Eight months ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I went through surgery, radiation, and finally got the "all clear" status in January. And I thought that would be the end of it. I assumed that my life would go back to how it was before. Everything was going to be normal now that the cancer had been expelled from my body.
That is something they don't prepare you for: the realization that your life is never going back to how it was before cancer. Sure, it might resemble your previous life, but cancer alters you in a way that is deep and unexplainable.
While I adopted a YOLO attitude, I have also experienced debilitating fear. The fear that the cancer might come back, stronger, more determined to kill me. The fear that the radiation treatment could cause a secondary cancer. The fear that I might not have the long, happy life that I once imagined. The fear that comes with scans and blood tests and doctor appointments. The fear that can send me into a spiraling depression with one swollen lymph node.
Most days I can brush it under the rug. I can put my fears aside and only feel the absolute gratitude of being alive. But there are other days, days like today, when the fear and hopelessness sinks in. Days when I have flashbacks of passing out on a bed pan, waking up in excruciating pain, and realize that this could all happen to me again. While there is "no evidence" of disease, it is still inside me. Still in my body just waiting to sneak back when I least expect it.
And I find myself unable to move on with my life. Unable to fully grasp what all of this means. Unable to understand how cancer has changed me: physically, emotionally, mentally. The past eight months have been an absolute roller coaster ride, to say the least. And I used to look at it like there would eventually be an ending...
But I am slowly learning, no matter how hard I fight it, cancer has become a part of me. It is essential to who I am, who I want to be. I need to stop fighting it; and I need to start embracing it.
Because you only live once.
Boys Don't Have Boyfriends (& Other Things I Refuse to Tell My Son)
- October 14, 2013
- By Emily
- 1 Comments
My son is quite the character. At five years old, he already has the great sense of humor and dashing personality that I acquired during puberty. It is refreshing to see him embrace who he is at such a young age, and he makes no apologies for his larger-than-life nature. Sometimes it is hard to believe he is only in kindergarten.
As a mother, I have really tried to cultivate his odd personality rather than force him to conform to the norms expected of a little boy. I wanted him to be who he is meant to be, not who society wanted him to be. So this meant letting him play with baby dolls, buying a deluxe Barbie playhouse, and encouraging him to shake what his momma gave him.
Shortly after starting kindergarten, I saw my son "flirting" with a sweet, blonde girl in the school pick-up line. (I use the term "flirting" loosely, because he is only five!) So as we walked to the car, hand-in-hand, I asked if he had any "girlfriends" at school.
"Yeah! I have three girlfriends: Madison, Taylor, and Jordan," he told me, matter-of-factly, without looking up.
I start jokingly giving him a lecture about how he is only allowed to kiss his mom and that he better not be kissing any girls at school. As I buckle him in his carseat, he reassures me that he won't and then drops a bomb on me. "I have a boyfriend at school, too!" he nonchalantly mentions.
Now, I understand that we are talking about five year old's who may-or-may-not understand terms such as "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" in the actual context. But it still really caught me off guard for him to talk about having a "boyfriend", and my first instinct was to tell him that boys don't have boyfriends. I started to form a speech in my head as I closed his door and got in the drivers seat. He just needed me to explain the difference between "friends" and "boyfriends".
Then I remember what it felt like to grow up thinking that you had to be a certain way. You had to wear dresses and like boys and get good grades and be polite and stay thin and not deviate from what everybody else was doing around you. I looked at my little boy in the back seat, and I didn't want to ever make him ashamed for being himself. No matter what.
Still in the school's parking lot, I turned around and gave him a huge smile. "No kissing boys either, mister!' I told him. He giggled and did the typical sigh and "Okay, mom" that you would expect from a teenager. We carried on with our day as if nothing was wrong with him having a boyfriend, and I was really proud of myself.
However, I know that not everybody feels the way I do. In the rural area that we live, people don't really accept those who are considered "different", and their disapproval usually passes on to their children. My classmates teased and bullied a boy so badly for being gay that he stopped coming to school. As a parent, I never want my child to have to endure that type of pain, but it becomes hard to know which is the lesser of two evils: do you let your child hide who they are or get tormented by other kids?
For now, I am just happy and proud to have a sweet, charismatic little boy who knows no matter what, his momma loves him. And that is enough.
It will get better.
I hate when people use that encouragement, like they are staring into a crystal ball and just know what your future holds. Not to be pessimistic or anything, but I think it is a load of crap.
Other examples include:
What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
God only gives you what you can handle.
When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.
I wish I could be the optimistic, hopeful person that I once was. Before I stepped into the world and realized that life doesn't always go the way that you plan. In fact, life usually tries to mess up your plans. Constantly. Like a never-ending cock blocker.
Most of the sadness and depression has worn off, and I am only left with anger. I am so angry at the world. I know that I sound like a terrible person. Like I am constantly complaining and being pretty negative about everything. But am I supposed to be happy about having cancer?
