Monday, August 23, 2021
I’ve been struggling today, the past couple days really. Emotionally, physically, I’ve been struggling. I had a bit of a hard weekend... Saturday was wonderful - we celebrated my brother and future sister-in-law with a bridal shower and it was so fun. We saw family members that we hadn’t seen since long before the pandemic and I did everything in my power to soak up every minute with them because they are my people and I need them, and I fiercely missed them, and it fed my soul to be with all of them. I was so hot and sweat rolled down my neck from my wig and practically melted off my makeup all day long. But I didn’t even care, because I was with my people. And these last couple months keep reminding me how much I really need my people.
But after all the fun was done and we said our 'goodbyes,' this cancer crap snapped back into focus. Saturday night my port implant started hurting. It felt like a bruise, like I had been punched in my port and it was a deep-tissue bruise. I sat in bed complaining to Cory about how much it hurt but at the same time thinking it was probably nothing. But as the night went on, I kept waking up when I’d move in my sleep from this deep, burning pain in my upper chest. In the morning, I could tell that it had gotten worse, whatever “it” was. I talked with my mom and we thought maybe it was a muscle strain from all the heavy lifting and set-up for the bridal shower the day before. However, as time passed the pain became so intense I knew that it needed to be checked out.
My surgeon’s practice is closed on the weekend so I txt my oncologist and asked him if I should be concerned and needed to get it checked out. He responded quickly and said yes, I needed to go to Prompt Care and get it looked at right away. So I headed out around 11:30am to the prompt care nearby, sat in their waiting room for a little while and then was ultimately told that they wouldn’t have the resources to check me out and I needed to go over to the hospital’s ER instead. Back in the car and over to the hospital's emergency facility. By the grace of God, when I arrived there was no one in the waiting area and I got checked in right away. And would you believe the luck, but my surgeon who placed my port was the on-call surgeon for the hospital that day. After being checked out by the ER Dr. and having nurses coming in and out to run tests, draw blood cultures, etc., my surgeon stopped in, all on his own - the nurse said that never happens and seemed really amazed that he did that - either way I was grateful for the familiar face.
He took one look at the port and said “yep, it’s infected” and after talking to my oncologist and confirming that I only have 2 rounds of chemo left to go, he recommended we go ahead and remove the port and I would do my last 2 rounds of chemo with an IV instead of the port.
He said that an antibiotic would help but that there’s no guarantee it would clean up the infection completely and it would be best to just take it out. As scary as all of this is, as unexpected and uncertain it makes me feel, I’m trusting that my doctors are making recommendations based on my best interest and will do everything in their power to keep me safe and take the best care of me. I am praying for a smooth and successful surgery with an easy recovery - the surgery had originally been set for this morning, but was later changed to tomorrow (8/24).
I’ll have to check-in at 6am and then we’ll go from there. Since the surgery is set for tomorrow, which is usually my regular chemo day, we’ll have to push chemo back in the week - hopefully not too far though. I don’t want my schedule to get too off track, we’ve got my brother's wedding to get ready for and I want to be feeling my best. I’m still waiting to hear back from my oncologist about when we’ll reschedule the 7th round of chemo.
And then last night I had another nasty dose of reality. I was trying to get ready for bed and couldn’t get myself undressed because of the excruciating pain from the infected port, when I tried to raise my arm over my head I had to ask Cory to help me. I stood there with my sports bra halfway on halfway off and feeling like a complete invalid.
It was embarrassing having to ask for help like that. Yes, even though he’s my husband, I was mortified and I started crying because that’s not what I want for my husband, for our marriage. We’re young and in love, we’re supposed to be doing young and in love things, not this. He’s had to do so many not-sexy things for me. He’s had to shave my head, hold me up in the shower when I was feeling too weak to stand after chemo, help me get dressed, watch me struggle with loving myself and my self image throughout this whole fight. It’s not what I would have ever wanted for our marriage. But I am so incredibly thankful that he is in this, deep in this, with me and I pray that it truly does just strengthen our marriage and our love for one another once we’re on the other side of this. A friend of mine who is also fighting breast cancer right now said it best when she said, “Thank You seems like too cheap a word to express how I’m feeling right now,” and she’s right. “Thank you” will never be enough, but it’s all I’ve got right now I guess, so I’ll never stop saying it.
All that to say - I’m struggling. Cancer sucks. It really f*cking sucks. And the struggling - I think I’ve been pushing it down and pushing it away and trying to ignore it, but it’s starting to bubble up lately. It feels odd because I can sense that light at the end of the tunnel on this chemotherapy crap, but the instinct to cry and the desire to sit and wallow seems a lot more present for some reason. Maybe because I’ve been lucky and I haven’t really done that a lot throughout this whole battle. Maybe because I’ve been pushing the trauma down to be dealt with when I’ve got the ‘bandwidth’ for it… maybe because the really hard part is almost over, my body is telling me it’s time to start dealing with it. Who knows, but it’s been rearing its’ ugly head more often lately - the grief, the pity party. I’m aware that it is all waiting for me just below the surface.
Everyone continues to comment on how strong I am, what grace I have dealing with all of this, the courage and bravery I’m showing as I fight this battle. Truth is, any strength I have comes from my Lord God; or from my husband or my daughter or my parents or family or friends. I’ve been fighting this for all of them, all of you, with the strength of God holding me up and driving me forward. But when it’s all said and done I’m just a human, a weak and broken human and I cry and I bleed and I hurt - and I still ache for this to be anyone else’s story but mine.
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