The parts I left out

From my sketchbook

When I was going through my sketchbook this morning I found journal entries that I never made a part of this online journal.  Most of these were written during treatment and when I went back to work.  If I don’t include some of them, there are holes in this story.  I’m not going to enter them in chronological order, but will go back and try to organize them later.  If I try to be too organized I may never get them entered. I’m having a hellofa time this morning getting things uploaded the way it is – have had to go back and re-write this introduction three times. So now I’m leaving it as is.

++++++++++++++++++++
Undated

Thursday. I’m having dreams in the afternoon. I am having to leave work and come home to sleep all afternoon because not to do so means exposing my weakness and emotional lack of control to others that I am supposed to be supervising at work. Today I couldn’t answer a question about a budget that I put together yesterday. I don’t understand what I wrote yesterday. I was sitting at my desk and looking blankly at the computer screen most of the morning and not knowing where to begin. Angry and frustrated with people who were not doing their jobs but were thinking I should do it for them, and then when I did, they disregarded what I did. I said, “I need people to start thinking independently!!” And then I burst into tears thirty minutes later for not being able to communicate better. WHO is not communicating!!?? It has been very difficult going back to work with this fatigue and try to take my position over people who believe they got alone fine without me for two months.

When I’m this tired, I’m discouraged about everything.

Later — no need to be discouraged just because my body says rest. I’m lucky I can take the time to rest. I’m looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

I want to go help a friend in Denver, then I realize I’m sitting here paralyzed in my house, too.

==================================

The author of She Who Dreams had dreams of three snakes associated with her cancer and treatment.

My three snakes were real – not dreams. The day before my first chemotherapy treatment appointment in Denver, I stood at the front door wondering how I would ever take care of this place with 5 acres. I had just had breast cancer surgery on the left side. A chemo port had been put in my right arm and my entire arm was hot, red, swollen, and breaking out. I went out and walked through the front yard, almost stepping on a long yellow and green ribbon snake. I saw a snake in the side yard, and another one in the back yard in the grass. Three snakes in one trip around the house. This had never happened before. Just then a crow flew into the tree beside the house and cawwed at me. (“The worst is over,” in the old Mexican proverb.  “The crow can’t be blacker than it’s wing.”) 

I went straight into the house and called the doctor’s office and cancelled my chemo. I made an appointment to have the chemo port taken out.

Of course, this was the last thing that happened after a long agonizing process of trying to decide logially whether to have chemo and several false starts to the process, including being told at one time I would need to chance oncologists and locations for treatment.   I used the numbers one doctor gave me, and decided I needed to do it. The second doctor said, “they’re just numbers.”  I asked him, if I don’t use numbers, what else is there?  Everything in me told me it made no sense to be poisoned to make myself well.   My intuition was telling me not to do it. I was trying to ignore my intuition.

Actually, my body was also telling me not to do it.  When I had the port removed, we discovered that I had several blood clots at both ends of the port, an allergic reaction to the latex and adhesive, and I had to start on daily shots of Heparin in my stomach for the blood clots.

It just took three snakes and a crow to get my attention.

I don’t advocate that anyone else wait for snakes to make a decision. But it is one of the most difficult and agonizing decisions that I’ve ever made. Later, my doctor said she thought it was the best decision for me at the time, and the important thing was for me to be comfortable with it.  “Well, that may not happen,” I told her.

=======================

Tonight after cleaning my house and breathing and focusing on setting up my living space for reading and art, I opened the curtains and turned on the front porch light and am sitting here watching it snow.

I think my anxiety level is decreasing. Or, maybe it’s the xanex! I called the social worker at the doctor’s office today and got names of some counselors to call and make an appointment to talk to someone. Gotta do this. Gotta change something.

=========================

My friend who also has breast cancer called today and we agree that this post-treatment stage is more emotional and tiring. I finally felt rested enough when I woke up yesterday afternoon to clean the livingroom and wash the dishes. I arranged the furniture so I have the art table under the east window by the cupboard I’m going to use for art supplies.

Lesson: Rest until done resting. Then do one next thing. Don’t worry about the next thing when resting.

“He said the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call of languor and of death.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road.

Just as I sat down to the art table, a young hawk flew up and sat on top of the lattice outside the window. Maybe I have a new totem for this stage. Soaring high and hunting. Skimming the landscape and not getting weighed down in it.