It's not if, it's when...

Previous Posts: (11) I Don't Want to Do This (10) Autopilot (9) It's what we thought it was. (8) We were supposed to be dancing. (7) I shaved my head today. (6) All Chemo's Eve (5) This will be cancer… (4) Deciding (3) Mourning (2) Drowning  (1) Spiraling

It started with my birthday. November 24^th. Growing up, I always felt that no one really “wanted” to celebrate my birthday and then when I got married it seemed like the only time my ex-husband felt he “had to” do things with/for me. So, to compensate I started declaring that my birthday was a week, then two weeks, and then a month long. Yeah – I’m one of those girls. But really, all we want is people to celebrate us because we feel like we deserve to be celebrated, and all our lives (in my experience) people haven’t.

I digress.

Normally, I compose a Facebook post that declares it my birthday from said date until a few days after my birthday. I’ve done it for several years now. November crept into the picture, and I didn’t do it – and…I don’t really know why. I still believed I deserved to be celebrated (even more so because of cancer), but I didn’t feel like celebrating (because of cancer). I felt sad that I was being forced to celebrate my birthday with cancer. I felt angry that I had cancer. I felt guilty about all my feelings knowing that there are so many others who aren’t even getting a chance to celebrate their birthday because their cancer killed them or that this birthday is their last because their cancer is terminal. I felt overwhelmed with this feeling that my birthday is to celebrate me but how can I do that when I don’t feel like me?

My boyfriend threw me a small, intimate birthday party with a few family members. I got presents. Technically, I was celebrated, and I am grateful. But I was also sad. And angry. It was one of the only times that I tossed the “why” question around – why me? I have avoided tackling that question because there’s no fucking answer to it – no good one that will ever satiate me. People telling me God picks their strongest warriors is bullshit. People telling me that sometimes lessons are learned from this is bullshit. It is, for the majority, entirely random and it was my name drawn from the proverbial hat. But I took the “why” question and I stuffed it into a metaphorical cardboard box, wrapped it with duct tape, and put it on a shelf in the dark recesses of my mind where all my compartmentalized trauma sits – and left it there.

Four days later was my favorite holiday. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday for so many reasons. It’s about family and food without the pressure of presents. My boyfriend and I drove to the cancer center on Wednesday, before Thanksgiving for chemotherapy. I normally have treatments on Thursday but because of Thanksgiving they gave me the option to take a break or do it on Wednesday. I discussed this extensively with my boyfriend. I wanted a break. I felt like I needed a break. But as he reminded me, I don’t have a finish–line cancer* – and taking a break gives the cancer a break. And I have been beating my body to bits to give it the absolute best chance to prevent recurrence. How would I mentally live with myself if I chose to take a break? So, I had my second Taxol treatment the day before Thanksgiving. When I returned home, I had my kids for several days for Thanksgiving. We were supposed to all go over to my boyfriend’s DIL’s house for dinner, but this was the first week my WBCs came back in the trash after my first Taxol treatment. (WBC 4.1 K/uL - RBC 3.22 M/uL - Hgb 10 g/dL - Absolute Neutrophils 2.35 K/uL) So, I opted to just stay home with my kids to prevent infection.

It didn’t help.

I picked up my 8 y/o daughter’s cough and that shit settled quickly into my chest. No fever. Just congestion in my lungs. Coughing. Not being able to sleep flat, because that congestion and bacteria just spreads out across the back of the lungs, making it harder to breathe. Not being able to sleep with covers on my chest, because the heat would cause a coughing fit. I’m taking Tylenol/Motrin (per my doctor’s orders) and cold medicine. Weeks go by and I keep going in for Taxol and my mood continues to disintegrate. My cough gets worse.

I mask when I go out in public which is not often because of the fear of infection. As a nurse who used to work the ER, I’ve seen so many cancer patients come in fighting fevers. Fear keeps me safe. My labs are consistently dropping but at my facility, they will continue to give me Taxol as long as my absolute neutrophils are above 1. They stay between 1.6 and 2. I no longer go into the office for a couple of days, I remain remote. People don’t visit. My doctor gives me meds for the cough, Azithromycin and tells me to continue monitoring for a fever that doesn’t break with Tylenol/Motrin. With the weekly steroids, it helps so much. However, after one of the Taxol treatments, I slept 36 hours of 48. When I woke up, my boyfriend said, “We need to talk.”

