as a badge of courage. It is the one visible marker.
Even though everyone keeps telling me how heroic i am being, or how gracefully i am handling this, maybe HW seems more heroic than me because she is just the only other person I actually *know* who is currently dealing with this. There are other people I know who have gone through this. And there are the kind-of anonymous people at the Infusion center, but I only know the first name of one of them. The other Interferon woman who is the only other everyday person doesn’t even wave at me when she leaves at the end of the day. I tried waving at her, but it was awkward; she didn’t really wave back, but kind of smiled. She is middle aged, which is still young for the center. Mostly very old people.
between my colleage and having HW over, there was a lot of cancer talk today. all day. it was hard. i knew it would be hard, and i went for a bike ride beforehand. i rode hard, and was winded. i had a lack-of-oxygen-from-exercising ear ache. it felt good. and also it was a distancing tool. i think. i realize this in retrospect.
I was kind of nervous all day. about seeing everyone. i mean, i don’t see many people these days. i kind of freaked out at the farmers market this morning because there were so many people. And at dinner, I kind of wanted to just withdraw from the whole thing and go upstairs and cry or write email, or curl up in a ball, or something. but BD sat next to me the whole time and held my hand
I’m nervous about tomorrow. but i think i should be able to sleep okay. i will take the regular klonopiin and ambien. and listen to this new CD:
last night i went to sleep listening to this ‘visualization’ CD for stress. i was too scared to listen to the cancer one. the narrator repeatedly states that the best time to listen to the CD is right as you are going to bed, and that if you fall asleep while listening, that is very much okay. so of course, i fell asleep almost immediately when she finished the introduciton. so i think i’ll listen to that again tonight, and hopefully the anxiety and stress will go away, and i will sleep well
mom just came into my room to tell me i have a 9am appointment with the Naturopath. I was really peaceful, and then the idea that I was going to have to get up so early, and go to see this guy just to ‘check in’ made me really angry. and really ready to cry. I stormed downstairs, drank three glasses of water, almost ate something just to eat something (not hungry) and came back upstairs, and rewrote this entire post to reflect how upset i am feeling right now. how anxious i am, and how upset seeing HW made me. upset at my own fear. upset by my own fear. oh, god, what a state to be in before bed.