Saturday, January 21, 2012

Pollyanna, this is Anger...


SATURDAY, JANUARY 21, 2012 2:21 PM, EST
Pollyanna, this is Anger...
When we were kids, we watched a lot of movies. I still watch a lot of movies. In some circles (very small ones made up mostly of Mama and BF Nicole), I consider myself a critic. I fondly remember many movies from my childhood: The Wizard of Oz, Grease, and Pollyanna to name a few. The Pollyanna attitude is something that I think I’ve adopted throughout life, and certainly through my cancer experience. I am a “glass half full” kind of gal – it’s who I am. I like crystals and prisms, the Glad Game, and I would have steak and ice cream for dinner every night if I could. But honestly, my favorite thing about Pollyanna was the intro, in which a naked boy runs bare-bottomed to a rope swing and releases over the lake, arms flailing. Tiffany, Jayme and I would rewind that VHS tape 15 times to see that poor boys bottom run across the screen…and we would laugh every time like it was the first time we had seen it.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times that I've been really angry. I'd say I've been hurt, or even sad, more than I've been "angry." But as we all know, anger is one of the 5 stages of grief. And I have officially met Anger, who introduced me to Pissed Off.

I'm not the whiny "Why me?" kind of person. But there's nothing like cancer to make you look back on 8 months of your life with contempt. Please excuse me while I have an all out bitchfest for a second. I think we can all agree that it is long overdue, and my therapist is encouraging me to get things out. This happens to be a more amicable method for me to use than penciling something on a piece of paper then burning it.

First, let me start with diagnosis. This is the most terrifying experience (next to labor) that I can think of. Keep in mind that I've never been a trauma patient (unless you count that whole hit with a car thing...yeah, D-Day was worse). God, please keep in mind that this is not an invocation to introduce me to something more terrifying that a cancer diagnosis. I am clearly at my breaking point, and I my little red wagon is full, full, full. 

Diagnosis to treatment is fast and furious. You know how a movie makes it look like a place gets bombed one day and the next day there is a war? Well, this is how cancer is. It gives you little time to process what is really happening to you. Treatment breaks you down. Take every good thing you have in your life, and file it into a mental drawer. Then imagine that someone comes into your mental file and rearranges everything in there. Everything that happens over the next year goes into that discombobulated file, mixed in among mismatched memories and current realities. Suddenly you feel like an Alzheimer's patient, scared of what might come out of your mouth and scared that memories may be lost forever; wondering if you can ever recover the words you can't remember or meanings you can't match up. You wonder what else you will forget, and whether or not people notice. You get frustrated when people bring it to your attention because so much of your energy goes into hiding it. You decide how treatment will affect the way you look at yourself – literally the way your “self” looks. You rock the scarf, or you try to keep your life as normal as possible by wearing a wig, only to find either choice hot, sweaty and unnatural. Treatment breaks you down - not just your cancer, but your strength, your memory, your emotional balance, your drive. 

And then you realize that chemo was the easy part. But you are broken down, and you are wondering how you are going to get through the surgical experience. As if 4 1/2 months of chemo isn't enough to get to you, it's time to undergo a 6-8 hour surgery, which will render you nipple-less and breast-less alike. You wonder if your husband will ever find you attractive again. Suddenly it becomes pointless for a random person from a gas station or grocery store to give you a look of lust...those people can't see what's underneath your clothes, and they never will. There's only one person who matters, and whose "luscious look" matters moving forward. You wonder if your kids will ever catch you after a shower or while you are dressing and mistake you for a disfigured monster that they dream about hiding in the closet. You fear the next time you are asked, "Do you have a tattoo?" And the only response you can think of is, "Yes, my nipples." That's not edgy. So the surgery is over, and you are in pain...all the time. Except where you can't feel anything – nerve damage is unmistakably irritating. You don’t know how permanent the effects are, and it is surprising when you start feeling pain where you were just numb yesterday. The pain is sometimes startling…sharp, as numbness ebbs and tides.

