It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two months since my last post.
April was like standing up after being passed out on the floor all winter. A cold dark concrete room with the suggestion of daylight creeping in from a neighboring hallway. What is all this shit all over the floor? Crumpled funeral tissues, broken toy parts, dozens of old medicine bottles, and other random tokens of the last eight months litter this slab of a surface.
Time to get up.
I felt my knees crack beneath the weight of my body because I haven’t been able to stand up since last August.
“Ah,” I wondered, “so this is what it’s like to stretch without the threat of nauseating myself! Or ripping a surgical wound! Or irritating the irritated skin. Just my body and me.”
Or, this new war-torn shell, and me.
And just as I reached into the metaphorical junk room, I remembered that my kids were in the next room. Have I been asleep all this time? The autopilot maternal instinct took over as I raced into the playroom.
Peaceful babes.
Bigger than last August, but still cherubs.
Jet’s full sentences are some of the most insane I’ve ever heard.
“Mom, people are NOT real!”
“Can we go to the-Pan (Japan) right now?”
“I do not need help, Mamma!”
And then Lennox trails behind with her mushed jumble of words.
“can-a you-a help-a me-a muh-ma?”
“I go to da yard!”
By the time I’ve unearthed the hardwood floors from my mountain range of laundry, it’s May.
May. My favorite month of the year.
Because in May, you don’t have to hold your breath when looking at the forecast for any 40-degree days. Maybe high 50s in a cold spell, but mostly it’s the late 60s and early 70s. Blouses, t-shirts, and tanks are a safe bet with the sweatshirts going back into the evening rotation.
You can smell the time of day in May. The morning dew hangs over the damp soil in twinkling grass blades until 11 am. By lunchtime, the haze has lifted only to be replaced by a crisp breeze. Jet and I take out the dog and run around the yard while Lennox naps. When she wakes, the edges of the yard hang shade for her to hide from the sun. The soil is dry and crumbles into dust, but not for long. Both children scamper to the shed, throw open the door, and pull their designated watering cans from a wonky stacked tower of tools and toys. By the time I catch up, they are at the spigot.
“Mamma, big fill please!” Jet screams as he thrusts his can under the faucet. Lennox gently pushes hers under his.
“Waw-tar, peeeze!”
In mid-May, life was a dazzling light that held my gaze through flower petals, kid’s tennis shoes, and my husband’s biceps. I was spinning around with my arms extended in slow motion like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music.
Until I tripped.
Not just tripped, but completely ate shit.
Que the clumsy sound bite of “oh no, oh no, oh no, no, no” while I in my nun outfit cartwheeled into a faceplant on a paved trail atop the Alps. A triumphant cinematic spin on the mountain rewinds and plays forward over and over again just before I skid onto a slab.
The clip plays in a slideshow of Fail Army videos.
It all started during my last hormone infusion. My sunshine-y oncologist entered the room with her usual glow and blinding smile.
“So, we’re a month out of radiation now, right?”
I could see her calculating the weeks as she asked. I excitedly nodded as if she was about to present me with a gold star and a kiss on the forehead.
“Okay, so I think it’s safe to say that you’re ready for Tamoxifen. We talked about it last time, right?”
FUCK. Ugh. Yes, doctor, we talked about it. Except while I was nodding like a crazed teacher’s pet, I was also la-la-la-laaaaing at the endless lists of side effects. Because I never thought this day would get here. Like every time I finish a new part of treatment, a little fairy is supposed to spring up and wave a wand while saying spritely, “Congratulations on still being alive!!!” Then, the fairy turns into a demon and in a loud low voice declares, “COMMENCING ROUND #5 OF SURVIVOR: BREAST CANCER EDITION.”
A gate lifts from the bottom of the screen, and instead of a monster, it’s my friendly pharmacist handing me a white paper bag with my medication inside.
My doctor goes on to remind me that I will be taking this pill every day for a minimum of five years. It will reduce my risk of recurrence by at least 25%, but probably more given my wildly unstable hormonal levels. To refuse this medication would be to essentially place a welcome mat on my left tit for the grim reaper.
Great.
Want to know a secret about being a cancer patient? You’re not supposed to say follow-up medication sucks, for two reasons. The first reason to is that the only patients who detest follow-up medication are hippie doo-da’s who detest all of big pharma. They’re convinced that cancer in its entirety is a scam, and that the world is a giant conspiracy theory. They’ll scoff when you say yes after they ask, “You aren’t taking tamoxifen, are you?” And after you’ve endured their monologue about some Do-Terra cures their relative found on Etsy, you’ll remember that someone had to be this person’s doctor.
The second reason, and the reason that feels closest to me, is that you want to be the reassuring presence when you inevitably encounter a fellow patient in a younger part of treatment. Because all through the heavy-duty fighting, you hear whispers of the dreaded side effects up ahead. These bits of information are always elusive and vary from doctor to doctor. But I get it.
The alternative to not sucking it up and taking the preventative medication is risking a relapse.
A relapse means active treatment.
A relapse means back to square one.