I refuse. I refuse to even be okay with having cancer at twenty three years old. I find that unacceptable. I refuse to pretend like it is fine with me. It is not fine by me. I think all of this is nonsense. It is bullshit. And I honestly do not think there should ever come a time when I am "okay" with it.
Yes, I will get through this.
Yes, I will become a stronger person.
Yes, I will learn important lessons.
But at no point will I look at having cancer as a good thing. As a positive experience. I will joke and make light of the whole thing, but at the end of the day I hate cancer. I hate that it is inside of my body. Sometimes I just stand in the shower feeling...dirty. Like if I stay in there long enough, the water will wash away the cancer.
I am just really, really angry at this point. I had just spent five long years struggling through college and finally graduated. I felt like I was on the verge of starting my life, a life that would mean something. I thought that I was going to do things and become this amazing version of myself. I assumed I would be finding a great job and enjoying the new territory of having a school-aged son. I wanted life to go my way. Just this once. I just wanted things to just finally be okay rather than the constant struggle they had been for the past twenty years.
Instead, I got cancer. Lucky me.
The only thing worse than being told you have cancer is trying to tell your five year old son. Honestly, I wasn't sure how to approach the subject or if I should even say anything at all. There wasn't a section on this in my parenting handbook. So I told Ollie that I had cancer and that cancer makes people really sick and some people die from it. He was horrified. He looked at me with wide eyes and said, Who am I going to stay with?
I didn't really get it at first, so I asked what he meant. If you die, who am I going to stay with, my baby boy asked me. I scooped him up into my arms and reassured him, I'm not going to die, sweetie. I'm not going anywhere.
He held on to me tightly and whispered into my ear, Please don't leave me.
Lately, life has been a whirlwind. It was exactly one week ago that I got the phone call with the news. It is crazy how one phone call can completely change your life.
If there is one thing that I have learned, it is to be my own advocate for my health. I have known for quite some time that something just was not right with my body. I need to check my medical records, but I believe I probably saw a doctor around 30 times in the past 18 months. Which, for a normal person is excessive, but I am the type of person who avoids the doctor's office at all costs. I doubt I had been to the doctor 30 times in the five years previous, which included a pregnancy!
The doctor's continued to ignore me and gave up really fast. I was prescribed antibiotic after antibiotic. When I discovered a lump on my clavicle at the beginning of June, I really started to think that something was wrong. But my doctor's continued to brush everything off, and insisted that my large tonsils were holding bacteria and causing all my issues. Finally, after continuing to go into walk-in appointments week-after-week, my doctor decided to do a thyroid ultrasound. This ultrasound showed that I had multinodular goiter, which just means that I had an enlarged thyroid with multiple nodules (tumors, basically) on it.
When I was getting my ultrasound, I could tell that they had found something, and I went home from the appointment extremely anxious. The radiologist told me that they had found nodules and that my doctor would contact me about the results. Well, I had no idea what that meant. As I searched Google, I began to think it was possible that I had the dreaded c-word. But I put it out of my head.
The nurse called and referred me to an Endocrinologist (a thyroid specialist). She explained that my thyroid was enlarged and had nodules on it. My appointment was made for September 19th, which was like six weeks away. During the phone call, the nurse made a point to say, probably four or five times "...but everything could just be okay". Which did not put me at ease.
So, I went to the hospital and got a copy of my ultrasound results. They honestly really did not find anything that suggested I was really sick, but I felt really sick and so I knew I did not want to wait that long to see a specialist. I began calling Endocrinologists that my insurance covered and found an appointment for the following week.
At my appointment with the specialist, he basically told me that my nodules were very small and my thyroid was barely enlarged. He suggested that my illness and other symptoms were from a low vitamin D and surprise surprise...tonsils. Since I was looking into doing a tonsillectomy, he reluctantly decided to do a biopsy on the largest nodule, which was only 1cm (that is the smallest they can biopsy). This was just as a precaution and he told me there was no reason to think that this was cancer. He wasn't worried at all.
I came home and Googled Thyroid Cancer. The symptoms were:
- Nodule(s) on the thyroid
- Change in voice / increased hoarseness
- Difficulty swallowing
- Swollen lymph nodes in neck
- Pain in the neck/throat/ears
Well, I had all of those symptoms. Every single one. So I began to worry about the biopsy and the results. I began to Google everything about Thyroid Cancer. I read everything I could and convinced myself that I had it. But the whole time I thought I was just being silly. I thought I was paranoid and that the results would come back benign. I never thought I would actually have cancer. It turns on I did, and I was right.
Today, I am meeting with a surgeon to discuss removing my thyroid. My Endocrinologist had referred me to a different surgeon for an appointment on the 17th, but when I had spoken to a nurse about the procedure she was super rude and ignorant. It made me feel uncomfortable. So, I took matters into my own hands and found somebody else.
I think that is one of the hardest things about having cancer. I don't know what I am doing. I don't know what I should be doing. I don't know if doctor's are right all the time. I don't know how this all works. It makes it really scary that you are putting your life in somebody else's hands. I just hope that everything goes well today, because I am ready to get the cancer out of me!
