I figured it out

Phew! These steroids are making me hungry this time. Bizarre! Last time I was on Predisone they didn't make me hungry at all. I didn't sleep well without a pill, but I didn't wake up starving. I am not letting myself eat out of ordinary times right now. So I am just sitting with the hunger. I am sick of being heavy. Over it. Totally.
As a watchful young woman, I have witnessed all these beautiful women in my life get old. Or I have met them once they are old, and lamenting on the "good old days, of being "hot" I understand, more than ever know. But I understood before cancer. Vanity, and pride are huge ego boosters. And so not what is real, nor what matters. Before cancer, I understood this, I did, and so I always had a little less patience for it. Hearing all these grown women gawk at their arms, their wrinkles, their thighs, their whatever wasn't up to their par. As a young woman looking at these women, and hearing them, I always do and have seen their power that comes with those changes, and personally felt their beauty deeper than the peripheral they were grieving the loss of.
Basically, I wanted to say to them, " Get over it. Its not what lifes about. Love yourself, accept yourself."
I think one of the hardest parts of being a woman in America/Canada/Europe, wherever, is that we have a lack of ritual to guide us through our losses and our rites of passages. We have long ago let that go, and I think it makes it harder for, in this case, a woman to "change".
I've changed. I took down the pictures of myself two days ago. Pictures of my once beautiful, long hair, in various shades. The joy I had kills me to look at now. I am joyful, no one, not even cancer can take that away from me. I was born spastic for life, not crawling, but got up and ran at 7 months. I'm still there. But there is (oh, i'm starving, I might have to eat) no point making and pointing out to myself daily, constantly throughout the day, of the old carefree that I so long to reunite with. Those pictures of her, of me, have been helpful up to this point. And now that I am nearing the end of my battle, I don't want to see them. So I put all the pics away, all the wedding photos. Can't stand to look at them. I hope D and I make it through this. But honestly, its been incredibly hard. Words cannot express how hard. I just feel very thankful I have had him to go through this with me. To get me water when I couldn't move, to get me meds, to care for me the best he could.
Its easy to want and expect someone to love you the way you would to them. But that is not truely loving someone. I believe. I believe it is loving the person for who they are and accepting what it is they are able to give to you. At times like these, and in life, though I never could imagine it, and now I do, this is how people can grow apart. The giving, the needing, in my case, changed. It grew to an intensity, that no one wishes for. But I needed to need, and I deserved to need, and it was and is all encompassing. Its a beautiful thing to grow.
Back to me changing. Body stuff. So, its hard. The wise young woman has to say to the "chemopausal" "menopausal" 34, how fucked up is that? that its okay I have lots and lots of gray hair coming in, where before cancer I had blond/brown hair. Its okay, that I am swollen and huge. Its okay. Yesterday, since I just sold a house, I went and bought myself a new outfit, that fits. The super-sized Heather pants no longer fit, yeah! And the 1st time out of hospital pants I bought don't fit, they're too tight right now. Wearing pants that don't fit, sucks. I have never had to deal with this, and I realized waiting to fit in to the smaller ones was ridiculous and a form of not accepting myself and loving myself. I was in costant torture, or I was constantly walking around with super baggy pants. Ick!
Those are the two ways I decided to love myself more this week. Take down the old pictures that were torturing me, and get a pair of pants that fit.
Two last thoughts. One is that I spelled the therapists name wrong, for those of you that googled her. It is Janet Abrams.
And the last, is that maybe my left eye (its getting better, by the way) want to be weepy because it is reminding me to cry more often.

