Sometimes when I pass by a reflective surface of some sort and turn my head to look, I am taken aback by what peers back at me.
It is not me in there looking out, that is for certain. I am a vibrant, happy, fun loving sister/aunt/daughter/friend/girlfriend who has a full and enjoyable life and loves to do all kinds of stuff at all different times of the day with the people I love; but that person in the mirror -- that person who could not possibly be me -- has quite obviously had the life sucked out of them by some terrible turn of events.
The person in the mirror is pale and sickly, void of hair, eyebrows and eyelashes. They are alien -- listless and lacking facial definition. I look at them in shock, bewildered at how they got in the mirror, but they wear only an expression of desperate and hopeless blankness, seemingly unable to register anything else, any other emotion, any emotion at all. Perhaps it is just I who cannot read the emotion on their alien face, though, so I concentrate harder.
I look into their eyes, their dull, tired, shadowed eyes, and I look for the life that I know is there, somewhere -- it has to be -- but I can't see it... why can't I see it?
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Thursday, January 17, 2008
MA+CB=OMGWTF
On Tuesday, January 8th of 2008, I started graduate school at USF. I suppose some of my friends and family might have thought something along the lines of, "well it's about damn time," but, honestly, I wouldn't trade all of the experiences I've had in the past four years for a Ph.D, not to mention that I've contemplated everything from law school to master sommelier since I received my BA. Now, though, while I'm going through chemotherapy and putting myself several thousand dollars further into debt every week, seemed like the perfect time to start commuting from Homosassa to Tampa twice a week to attend grad school.
I'm taking two classes: Social Constructions of Reality on Tuesday nights and Communicating Race and Racism on Wednesday nights. So far, it has been interesting.
The first week was extraordinarily difficult -- more so than I anticipated. As I have mentioned before, I am currently finding paying attention, retaining information and speaking in a coherent manner an arduous task. I have a tendency to lose focus, forget everything and repeat myself a lot while talking in circles. As you may be able to imagine, reading text book type material is not easy.
It took me the entire week to finish the reading for my two classes; I would be reading and realize that I didn't know what I had just read, and at times the words just didn't look like English writing, so I would read the sentence again, then still not be able to gain any meaning from the words and read it again, go back to the beginning of the paragraph, still not understand what information the author was trying to relay, finish the paragraph in hopes of understanding something, and then read the whole paragraph over again. This is how I read 272 pages of assigned reading.
Now, I know that 272 pages should be a breeze considering how much we were assigned at the HC, but please don't hold it against me until I find myself reading exceptionally slowly after I'm all done with chemotherapy and radiation. Two months after I'm all done with that, it's fair game and you're welcome to ridicule me openly, but until then I will continue to cite "chemo brain" as the source of my constant in-articulation and inability to focus/understand/remember.
However, it is entirely possible that my brain, like the rest of my body, is learning to recover from the poison, for I have found this week much less demoralizing than last week. I have found that I am able to remember things much easier, even number sequences, which before was more or less impossible. I also don't zone out so easily and I'm only having to re-read sentences and paragraphs once or twice before I at least sort of get what the author is getting at. My favorite part, though, is that I sound slightly less brainless when I talk.
I believe that all of the brain exercise that I've been getting kind of made my brain say "Oh, crap, I have to process information! I'd better start fixing this place up, then." And so it at least seems like it's getting better, which is quite relieving.
The best thing about starting school right now, though, is that I feel more normal and less bored. Sure, it might be a little frustrating at times, but I'm doing something that I'd be doing under more normal circumstances, and it's making me work and put myself in the "normal" category of "student," which kind of helps to blur the definitive outline of "cancer patient," which is nice for me because it kind of helps to prove that category less viable in other people's minds, therefore causing them to view me more like they did before and thus causing them to tell me less frequently that they pray for me every night.
So, basically, this school thing is good, and I think I'll get through this semester just fine.
I'm taking two classes: Social Constructions of Reality on Tuesday nights and Communicating Race and Racism on Wednesday nights. So far, it has been interesting.
The first week was extraordinarily difficult -- more so than I anticipated. As I have mentioned before, I am currently finding paying attention, retaining information and speaking in a coherent manner an arduous task. I have a tendency to lose focus, forget everything and repeat myself a lot while talking in circles. As you may be able to imagine, reading text book type material is not easy.
It took me the entire week to finish the reading for my two classes; I would be reading and realize that I didn't know what I had just read, and at times the words just didn't look like English writing, so I would read the sentence again, then still not be able to gain any meaning from the words and read it again, go back to the beginning of the paragraph, still not understand what information the author was trying to relay, finish the paragraph in hopes of understanding something, and then read the whole paragraph over again. This is how I read 272 pages of assigned reading.
Now, I know that 272 pages should be a breeze considering how much we were assigned at the HC, but please don't hold it against me until I find myself reading exceptionally slowly after I'm all done with chemotherapy and radiation. Two months after I'm all done with that, it's fair game and you're welcome to ridicule me openly, but until then I will continue to cite "chemo brain" as the source of my constant in-articulation and inability to focus/understand/remember.
