Words have not been forthcoming.
Telling the truth is hard.
Makes me think of my blog award from last year. What an honour to get an award just for telling the truth. Lots of truth. It sounds simple but that doesn’t make it easy.
Category: Cancer Survivorship (Page 6 of 11)
Last night I wrote the following tweet, which got more attention than I thought it would:
Birthday in a few weeks! Don’t think people realize how important my 30th is to me as a cancer survivor. It is a landmark I will feel privileged to reach. If anyone did already realise that, I would declare them my bff right now; that would be impressive. Blog to follow tomorrow.
I wrote the below passage when I got to my desk this morning because on the drive to work I had been thinking about my uncle who doesn’t have long left with us, and that made me think about my brother and all the things I don’t know and don’t dare ask about his passing, and naturally my thoughts turned to myself, so here we are. And I hesitated before sharing this because even though I have been writing this stuff here for a while now, it still seems like maybe it’s weird or oversharing, but above all I feel like it is important and we should talk about mental and emotional health after cancer, even if people don’t want us to, even if nobody else is, even if nobody is listening. So here we are.
I’m in a really good place right now in terms of not withdrawing to some dark recess of my brain to think about bad memories, or worry about what future health problems might occur. That is really weird for me at this time of year. Normally September/October would be the time when my blog would have an influx of dark poetry, and I haven’t written any poems in a few weeks. So, not great in that respect. I do think my lack of poetry is partly because cancer survivorship is where most of my inspiration has come from for the past couple of years now, and partly because I’ve just been busy with other things such as my degree and my literary magazines, so I haven’t dedicated time to writing poetry. It’s almost as if I have to be unhappy in order to be creative. But as much as I love writing, that would be too big of a sacrifice to make. I know there’s a saying about suffering for your art or whatever, but there has to be a balance.
Or rather, you might not find me at a Macmillan Coffee Morning.
Typically, this is a difficult time of year for me. It’s coming up to my annual consultant appointment, which leads to my consultant (also known as “the life-saver”) sending me for some lovely tests to make sure I’m not about to keel over. Namely: a tumour marker blood test, an endoscopy, a flexible sigmoidoscopy, and until last year, a CT scan. As you can imagine, none of this is much fun – never mind being poked and prodded by strangers (lovely as those strangers may be), but scanxiety is pretty horrible. And around this time of year when it’s all looming ahead of me, I have a habit of going to a dark place. I just think about it all… a lot. It’s not just worrying about what could happen to me in the future (particularly the not-so-distant future), but also being reminded of what happened seven years ago and at check-ups in the years that have followed. My brain latches onto a bad thought and runs with it, and I let it, and I wallow, and it all takes over until my appointment has gone – or at least, until the next appointment:
This is a quick note about how I tried not to let a bad memory ruin my morning. One of my work colleagues became a dad yesterday, which meant that this morning people in the office were talking about birth, labour, c-sections and epidurals. I sat listening while working (it’s a small office, it’s impossible not to listen), until the bit about the epidural, at which point I grabbed my headphones, went to YouTube and clicked on the first music video I saw. Which, usefully, was Slipknot, but anything would have worked to drown out what they were saying.
I am officially seven years cancer-free tomorrow (as far as I know) and yes, I’m still harping on about it.
In case anyone wants some perspective on how utterly random triggers can be. I haven’t lived in a house with a garage door in four-ish years. Right now at this moment, I honestly can’t recall what they sound like, except something metallic moving and rather clanky.
There was one on tv. I wasn’t even paying attention to it, I had my headphones on and was actively trying to tune the show out. My ears picked up on the sound of the garage door, and a jolt of adrenaline shot through my body as I grabbed my laptop and moved to get out of my seat and run to my room.
I realized what happened after about two seconds.
The sound is gone from my ears, but my heart is still racing and I’m waiting for the door to the house to open, to hear the jingling of my mother’s keys and her footsteps moving through the house. My muscles are still tense and I’m fighting the urge to run to my room and stick a board in front of the door.
For years, the sound of a garage door was my warning to pack up what I was doing quickly and retreat to my room if I was out of it.
I can’t remember the sound of the garage door right now, but I can’t tell my brain to stop trying to react to it.
This can be reblogged, if anyone was wondering. I wrote up this post with the intention that hopefully people who read it and didn’t really get triggers would understand a bit.
Another thing: my sister was watching a tv show, and an actor with the same voice pitch as my dad’s came onscreen. I heard the voice and froze, choking on my own breath while mentally checking everything on my phone and in my room, making sure that none of my possessions were going to be taken because I had done something “wrong.” My dad was on a business trip in India.
Literally I once almost cried walking into my job at a craft store because they had orange streamers out. It reminded me of Halloween and that holiday has traumatic associations for me. Crying over a streamer seems completely silly without context, but you never really know what it may make another person think about.
I almost burst into tears at work one morning because someone was eating toast and the smell reminded me of being in hospital, where they would always come around and ask us what we wanted for breakfast and we’d have toast. Mine was with strawberry jam. I can’t stomach the thought of strawberry jam now just thinkng about it, but the toast smell trigger doesn’t make much sense because I have eaten it at home plenty of times since being in hospital. Maybe it’s just because it was in a public/unexpected place.
But yes, I have gotten upset over toast. And also the beeping sound a printer was making because it sounded like hospital machinery. I so wanted to go over there and smash the thing to make it stop.
This week I am thinking about the labels we put on ourselves, the labels other people put on us, and the labels we want. Partly because today is PTSD Awareness Day, and partly because a colleague is celebrating a different diagnosis that has given him relief and closure.
Really quick update about how terrible things have been because tonight is the first time all week that I’ve felt a bit more like myself, and I don’t really want to dwell for too long on how terrible things have felt.
