Chapter Thirty Two

Shawn Patrick sledding with friends

February 2008

Chapter Thirty Two – February 12, 2008

So I was scared. I admit it. Now, not before, I wouldn’t have admitted it before but I’ll say it now. I was scared.

The timeline goes like this….December 06 discovered a weird lump, December 06 biopsy confirmed cancer, January 07 Swedish and doctors, doctors, and more doctors, March 07 double mastectomy and reconstruction (tissue expanders), April 07-October 07 Expansions and Chemo grays, haze and daze, December 07 Reconstructive Surgery (Implants)…….
So throughout that time, I marched along like a little soldier, one foot in front of the other, don’t look down, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming…anyhoo…I was proud of that… I only asked two questions: “What is the most aggressive treatment I can have so that I never need to look at my kids and tell them that mommy has cancer again?” and “Will I lose my hair?”…. Don’t look down…. Just keep going.

So it was interesting this month when I hit a wall and stopped. I hit the wall and fell and I laid there and it took weeks to pick myself up….It was supposed to be simple really. At my last oncology appointment in October I reported to all of you that I was finished, finished with treatment, cancer, and even my weekly updates to all of you. Yep, clap my hands, dust myself off and put it behind me, moving right along. All I had left to do was a check up at Swedish in three months and then every three months after. No big deal right?

So when the 60th day rolled around I had it on my calendar to call Swedish and my “oh so cha cha” oncologist (is it wrong that I chose her in part because she is smart, good at her job AND because she was wearing earrings that I thought were darling?) So that day rolled by and the next and the next and after a couple of weeks I realized that I was putting it off. One day I sat at my office and crossed off everything else on my list. That never happens. Never. But at the beginning of the day I made a list of all of the things I needed to do before I would call and make the appointment. I accomplished the list and sat at my desk and looked at the last item: “Call Swedish for appt.” Hmmm…. Nope, not today. Maybe tomorrow.
Finally…they started to call…First my angel Monica, my general practitioner’s wife and nurse… and I didn’t return those calls. And then Swedish started to call and still, I waited. Finally while copying down the number for the 2nd time that week and listening to the message I had to admit to myself that there was a reason why I wasn’t calling them back and for the first time since all of this started I had to admit to myself that I was scared. I was really, really scared.

I had my appointment last week with my oncologist and I cried in front of her for the first time since she met me. Good Lord… is it apparent to anyone else out there that I am a little slow on the uptake? Jesus. Now????? I have tears now??????
She asked me how I was and I started with my bullshit line of…. “Fine…I’m great… doing great.” What is it about me that craves the title of being the easiest patient in her roster…. No problems from little me… I’m even sensitive to the fact that she has fourteen other bald patients in the waiting room and that I should hurry up in case they’re sicker than I am and need more of her time. Good God! But about the third time I told her I was fine, she called bullshit and I cried.

I told her that I was scared of the appointment. Scared of her and what she might say. I was scared for my babies and I told her that in every other appointment I felt as though I was strong enough to take anything she threw at me. But in this case, for this appointment, in my heart I felt that I wasn’t …. Strong enough that is… and that if she came back into that room with her clip board and gave me that look again… that look… I know that look…. That I would fold inward….. and fall…. and fall and keep falling and that I would not recover… because I just don’t, at this moment anyway… have it in me to begin again.

So I held off on writing this chapter, it’s been in here all along, perfectly formed… but I didn’t want to put it on paper until I knew the outcome… so here it is.
My check up went great. I am well… my blood work is rebounding and I am healing.

But maybe, even better than that knowledge, is the feeling that I had sitting with another soul who understands where I am right now. In that room on the 2nd floor of the Swedish Cancer Center, past the waterfall and the quote from Emily Dickenson, up the stairs and past the fish tank, through the door and onto the scale, down the hall and into the exam room. In that room, in my chair ( I don’t like to sit on the exam table because it makes me feel weak and she knows it), with tears streaming down my face…I felt relief… because she knows…she knows all of it. She told me that I could hide it from most of you because I didn’t lose my hair and I stayed away on my worst days and reported only what I wanted you to know…but she knows… she knows it because she is the one who prescribed it….my hell… and she even knows that I feel worse emotionally now than I did then… and that I am more scared now than I was then… and that now, that I am finished with the business of just staying alive, it occurs to me that I was sick and the enormity of all of it just buckles my knees.