You recover. You are sad when you hear about others who are sharing in your experience, because you feel like no one should have to endure all of this. Not the girl who stole your boyfriend in college, or the neighbor who didn’t want you to build a fence. Not the guy who cut you off on the way to work, or the teacher you hated the most in high school. No one should know this terror, this sadness, this strength. 1 in 8 women. 1:8 women is diagnosed with breast cancer. Anger, meet Pissed Off.

Tissue expansion is its own blog, and I won’t go into the PITAs, except to say that the process is extremely painful for about 6 days, and then just subsiding pain for the next 8 days…only to start over again. Pain does horrible things to you. It makes stress less easy to cope with, your fuse shorter, and your bang banger. You are unpleasant to be around, and you know it. It makes you want to crawl into a hole for 2 whole days just to save your loved ones from your eager wrath.

And don’t even get me started on the hormone medication. You know when you are pregnant, and you have little to no control over your temper? Yeah, cutting off your hormones at 32 years old after the hardest year of your life intensifies that feeling. Think pregnancy on steroids. That is what menopause is like. Only just like pregnancy, you can’t explain to someone who’s never been through it what it is like. Am I right? You can’t truly put words to the hot flashes and the anxiety (borderline paranoia), and the sheer embarrassment that comes along with them. As if the feeling and internal struggle of the hot flash isn’t bad enough, you have an incomprehensible physical symptom for all the world to see…like a big old scarlet letter tattooed on your chest. But you coast through yet another hardship and continuation of this disease we call “breast” cancer. Let me just tell you…calling something “breast” cancer when it affects your whole life is ridiculously unfair. Oh, you are Pissed Off? Nice to meet you, I’m Tina. They call me Bean.

I have about 2-3 more visits to the Filling Station before I get my new boobs. I swear every time I’m in there, Dr. Quintero tells me that I have 2-3 times to go, but as he says, “It’s not rocket science!”  I’ve put myself on a realistically strict diet to lose ten pounds before I will allow myself to go through with my surgery. As if my body image isn’t suffering enough, I have to talk myself into dieting. This really isn’t a bad thing since I’m supposed to be eating “right” and exercising for the rest of my life anyway to reduce my chance of a recurrence. So I put a reward on it – my new ta-tas. I can’t have them until I lose the 10 pounds. This is the thing with a reconstructive breast surgery. I don’t have breast tissue, or padding over the implants. So the actual implants have to be larger than the typical implant because I have no padding (hence the multiple “fills”). Because I have no breast tissue, my breasts won’t grow and shrink as I grow and shrink, as we naturally do. So when I do have my surgery, it is ideal to be at a goal weight so that Dr. Quintero and I are setting the expectation. The drugs that counterbalance the side effects of chemo inevitably make it easy for your body to gain weight, which is exactly what happened in my case. And I can’t exactly count the 4 pounds that Bess and Gretchen took with them! It’s about fit, not about pounds…yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell it to my self-image.

So yes, I’ve met Pissed Off. I hung out with her for a while. I took her out on Mama, who was on the undeserving end of my tirade. While our perceptions of what was said are very different, I shouldn’t have said the things that I did say. All she has done over the last 8 months is be there for me forevery chemo session, hold my children when I couldn’t, keep my family fed in Paula Deen style, and love me and my family. I shouldn’t be posting this before I have an opportunity to talk to her, but I’ve attempted, and I can’t stop my creative mind from rambling once I sit down at the computer. So however unfair that may be, sometimes I am better at an apology on paper than in person. That doesn't make me a coward; it just makes it easier for me to express my thoughts.

Hey Anger, I met your friend Pissed Off. She’s a bitch. In fact, you both are, and Mama always said you are who you hang out with. Why don’t you take a hike so that I can surround myself with positive energy and get my Pollyanna attitude back?

Bean

PS I do have some amazing physical attributes to be grateful for...like hair and eyelashes!!

2 comments:

  1. glad you were able to get that off your chest (bad pun). your new hair looks very pretty! :)

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  2. Tina, I love reading your blog. You are a great writer and of course, I can relate to most of your journey :) Your hair is looking FANTASTIC!!
    Mine is just starting to look like hair LOL
    love ya girl, take care!

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