Oncology Therapy

I have found a wonderful mental health, talky-talky therapist here in Seattle. Her name is Janet Abrams and she is wonderful. I have seen therapists off and on since I was a little girl, and I feel so blessed to have found her. When my mom first had her stroke, I went to see my first specialized therapist for Grief and he was mind-blowingly perfect for me. I learned a lot. The main lesson, and I know this is a deviated (steroids and all the energy and mind-altering deviations they give me) but the main lesson he taught me was that when I was with my mom, it wasn't about me. It wasn't about me needing to and trying to convey, fix, or repair anything. That work could be done in therapy, but what I needed to do was just be present with her and in the present. You know what I am saying? Am I saying this correctly. My mom deserved to have her kids usher her into the otherworld, and to allow her, her sacred rites of passage, of passing. Not me crying over all the hurtful stuff, things unsaid, but just loving. Being in the Love.
So, this grief therapists is sortof like Janet in that they specialize. I like specialists is what I am discovering through all this. My Grandad told me once, get really good at one thing, Heather.
I saw Janet a few weeks ago, and I wasn't on steroids. Today I walked in there, and it was very centering, healing, and opening to be me to see ME. She validated me. She understood how traumatic of a week I just had. Not that she has gone through it, but she has made Cancer, her lifes work. One thing that is really hard going through this is that no one truly "gets" what or where I am at. Or what I have/will/had had to go through. D surely doesn't get it. Which I get. I learned from my mom's passing, that until you lose a parent, it is very hard to be in a place of understanding. But of coarse, there is just being a simple caring soul who is there for someone.
And I get that. Lots of you, lots of the girls on the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation site, friends, family, and my Keller Williams family are there for me. All asking me how I am doing. But unless you've gone through this you don't get it. So, I just cry. There is so much loneliness at a time when life is so full and feeling all that life is about. Such a contradictory journey.
Janet helped lead me to an understanding that I am different on the med's. I am pretty manic really. That was this morning a few hours after I took my med's. Now I am exhausted, barely able to keep my eyes open, on the coach, and will take them again tonight at 9.
At the base of all the "manic-ness" and all the anger, and all the crap, there sits sadness. Just blue, deep, dark, ocean blue with the foggiest, unknowns following it. Hovering over the sea with the heaviest rain falling. Just sad. There are a lot of tears to come. To heal. To come full circle again. I only have 16 radiation appointments left. And then, I can enter this place. Safely. The unknowns of life and my imminent time of departing this world can once again become part of a future time that won't be on my shoulder, cawing and scratching at my every move.

trickling back to life

Most of the time, I feel like I am back to "life". I have been pretty upset the past few weeks, emotionally. Not for any other reason that just coming to grips with the fact that I "got" breast cancer. I am trying to not dwell on the fact that my period hasn't returned yet, but this is upsetting. There are lots of things that are upsetting.
But there are a lot of things that are positive. For instance, morning, I had radiation #11, so only 22 left. I saw my eye doc again, and he said in surgery they found a bunch of little obstructions. My eye isn't tolerable yet to me, so we may have a few other options in a few weeks to discover. I am now eating vegetarian. My Onc says he doesn't care what I eat. My ND that focuses just on cancer says only red meat once a month. And most of the literature I read says that I need to not eat red meat, as it turns carcinogenic in the body. So. Diet is one of three things I can control.
#1 Diet
#2- Exercise

Which leads me to my other positive so far in the day, is that I started running again. I started lifting weights and walking last week. And today, I walked a 1/2 mile to the beach, ran I think 3/4 of a mile, and walked back up the hill doing lots of lunges to my home. I feel great.

and the
#3 is attitude. Of coarse. This one makes me angry because I had a really good attitude before cancer. I never dwelt on getting cancer or even thought of it. So this one pisses me off. LIke my attitude is going to keep cancer away. Well, who knows if it will or not. So, I am going to opt to try to get back to the attitude of not thinking about "getting" cancer again.

Last week I saw my first mental health Oncology Therapist. I basically cried the whole time I was in there. Literally. I am sure she clincally diagnosed me as "depressed". I think I might be. Or maybe I'm not. Maybe I am hormonal with lots of those changes, since I don't have my period. Or maybe its because I am overwhelmed with emotions because of what I have had to face in such a short period of time or maybe its because I had to face it at all.
I told my eye doctor today that I just want to be a normal 33 year old girl again. I really do. I want to bleed every month, I want to get hormonal achne again, I just want to not have my world be full of hot flashes, and doctor appointments. My friend Gen is in Eugene visiting her boyfriend for the next month and my sister lives there, and she's pregnant. I want to go visit them, but I can't because I have doctor appointments every freakin' day.
Did i mention how incredible my body feels right now? I just ate a delicious salad had some "Veggie Delight" on the side (look it up for those of you that don't know it) and my spirit feels pretty good right now.

Horrible sleep

I have been sleeping pretty well the past few nights, but not last night. Went to bed at usual 830 but woke up all through the night. At one point I thought about how scared I really am. To get through this I haven't allowed myself to feel the fear mainly because the fear isn't a healthy place to visit nor reside in for a period of time. I don't feel safe feeling the fear, nor acknowledging it alone. I am going to start seeing and oncology therapist and I will do that with her.
Today i have a few massages early this morning, and then and HIV/AIDS continuing ed class for massage. I took the class 14 years ago, so I thought it was time for a recap.
I am seriously beginning to dream of my veggie garden I am going to have this year. The entire time I've lived in the city I have always thought that living in the city one doesn't get to have a big garden. This year, I thought what balonie and I am going to have one, the size I'd have on Vashon! I'm excited.