And sometimes, relapse takes you out.
But still, when seated next to a fellow patient in active chemo during an infusion session and they look at you through war-torn, post-chemo eyes, you don’t have the heart to tell them that it’s going to continue to suck for a long long time. That this is just the beginning.
This is why you’re not supposed to say that Tamoxifen sucks.
But I can’t do that.
The medication started as a heavy cloud over my A.M. bedhead.
Despite, my dreamboat of a husband serving me coffee in bed every morning and the kids huddled around me in bed to give me greeting kisses.
Despite, him taking a step further and making me oatmeal after going back downstairs. Calling up, “Babe, your oatmeal is cooling!” after 15 minutes.
Despite, willing myself out of bed and stumbling through a haze downstairs to a spread waiting for me;
An enormous emotional weight nestled on my shoulders and slumped me over until my head returned to the pillow.
Let me just preface by saying that I have been a faithful consumer of Lexapro since 2013. Despite a brief departure in 2018 when I wanted to be “fully sober” and quickly found out that sober and insane can be the same thing, I LOVE Lexapro. The ability to swallow away my tumultuous family history of mental health is *chefs kiss.*
But! One thing about Lexapro is that you stop crying altogether. With the unfortunate and too frequent exceptions of my loved ones dying, I don’t cry. If I’m crying, it’s not a casual stream of tears to blow off steam, it’s a full-on typhoon scream into a pillow. It’s a pull over the car because I can’t see situation.
With that being said, I have cried almost every day of being on this medication. The emotional fatigue looms over every mind trick up my sleeve to get myself out of a funk.
Exercising? Everyday.
Gardening? The kid’s favorite time of day is watering the plants.
Walking? The kids and I get a half-hour walk every day.
Sleeping? I started drinking cherry juice before bed for magnesium and then add melatonin to the nightly carousel of medication.
I find the patience that used to flow like an everlasting spring is now paper thin and in shreds at the slightest inconvenience. A newfound temper unleashes before I ever realized it was ever there. It’s like my emotions slip from my mouth just moments before I can jump onto them and wrestle them back into my head.
Stuffing the medicated banshee back into the lightly fluffed head, I apologize to whoever is standing before me and take deep breaths.
And other times, I have to numb myself out.
With Lennox ascending one of my legs and Jet tugging on the adjacent hand, I find myself groaning out loud where I used to say something fun like, “Hey guys, you can’t split Mom in half!” And then I would tickle them and spin them around. Under Tamoxifen’s spell, it’s just sad clown Mom being ushered along the dining room.
It’s been a lot of stepping into the bathroom and emerging with a smiling but wet, beet-red face.
A lot of internal arguing. Pissed when I can’t will my way out of a funk.
A lot of resentment that I’ve made it so far into treatment to feel like this.
A lot of, “Do I need therapy? Do I have time to add another doctor to my roster right now?”
A lot of “Why is the emotional discipline and peace made with past trauma being dissolved beneath a little white pill?”
To top it all off, the week following my introduction to the medication,
-I was scammed of $350 for a fake Taylor Swift concert ticket
-I had to get an ingrown toenail from chemo surgically corrected
-my fridge broke after a giant grocery haul, and we lived out of coolers for a long weekend.
Not awful, not great. Just continuous bad luck.
Maybe it’s made me more susceptible to untoward feelings.
It isn’t love, it isn’t hate, it’s just indifference. (iykyk)
And with all that said, I am on a sort of quest for self-preservation. Dare I say, enlightenment?
Think, a grown-up, Ram Dass Be Here Now sequel. Instead of meditating on a yoga mat with incense burning around me, I’m a mom with a post-chemo, conservative but butch haircut, in an allergy commercial enjoying the outdoors.
But I’m enjoying it! I’m seizing the moment! Ask your doctor to see if you qualify!
Although he doesn’t know it, Eckhart Tolle is my therapist. I let his gentle German accent permeate my kitchen while I do dishes, my dining room as I fold laundry, and even in the car when the kids forget to ask for Wheels on the Bus.
Eckart Tolle’s “The Power of Now” laid my spiritual foundation when I got sober, so it’s been a natural retreat to seek out his “A New World.” It’s not new, just new to me. New because why would I be proactive when I can just wait for shit to inevitably hit the fan at a later date? If you have never heard of Eckhart Tolle or have never been to an AA meeting, you just need to know that he centers his work around “nowness.” He theorizes that there is no true past or present, there has only and ever will be now. I credit his teachings and my sacred 20 milligrams of daily Lexapro with ending my anxiety altogether.
Well, before Tamoxifen.
Here at the edge of June, my focus remains on daily consciousness. Pressing my feet into the earth and letting the sensation rise through my body before addressing Lennox’s chocolate-covered face. Breathing three counts of eight before calmly picking up the truck Jet has just hurled at my post-surgery toenail, now dripping with fresh blood.
Laughing along as my kids hurl their tiny bodies into mud puddles, and reminding myself to jump in too.
There’s never been a better time to stop waiting for now.
Kathlyn Ramsey Moore 