In my time line I thought that I would report to you now that I am better, and feeling better and moving on…so I have been so disturbed by the fact that I can’t write any of that to you. It’s simply not the truth. And to be honest, I was disgusted with myself because of it. For God sake, just get over it and move on. But I can’t. So when she looked at me in my little cancer room, and told me that she knew, she knew. I couldn’t help but cry… the relief of it all was so stinking overwhelming that I cried…more because I was grateful that she got me than because I was scared. “Normal” means nothing to me now, or maybe so many things that I can’t bring it in focus, but still she said the word “normal” and though I don’t know what that is anymore, still, the hope of it made me grateful and I asked her to say it again. “This is normal,” she said: “This is normal, and you are normal, and it is what you should be feeling and everyone else who comes in here after going through what I know I just put you through feels the same way.”
Oh. My. Lord. I’m normal. This is normal. My reaction is normal…
I haven’t failed this test… I get more time….and in time she promises that I will process all of it and I will move on from it…. but I need more time, and more rest… and maybe even more tears…. but it will come. She promised.

Love to all of you
j

Chapter Thirty One

Chapter Thirty One – January 27, 2008
Ribbons of laughter.
So that’s what I keep thinking about this week. I had this experience at a cabin among friends which is always good for the soul. I believe in my heart that this is what possibly plagues those who are landlocked and citified. I believe that perspective is always restored in a cabin among friends….this is particularly therapeutic when the cabin sits between the shore and the forest and is stocked with a plentiful supply of food, alcohol, gossip magazines, and firewood.
So I was running around town the morning we left….. chores to do and things to get ready in addition to the Saturday morning “kid schlepping” which is part of my world. I try to pretend I don’t enjoy this part of my life but to be perfectly honest I do…I love it. Yes, I am frantic, and sometimes grouchy when faced with a tight schedule and missing shin guards, swim suits, tutu’s and gymnastics gear… but if you all promise not to tell, I will let you in on a secret. I love being a mom, and love being a mom on Saturday mornings while schlepping my kids to all of their adventures, all the while feeling grateful for the purpose they give me and the title that I am most honored to bear. I am “Shawn and Campbell’s Mom.”
Anyhoo – so on that particular morning I was VERY busy as I had to make several stops before we were to be picked up on the beach at Settlers Cove. About half way through my morning I had to remind myself to breathe in and out so as to avoid having a stroke between rushed sips of coffee while throwing gear at my children in the back of the car and shouting things like: “For God’s sake, just put the leotard on!”

My friends give me a hard time for the way that I take care of them. I like to cook for them and I like to watch them come to my home or to the Sande Cabin and I like to watch them relax and enjoy themselves. It’s one of my favorite things. So I think people are under the misguided notion that I do all of that work for them. The reality is that I do it for very selfish reasons. I surround myself with people that make me laugh and in exchange for my time and my mom’s recipes; they give me so much more than I give to them. They make me laugh… and often… they give me that when I need it the most. So that morning when I was cursing at myself for not being more organized and trying to figure out in my sluggish chemo brain whether I could physically accomplish all of things still on my list before the pick up boat left the shore and wondering if my mother was right when she said that I just keep my schedule this busy because I obviously hate myself and am trying to punish myself for unnamed sins. I thought of that and then I thought of what I wanted to get out of the weekend and why I felt like I needed to go at all.
It was so simple really, so simple that I said it out loud…“Laughter… I am going to the cabin for laughter.” Yep, splendors of the simple sort… I was going to the cabin to get from my friends what they give me best… laughter.

Oh my Lord! I love Southeast Alaska. I talk about it all the time. You all know it, I’m a Southeast girl at heart and I do so love being an Alaskan, but more specifically, I love being from Southeast and I believe that if you come from this region that I can relate to you in some way… what is that Emily Bronte quote that’s so fantastic? “Whatever it is that our souls are made from, yours and mine are the same.” I probably crucified that quote. Anyhoo… you get my drift. But sometimes we get busy and we drive to work and we drive home without looking to the water…or we get in the boat and we forget to take a deep breath and capture the salt air in our lungs and hold onto it for a second… we forget. I was lucky because it had been awhile since I’d been on a boat and so I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with my surroundings. I do so love Southeast Alaska, and I especially love it when I am in a boat and I have a beer and the wind and the waves and the greens and blues make such a powerful statement that you realize they feel like an old friend that you haven’t seen in a long time and you feel yourself rushing into them.

Campbell Rose and Sean loading up after a weekend at the Mitchell's Cabin

You know what inspired me? There were lots of really good moments…fireside on the beach, stories in a hot tub, sleeping in bags side by side with friends, listening to really good music… but I had this moment that I kept, it was the kind of moment that you look at and then close your eyes so that you can capture it, and tuck it away in your heart as a snap shot of your life. As everyone was situated, eating good food and enjoying each others company I looked around the room at several different conversations all going on at once and I listened as they laughed. All of these independent conversations going on about different things, but the room was filled with it. Laughter. From my seat next to the little wood burning stove the laughter sounded as though it was floating. I closed my eyes and imagined what it would be like if there was a ribbon tied to each laugh… bright colored streams of satin floating between us, binding us together, and filling the room with extraordinary hope.

Love to all of you,
j