I spent a lot of time deciding whether or not to write this particular piece. You see, I am so tired of complaining, tired of listening to myself, tired of wondering if everyone else is as tired of listening to me as I am, that I didn’t know if it was reasonable to say it to the rest of the world. I had a talk with my husband about it and his opinion was that I started writing here to share my feelings and experience with others and so I should go ahead. So here we are.
I was scrolling through Facebook today and saw an article written by a woman that I don’t know but she was talking about her weekend. She explained that she had this year had breast cancer surgery, chemotherapy and had just finished radiation last Friday (that was four days ago). Yesterday and today she picked berries, made thirty-eight jars of jam, canned some veggies and she had just come in from her garden with tonight’s fresh veggies to use for dinner. OMG!!! The biggest thing I accomplished this week is keeping up with the laundry and that was difficult.
I have always been energetic, focussed, goal-oriented and couldn’t wait to get everything done. I have always had many projects on the go and was excited about them all. I have to say that with the way I am feeling, I can’t even think about doing day-to-day things, getting dressed is a chore and extra things is out of the question. The problem is, I feel lazy, that I am just being too lazy to do anything and that maybe I have fallen into a trap of doing nothing out of a new habit I have adopted through this whole experience.
I somehow had the feeling that once I was finished all my treatments, I would start feeling better and life would become normal or whatever the new normal was going to be. What I am living with right now is not normal and I refuse to believe it will become my normal. The arthritis in my hips is now so severe that walking is not only painful and difficult but sometimes near to impossible. The doctors have told me that I will be seen and assessed in good time but it’s most difficult. I was completely aware that there was arthritis but I believe that the treatments i have undergone have exacerbated the condition and the pain. I know I’m not a doctor and shouldn’t even say it since I don’t really know, but I still think so. On top of that, the pelvic floor dysfunction is back with a vengeance. I have constant pain and spend a lot of time going up and down the stairs to the washroom that makes my legs hurt and so on it goes. Next week, I will see what they can do about that. My other major issue is that eating is such a big deal that I don’t even want to think about it. During chemo, food tasted strange and often the things I have liked all my life didn’t appeal to me at all. I could never think of what I wanted to eat, I sure didn’t want to make it and even when I did have food in front of me I didn’t want it. Today, my appetite is back but I still have difficulty finding things to eat. There are so many things I used to eat and like that I just can’t even think about eating. Poor Vic works so hard to find things that I might want but I really don’t want much. I had no idea this would go on so long but apparently it can last for months. The good news is that I am not eating much and losing weight is good for relieving arthritis pain.
Here’s the part I really didn’t want to write. I am so tired of myself. I’m tired of moaning, whining, crying and not being able to do anything. Not only is it foreign to me, it is exhausting and must be even more so for those around me. It’s not just the pain although that is major. It’s the constant feeling useless and lazy. It’s also that I have spent a good part of my life learning and practicing techniques and methods to help yourself. Self care is something I have taught for years and always thought I practiced it well. There are so many days that I cannot even make myself do the things I know I should be doing to feel better. I know how to handle feelings, pains, and moods and many days I’m just not doing them.
I started wondering why that is. I should know better, I should do better. I think that it might be that it is easy to fall into victim mentality. You start to feel picked on (I don’t know by whom, maybe by life) and that you are the only one going through this. It’s easy to fall into this trap. I do believe that especially my generation grew up believing that if you do the right things, you will be rewarded. You think that there is some great scorecard and if you check all the boxes, everything will go right. It’s not so. Things happen, shit happens and it’s not because you did anything wrong. It JUST HAPPENS.
So rather than beating myself up because I am not like the woman on Facebook who can take on the world immediately after treatment, I am going to be good to myself. I am going to take charge of this and start doing the things that I can do. It’s time to find my inner shine and make it work for me. Wish me luck!
