Out of Nowhere

Earlier this week, I was having lunch with Jeff. He's training for a 100-mile bike ride. We casually chatted about the training, the ride, and the last time he'd been in a long bike ride, the MS-150 in Colorado. The MS-150 was just days after my first chemotherapy treatment over eight years ago. I started crying. Not balling, but tears stung my eyes and the room went blurry under a film of watery eyes that came literally out of nowhere.

It had been eight years and two months exactly since my first chemotherapy treatment.

I remember it well. I was dropped off at the hospital by my neighbor: are you OK? I'm fine. I walked through the hospital doors up to the post-surgical ward where, in one of the rooms, the beds had been replaced with leather recliners and the windows overlooked the hot roof of another wing of the hospital. It was hot and I could see the waves of the heat rising off the roof.

I was alone and I was scared.I had no idea what to expect except what Hollywood sensationalized. The chemo room was also the medications room where all the meds for the entire ward were locked. Nurses came and went and I sat. After what felt like an eternity, I was hooked up to IVs delivered to a port in my chest that I often referred to as the "mainline to my heart".

A chemotherapy port is a fancy IV with a tube inserted into the subclavian vein -- the vein that empties the blood from the body back into the right side of the heart which then travels into the lungs for some oxygen, returning to the left side of the heart where the oxygen -- and poison -- rich blood is pumped through the entire body. The poison (doctor's refer to as "medicine") is literally delivered to your heart-lungs-heart, in that order, first. This amazing me still today in two ways: first, what a way to inject poison (or medicine) into a body; second, what amazing bodies we have to survive a direct shot to our hearts.

Balloon Hat - Chemo #1

Eventually I fell asleep thanks to liquid Benadryl. I woke to Jody putting a hat made of balloons on my head that now, deflated, lives in a box labeled "cancer". I was thankful for Jody. She arrived within the last 30 to 60 minutes of all six of my treatments. And on the sixth treatment she even wore pink as I sang "Gotta have Boobs" (see posts from June though December 2009). We would have an early dinner before she took me home and I would throw up the dinner and further into treatment would throw up everything and nothing for three days.

Gotta Have Boobs - Chemo #6

I worked with a wonderful woman going through breast cancer treatment many years later. She told me that cancer treatment was easy. It was the collateral damage that sucked. This morning, I read an article about intimacy following cancer. Three weeks ago I had yet another surgery related to cancer. My entire body is so different now. I stepped on the scale as I do every morning - no shift. Still the same large number as the day before. The number post-hysterectomy-collateral-damage of cancer.

I'm part of an art exhibit that will be at the held at the ISPA conference in Florida October 16-18. Ironically, a brief conversation I had with Julie Bach the founder of Wellness for Cancer inspired the exhibit. Yesterday I spoke with the artist that will be drawing an abstract of me and several other women. Each abstract drawing will be beside an actual photograph of each of us. The exhibit is modeled after the Dove Experiment,  but instead is our opinion of who we are post cancer. I told the artist I was in a really good place right now. But as we spoke I remembered.

Cancer often feels a lot like death of a loved one. After the memorial (treatment) the people around you go on, but you still grieve. On the surface everything looks great, but scratch below and all hell breaks loose.

Admittedly things are much easier now. I'm slowly accepting the many changes my body has undergone with over 11-ish cancer related surgeries, chemotherapy, and radiation. The hardened outward surface is slowly matching the softer inside. Most days I don't even remember having cancer.

Then, out of nowhere....

Photograph taken for art project in 2010.
Photos and texts were included in a book as
inspiration for others going through treatment.
There were about 30 survivors and their stories.
Today, almost a third of those amazing women are gone.