The End of Chemorona
Last Monday, May 18th marked my last chemo treatment! The first part of this marathon is over.
I packed my “chemo bag” the night before, placed my port numbing cream on the bathroom vanity, laid out my chemo outfit and set my alarms. On Taxol, I have to take a high dose of steroids 10 hours and 6 hours before treatment. This time, it meant taking a dose at 12:45 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. The morning of the 18th, the weather was gorgeous and I blasted my music in the car as I drove to treatment. I saw a white egret on my way, and it felt like a happy sign from the universe.
I left treatment at 2 p.m. and it felt surreal. I expected to feel elated, but I felt a myriad of emotions. For sure, I felt happy to be done with chemo and lucky and proud for how I’d handled it. I’m lucky that my body handled chemo relatively well. I’m lucky for all the love and support I’ve received from family and friends. I’m proud that I ran more miles in the last week than I’ve done in years. Some peach fuzz has started growing in on my head, but from the Taxol, I’m still shedding some eyebrows and eyelashes. It seems strange to be simultaneously growing and losing hair. I washed my face the other night, and after toweling it off, I realized a good portion of the front part of my eyebrow had disappeared! Oh well, nothing some brow filler can’t fix. (Or you know, straight up black sharpie, to get that real max impact. I mean that’s how it’s done right?)
The closing of the door on chemo opened the door for me to think about the remainder of my treatment and how life-changing this whole diagnosis is. The full magnitude of the length of my treatment has hit me in the past week. All the anxieties I’ve pushed off because I was just trying to get through chemotherapy have come hurtling in. There’s been an ironic sense of safety in being in our little quarantine bubble, my only focus being on getting through chemo. The other night, it was 6:30 p.m. and I was washing dishes after dinner. B had the kids in the bath. I stared out the kitchen window and thought about how normally I’d just be getting home, feeling frazzled from my commute, stressed from my day, and feeling like I was always running late and rushing to be elsewhere. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want this bubble of togetherness to end. In a perverse way, cancer has enabled me to take that internal pressure off and just be here. The only pressure I put on myself during chemo was to survive and get through it. (Ok, that’s a lie. I still pressured myself to work out, be an involved mother, do home projects and a variety of other things. However, working out makes me feel incredible and creative/home projects bring me a lot of joy. I’ve taken some pressure off myself about always being “on” as mom. There are times I tune out because I have to).
Now, I am staring down multiple surgeries, radiation treatment, reconstruction, being put into menopause (first through hormone therapy treatment, then followed up by surgery to remove my ovaries and Fallopian tubes) and 10 years of additional hormone therapy treatment. We are lucky because we weren’t planning on having more kids, so fertility preservation is not an issue for our family. However, the other day, I was talking with B about my surgery and someone else having a baby, and R got super excited and asked if I was having surgery because I was going to have another baby (both L and R were born via c-section, so she has an association with surgery and babies being born). It was a gut punch. I explained that, “No, I would not be having another baby and that mommy’s surgery was to remove the cancer germs from her boobs.” R has been referring to my “big surgery” (my double mastectomy surgery) for months now. But seeing her excitement at the idea of another baby in the family and the fact that another baby will never be a reality (even though we weren’t planning on it) made me sad. There’s a part of me that mourns the fact that my body is going to be cut up, parts of me removed, and that my body will be prematurely old when mentally I don’t feel that way at all. I’ll adjust, but it’s scary and overwhelming.
The situation also brings my internal struggle about the role I want my work and career to play in my life into acute focus. I am having anxiety nightmares about work. I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself, and I’m struggling with how to reconcile that in the face of my diagnosis and figuring out what makes me happy. I don’t have the answers, but I’m going to try to be kind to myself, enjoy the time I have now, and treat this ultra-marathon like a much more manageable interval run.
I packed my “chemo bag” the night before, placed my port numbing cream on the bathroom vanity, laid out my chemo outfit and set my alarms. On Taxol, I have to take a high dose of steroids 10 hours and 6 hours before treatment. This time, it meant taking a dose at 12:45 a.m. and 6:45 a.m. The morning of the 18th, the weather was gorgeous and I blasted my music in the car as I drove to treatment. I saw a white egret on my way, and it felt like a happy sign from the universe.
I left treatment at 2 p.m. and it felt surreal. I expected to feel elated, but I felt a myriad of emotions. For sure, I felt happy to be done with chemo and lucky and proud for how I’d handled it. I’m lucky that my body handled chemo relatively well. I’m lucky for all the love and support I’ve received from family and friends. I’m proud that I ran more miles in the last week than I’ve done in years. Some peach fuzz has started growing in on my head, but from the Taxol, I’m still shedding some eyebrows and eyelashes. It seems strange to be simultaneously growing and losing hair. I washed my face the other night, and after toweling it off, I realized a good portion of the front part of my eyebrow had disappeared! Oh well, nothing some brow filler can’t fix. (Or you know, straight up black sharpie, to get that real max impact. I mean that’s how it’s done right?)
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| In the car after my last chemo. |
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| Hopefully the last chemo infusion I’ll ever have . |
The closing of the door on chemo opened the door for me to think about the remainder of my treatment and how life-changing this whole diagnosis is. The full magnitude of the length of my treatment has hit me in the past week. All the anxieties I’ve pushed off because I was just trying to get through chemotherapy have come hurtling in. There’s been an ironic sense of safety in being in our little quarantine bubble, my only focus being on getting through chemo. The other night, it was 6:30 p.m. and I was washing dishes after dinner. B had the kids in the bath. I stared out the kitchen window and thought about how normally I’d just be getting home, feeling frazzled from my commute, stressed from my day, and feeling like I was always running late and rushing to be elsewhere. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want this bubble of togetherness to end. In a perverse way, cancer has enabled me to take that internal pressure off and just be here. The only pressure I put on myself during chemo was to survive and get through it. (Ok, that’s a lie. I still pressured myself to work out, be an involved mother, do home projects and a variety of other things. However, working out makes me feel incredible and creative/home projects bring me a lot of joy. I’ve taken some pressure off myself about always being “on” as mom. There are times I tune out because I have to).
Now, I am staring down multiple surgeries, radiation treatment, reconstruction, being put into menopause (first through hormone therapy treatment, then followed up by surgery to remove my ovaries and Fallopian tubes) and 10 years of additional hormone therapy treatment. We are lucky because we weren’t planning on having more kids, so fertility preservation is not an issue for our family. However, the other day, I was talking with B about my surgery and someone else having a baby, and R got super excited and asked if I was having surgery because I was going to have another baby (both L and R were born via c-section, so she has an association with surgery and babies being born). It was a gut punch. I explained that, “No, I would not be having another baby and that mommy’s surgery was to remove the cancer germs from her boobs.” R has been referring to my “big surgery” (my double mastectomy surgery) for months now. But seeing her excitement at the idea of another baby in the family and the fact that another baby will never be a reality (even though we weren’t planning on it) made me sad. There’s a part of me that mourns the fact that my body is going to be cut up, parts of me removed, and that my body will be prematurely old when mentally I don’t feel that way at all. I’ll adjust, but it’s scary and overwhelming.
The situation also brings my internal struggle about the role I want my work and career to play in my life into acute focus. I am having anxiety nightmares about work. I put an enormous amount of pressure on myself, and I’m struggling with how to reconcile that in the face of my diagnosis and figuring out what makes me happy. I don’t have the answers, but I’m going to try to be kind to myself, enjoy the time I have now, and treat this ultra-marathon like a much more manageable interval run.
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