However, it is entirely possible that my brain, like the rest of my body, is learning to recover from the poison, for I have found this week much less demoralizing than last week. I have found that I am able to remember things much easier, even number sequences, which before was more or less impossible. I also don't zone out so easily and I'm only having to re-read sentences and paragraphs once or twice before I at least sort of get what the author is getting at. My favorite part, though, is that I sound slightly less brainless when I talk.
I believe that all of the brain exercise that I've been getting kind of made my brain say "Oh, crap, I have to process information! I'd better start fixing this place up, then." And so it at least seems like it's getting better, which is quite relieving.
The best thing about starting school right now, though, is that I feel more normal and less bored. Sure, it might be a little frustrating at times, but I'm doing something that I'd be doing under more normal circumstances, and it's making me work and put myself in the "normal" category of "student," which kind of helps to blur the definitive outline of "cancer patient," which is nice for me because it kind of helps to prove that category less viable in other people's minds, therefore causing them to view me more like they did before and thus causing them to tell me less frequently that they pray for me every night.
So, basically, this school thing is good, and I think I'll get through this semester just fine.
Wednesday, January 9, 2008
The Rebellious Youth
I went to Publix the other day wearing a pink bandanna that one of the oncology nurses gave me. I bought an assortment of foods, including mussels, garlic and white wine. Naturally, I had to prove that I was old enough to purchase alcohol and when the cashier was looking at my ID she said, "I never would have guessed;" assuming that she was referring to my age I said, "Yeah, I almost always got carded before, but since my hair fell out I get carded for everything all the time, even cold medicine." She laughed and kind of made this sad face at the same time and said, "Well, at least it'll grow back, right?" to which I replied, "Yeah, my doctor told me it might grow back curly, but that it should go back to normal after a while, although she's had two patients whose hair never went back."
The woman standing in line behind me who was in her mid to late 50's and had previously compared her fatty foods to my significantly healthier foods said, "Mine didn't grow back curly, and the doctor told me the same thing." I told her that I was always perfectly happy with my hair and that I would love for it to come back the same and she told me that hers came back a little thicker, but who doesn't want thicker hair? I agreed, and then she said, "Did your hair actually fall out, or did you just shave it?" I immediately felt like I had to explain myself and told her how my hair had been to the middle of my back and I cut it short to kind of adjust to less hair and then when it started coming out by the handfuls that I buzzed it because it was getting everywhere and that I found it much less traumatic to have tiny bits of hair all over my hands than having endless handfuls of hair coming out. She kind of nodded and then announced how depressing it was to have your hair coming out by the handfuls.
I signed my credit card receipt, the cashier wished me luck in everything, said it was nice to see someone so positive and told me to keep smiling ("you have a beautiful smile," she said) and I left the store.
While driving home, I suddenly realized that the woman in line behind me was challenging me, actually challenging me to see if my cancer was legitimate, or as serious as hers was, or something... I don't know.
Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that?
And then I realized it was just like everything else... just like every other damn part of this whole cancer thing... it's the same reason doctors didn't treat it like it was serious in the first place, the same reason that the Health Department blew me off, the same reason the biopsy surgeon's office made me wait two weeks for a consultation, the same reason that woman gave me such a dirty look back in October for saying "at least it's a good month to get breast cancer," the same reason I can't get financial assistance and the same reason that no one can believe that I have breast cancer: I'm too young, and I look even younger. I don't look old enough to buy Tylenol Cold and Flu, never mind alcohol or to have breast cancer.
But hey, guess what, this just in: Cancer doesn't care how young I am.
Why does everyone else?
The woman standing in line behind me who was in her mid to late 50's and had previously compared her fatty foods to my significantly healthier foods said, "Mine didn't grow back curly, and the doctor told me the same thing." I told her that I was always perfectly happy with my hair and that I would love for it to come back the same and she told me that hers came back a little thicker, but who doesn't want thicker hair? I agreed, and then she said, "Did your hair actually fall out, or did you just shave it?" I immediately felt like I had to explain myself and told her how my hair had been to the middle of my back and I cut it short to kind of adjust to less hair and then when it started coming out by the handfuls that I buzzed it because it was getting everywhere and that I found it much less traumatic to have tiny bits of hair all over my hands than having endless handfuls of hair coming out. She kind of nodded and then announced how depressing it was to have your hair coming out by the handfuls.
I signed my credit card receipt, the cashier wished me luck in everything, said it was nice to see someone so positive and told me to keep smiling ("you have a beautiful smile," she said) and I left the store.
While driving home, I suddenly realized that the woman in line behind me was challenging me, actually challenging me to see if my cancer was legitimate, or as serious as hers was, or something... I don't know.
Why would she do that? Why would anyone do that?
And then I realized it was just like everything else... just like every other damn part of this whole cancer thing... it's the same reason doctors didn't treat it like it was serious in the first place, the same reason that the Health Department blew me off, the same reason the biopsy surgeon's office made me wait two weeks for a consultation, the same reason that woman gave me such a dirty look back in October for saying "at least it's a good month to get breast cancer," the same reason I can't get financial assistance and the same reason that no one can believe that I have breast cancer: I'm too young, and I look even younger. I don't look old enough to buy Tylenol Cold and Flu, never mind alcohol or to have breast cancer.
But hey, guess what, this just in: Cancer doesn't care how young I am.
Why does everyone else?
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