My Own Double Rainbow

Lately I’ve been fluctuating between happiness that my mammogram came back all clear and the sadness and fear that the cancer will come back. Today has been a little harder for me.

It all started when baby girl and I started watching the movie “UP.” Within the first 5 minutes of the movie, I always cry (those of you who’ve seen it know what I’m talking about) and then towards the end, I cry again. There is this scene where Carl (the old man) looks through his and his late wife’s scrapbook reliving their life together. At the very last page, his wife wrote to him: “Thank you for the adventure, now go and have a new one.” She’s telling him to move on with his life after she’s gone.

I had not watched this movie in some years; and I’d forgotten about that scene. It made me so sad to think that one day I may have to tell baby girl and hubby to move on if I’m gone. How I may not see her grow, graduate from college, start her own family or celebrate any milestones in her life. When hubby came home, he noticed I was melancholy, but allowed me to be with my thoughts. After dinner, he and baby girl went to bed early and I was again stuck in my head about dying. To make it worse, there was an article in the paper about a local newscaster who battled breast cancer for 16 years and then passing away at age 56. That means she had started her battle against cancer right at 40 and I’m in my 30’s. Is that what I have to look forward to?

I’m finding it hard to be joyous tonight, even though I know it’s better for my health and my mind to stay positive. To be happy that I beat the disease. I’ve recently met several people with stories of survival and some who are just starting the battle. One woman I was chatting with is BRCA+ (meaning she has the genetic form) which has a lower survival rate than the type I have. She is a 6 year survivor and is going strong. I told her I couldn’t wait to hit my 6 year anniversary. She told me to stay strong. Sometimes, like tonight, I can’t be strong. I feel scared, and weak, and alone. I find it hard to take life day by day and there are times when even minute by minute is a struggle. I worry that it will affect my ability to be a good mother to baby girl. The fear and worry are gnawing at me.

This past weekend hubby and I had a short but meaningful conversation about children. I decided to not go through with seeing an onco-fertility specialist. Hubby had started to set aside money for in-vitro and egg harvesting, but I told him I had come to peace about not having another biological child. He hugged me and told me that he’d rather have me, his wife, than another child and that he was perfectly happy adopting. I think we may start the process, even though we’re not really ready for another child just yet. My heart has still not given up hope that one day I will be pregnant with a child again, but I am also glad that I finally got over the hurdle of being emotionally tied up over it.

This week, tomorrow, the next day, soon, really…I hope to be back to my normal self. The one who is still ecstatic over a one year cancer free diagnosis. I want to get to the point where I stop thinking about cancer everyday. It’s been a year and yet it still occupies my thoughts as if it where yesterday. A year ago, I was suffering through an episode of erythema nodosum and my breasts were still healing from surgery. I was getting ready to start to chemo and I was battling an infection. And now here I am, healthy and whole and yet I can’t be happy. I’m trying to find my own double rainbow.

Happy Second Birthday To Me!

It’s not often that you get a second chance at life, and that’s exactly what I got. HURRAY FOR ME!

As you can guess, I made the one year cancer survivor milestone! My mammogram came back all clear with no traces of cancer. I have been diligent with taking all my meds and I’ve been working on losing weight. The night before the mammogram was not a good one for me. I was tense and crying and nervous. Honestly, I was completely freaking out. When the tech began my mammogram, we started talking and I could not shup up. I was so nervous and so upset that I just kept talking and I told the tech that I knew I couldn’t shut up. She laughed, gave me a big hug and kept on with the process. Once she was finished, I told her I knew she couldn’t tell me anything so I asked if it looked like I was going to get a letter in the mail. (A letter in the mail indicates that the mammo is all clear.) I think because she knew I was anxious about my results, she actually told me what she saw on my mammogram. She said that she didn’t see anything, however, a radiologist would blow up the image and look more closely at it. She also said that no one was available to look at my images that day and to expect someone to look tomorrow. Her words immediately calmed me down and I was able to meet up with hubby and baby girl for a late lunch.

So imagine my surprise when during lunch, I received an email from my oncologist with 4 simple words: “Hello, no cancer seen.”

I cried in the middle of a Vietnamese restaurant.

The weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

Hubby and I decided to have a special dinner for my new second birthday. We even opened a very special bottle of champagne that was given to use when we got engaged. It was one of the best dinners of my life.

I still have fears in the back of my mind about the cancer coming back, or even becoming metastasized, but then I check myself to continue to think positively. Nothing good can ever come from stressing out over an unknown situation. I feel like the media is now starting to really pay close attention to metastasized cancers and that’s why I keep seeing it online and on the news. At the same time, I keep seeing more and more information on survivors (like little old ladies who have been cancer free for 30 years!) and I tell myself that life is too short as is, stop worrying!

So I will end this on a happy note…Happy second birthday to me. 🙂

Ramblings On Babies, Cats and Everything In Between

Let me catch you up to date on the latest happenings in our household.