Thinking of Me

When I got diagnosed suddenly I found myself interupting people in their mid-sentences and talking about my cancer, my disbelief, my emotions. I just was in such a state of shock, that grace and social to-do's went flying out the window. I didn't care what the hell people were talking about because all I could think about was cancer, my cancer, my breasts, my life that had just been shattered and was laying at my feet. I realized I was doing it, and I knew from the shock on peoples faces that they knew I was doing it, and everything became Cancer for me. There was and still is nothing else. If you are not a survivor you may not understand this. And I hope you never do.
In this place resides part of how I survived. I made Heather a priority. I made what I was feeling a priority. I made what I was thinking a priority. I made everything about me. I suddenly had to understand my new world, as if I had signed up with an experimental NASA trip to Venus and was living there for five years alone. With no help from anyone, unless I asked questions and read and asked more questions, and maybe I might find a few souls that had been to Venus and had survived the worst trip of their lives.
For D this has been very hard. And I don't want to talk about his process here. All I can say is that he never reached out to anyone, not even his parents on a regular basis, to get the support he needed to be supportive of me on an emotional level. There are/were so many options for him with support groups, counseling (even my Onc suggested a few for him because he was having such a hard time months back) and I have not had the energy to "take" on the usual responisbiliites I forced myself into in supporting him to do healthy things for him. All I had the energy to do was, call a few of his friends and say, "can you call him. can you hang out with him." Or call his mom and ask her to call. I feel sad and have felt very sad for him.
But the survivor in me that had to A Rise to survive has less sympathy. He is almost 40, he is 36, he is a man. And this survivor in me says, he can take care of himself, AND Me. So, I was able to relax into the state of asking him to fetch a million things for me when I couldn't walk ten steps without feeling like I was going to die.
This chemo hell ride I was on almost killed me. I just pray that in a few years time, my body doesn't start showing any negative effects of the chemo. But back to D, and you other supporters of survivors.
In the place of making everything about me, there is time for you, for D. And I just was too weak, and I also believe a changed person, in that I do not feel it is my responsiblity to take care of him. I was there, trust me. I tried talking to him about his feelings. And we had a few discussions on this topic, when he would allow himself to open up to me. But that's all I can/could do. I had to focus on me. And cancer and my treatment actually forced this to happen. I was so sick, so sick that I couldn't feel anything except my pain. So again, if there are any of you spouses out there reading this that have to go through this hell ride with your beloved. Take care of yourself, get the support you need. Otherwise your well will be dried up and it will be hard to get to the finish line. D, is going to Hawaii he let me know the other day. Alone. I am not allowed to come. He needs a break. He loves me but feels disgusted by me and can't stand to be around me anymore. What can you say about that? There is a breaking point. In all of us. And we are too young to go through this, and sure possibly, possibly as an older man he might be more gracious with his process. But the fact is, is there is no excuses in life. He is a man, and he has a choice in his life on how he wants to walk this earth. I have no control over that.
So back to me. In being diagnosed with cancer, to get through there is a place of Needing to be selfish. This was very hard to wrap my mind around in the beginning. Because my whole life I have taken care of others and put their needs first. For instance. When I was five my mom was in an accident. I took care of my then six month old brother, all the time. My massage practice, I booked appointments whenever so be it 7 am or 10 pm for clients so that I was flexible for them. My my husband and old boy friends, I did whatever I could to make their lives easier. Always, always thinking of others. Thinking that they would give back to me, or thinking the universe would give back to me.
This old disgusting habit was broken, clearly broken with me getting diagnosed with cancer. I will never do that again, unless I am a mother. And I think that this is a must if you're a mom.
So, in being a Survivor, there resides a place of needing to be selfish and its a good thing. Its a hard thing for me because I through old habits want to do for everyone. But I need to remember this lesson, and stick with it. When one is doing all the time, there isn't room to receive. And to open up to this beautiful gift. I really like the new Heather. Not that I didn't see my value before, because I did. But I see the value in my life, and my wants, and my needs, and my desire, and me not stopping what I am wanting to do or doing, to make anyones life easier for them. At least this is how it is right now.