My one year anniversary of being diagnosed has come and gone. It was very anti-climatic; I thought I’d wake to trumpets blaring and eagles flying overhead, but it was just another day. Baby girl needed her breakfast and laundry had to be done. I went for my check up with my oncologist and I passed with flying colors. I still need to get a mammogram and I’ve got one scheduled in the next few weeks.

We also went to see a fertility specialist to see what my reproductive system looked like post chemo. As feared, chemo decimated my egg supply, but overall, my lady parts were quite healthy. The doctor did find a solid number of eggs, but not as many as he would have liked. The question that’s been burning in my brain, is do I risk cancer coming back by having another child naturally? I’m in my 30’s now and by the time I finish my medications (5 years worth) I will be in my early 40’s and it will be much harder to have a child then. Interestingly enough, there is no statistical evidence that pregnancy causes breast cancer to re-occur. (In fact, there is actual evidence to show it may be good to be pregnant again.) I’ve asked my oncologist and other specialty doctors for the statistics and they don’t have any. They just keep telling me that it’s a bad idea. I know their job is to keep me alive, but is this just fear mongering to make sure there are no relapses? Maybe I’m just being hard headed as my heart still has a hard time believing I may not be able to have another child naturally. Even though hubby and I had planned to adopt, I keep wondering, am I really that vain that I need to have my genes replicated? Perhaps it’s the loss of something that really is so feminine to the core.

I have an appointment to see an onco-fertility specialist soon. Hubby and I felt that we needed to really be educated about what our options are. We’ve been pushed towards IVF and a surrogate, but that’s easily $100,000. I can’t afford that and I go back to the thought that we had planned to adopt anyway. Why the mental block then?

On another sad note, one of our pets died recently. And he died from cancer. I felt so horrible. This sweet creature comforted me during my time of need and I had no idea he was suffering as well until it was too late. He passed away gently in my arms under the warm sun. We all cried that day. It’s been a few weeks now and I still really miss him.

Other than that, things have been remarkably normal. I’ve been taking little mama to the library for story time and she started swimming lessons. I’ve also started working part time on my hobby business, so it’s nice to have a little extra spending money in the house. This weekend we are going on a road trip to check out a new city where hubby’s company is trying to relocate us. It’s at least a 10 hour drive from us now and I really don’t want to leave our family here in the Bay Area. I’ve already started packing and I’m preparing a lot of food to bring. Money is tight right now and with the hotel and gas, I’m trying to save as much money as possible. (His company is not paying for this trip.)

I’m still living life one day at a time, so when those burning thoughts enter my head, I try to give it up to God so that I don’t worry about it anymore.

PTSD After Treatment

The last week has not been good for me.

Lately, I’ve felt almost like I did when I was first diagnosed. My mind is dwelling on the breast cancer coming back and I’m absolutely terrified that baby girl won’t have her mother. I’ve found myself crying quite a bit and not being able to sleep. My anxiety is at an all time high and I can’t seem to stop the morbid thoughts from entering my mind.

I’m trying very hard to not be negative because I believe that our bodies respond to what we think. If we believe that our body will die, well then, I feel the individual cells may just stop working because they will feel like “what’s the point?” To make it worse, there have been stories in the news lately of people dying from cancer at a young age. Just recently, a popular Mexican singer passed from breast cancer at the age of 44 after battling the cancer for 6 years. Like her, I was diagnosed at a young age (in my 30’s) and her story reminded me of how fragile life really is. I keep telling myself I can not leave baby girl motherless, but I still can’t stop thinking about death.

I keep looking at my case and my statistics, and I know I’m very lucky that my cancer was caught early. Right now, I have a 92% survival rate but that 8% is f*cking with my mind. (Excuse the language; I just feel like it’s the only word that truly expresses how I feel.) I should be grateful, and I am, I just don’t know why I can’t let it go and move on and go back to how my life was.

Sometimes I just watch baby girl and I cry at the thought of not being with her because of this disease. I know some of the tears are the normal emotions of a mother watching her baby grow up. I’ve been burning images of her in my mind so I will have them always and then the morbid thoughts kick in. I feel that doing that is just setting myself up for a cancer recurrence.

I spoke with a medical professional recently about how I’ve been feeling and she told me that my feelings were normal and common among survivors in the months after treatment. She explained that during the treatment process, patients are strong because they have to deal with the physical demands of surgery, chemo and radiation. That patients don’t have time to really deal with the true emotions of what they are going through. She even said that many patients actually go through PTSD once treatment is finished. I thought that was a bit of a stretch because when I think of PTSD, I think of soldiers fighting overseas and people dealing with abuse and violent crime. How could something like cancer produce a PTSD response in a patient? She politely chastised me for not being gentle with myself and my feelings and urged me to seek out a support group or speak to a therapist.

I do agree that I need to find a group with other young survivors and I am considering a therapist for some one on one sessions. I think I have to stop acting like nothing ever happened and acknowledge what I’ve gone through, beyond the physical issues.

Hopefully this new week will be a better one.