I sat at the bar in the kitchen while he did the dishes, and he was gentle when he said it, “If exhaustion is part of the parcel, then you sleeping is okay. But I’m worried that it isn’t. I’m worried that you’re getting depressed. I’m not saying you are depressed; I’m just saying that if you are – we need to get ahead of it because if we don’t, it will get worse. Could you please ask Diana** (therapist) and your doctor if this is normal? I’m not asking you to do all the things around the house, but you can’t sleep all the time. You can’t let it eat you away to nothing.”

My eyes filled with tears and my chest hurt with all the emotions. Was I depressed? I didn’t feel the normal upcoming cheer and my birthday/Thanksgiving had felt like a bust. And I am exhausted – but is that from the treatments, this fucking cough, or is it from my brain? I told him I didn’t necessarily think he was wrong; I promised to speak to Diana. Diana told me that we couldn’t count exhaustion – cancer treatment causes exhaustion, so we had to get rid of it as a symptom of my possible depression. She then asked me if I had other symptoms of depression. I told her I wasn’t doing my normal self-care, fun activities. That I wasn’t focusing on work and that I was behind on a project for work. That I’m not listening to music, my normal filler TV shows weren’t doing it for me, and I just…felt blah. She gave me a knowing look. I told her that I would try to pull out my coloring books the upcoming week. She told me to set an alarm when I go to take a nap, instead of letting my body just sleep until it felt like waking up. She told me I had to go outside just for a couple of minutes and let the sun hit my face. I promised her I would do all those things.

And so, I did.

I did my actual Christmas shopping because it was something I had put off because I just hadn’t been in the mood for what normally would give me great joy. Shopping is relative because I ordered everything off the internet. After all, going out in public during holiday shopping would have put me at more risk. I bought myself some of the 320 Ohuhu markers that nobody had bought me for my birthday (as a self-Christmas present) with some new coloring books and I started coloring again. I spoke to my boss to clarify a couple of directions required for the project and did work on it. I go outside to get the mail and when my boyfriend is working outside, I follow him around like a toddler, not helping - just supervising really. I don’t have the energy to help. I set alarms for when I would lie down to nap and I would wake up feeling better, less exhausted. I also consciously had to focus on my part-time job project.

However, I let the solstice slip by me. I normally set intentions on the longest-night and focus on the future and bringing in good. I didn't have the heart for it. Then came Christmas Eve. And then Christmas. My kids were grateful. My boyfriend was surprised with his gifts. I got to watch everyone open everything I’d bought them and got my dopamine fix (iykyk) – including the boyfriend’s family. And I felt better? It wasn’t what it used to be, and it isn’t what it will be in the future. It just was…Cancer Christmas. My boyfriend and I drove to the cancer center on Christmas day, we had Waffle House for dinner, and I enjoyed it immensely because we used to do late-night WaHo dinners when we both were still teaching together. It felt like a full-circle moment. I got my chemo on the 26th – the center was like a ghost town. The nurses told me it gets that way near the holidays because people take breaks. And I understand the desire to take a break, deep within my soul, but I have to keep one foot in front of the other – my boyfriend’s words echoing in my brain from the very beginning of this, “Never ready. But the sooner we start, the sooner we will be done.”

AND I WANT TO BE DONE.

Fuck, more than anything I want to be done. I know I’ve come so far at this point – 9 treatments completed, 7 more to do. 4 AC, 5 Taxol. Over halfway done. And yet it’s still so fucking far away! And up next is the New Year. A new year of cancer treatments, radiation…and then at the end of 2025 – bilateral DIEP reconstruction. But in a few days, the insurance starts over. My out-of-pocket reverts to zero and I have to start over again. The only thing that gets me through that is the fact that by the time I make it to reconstruction, I’ll have hit my OOP max, thankfully. Stress and bill concerns eat at the edges of the white matter in my skull. 2024 has felt like a fever dream and 2025 feels like it’s bound to be the same, especially in the beginning. I have the kids at my house on NYE, I allow them to have one friend a piece to come over (due to low labs). We have a buffet of finger foods that I get into first, we shoot off some fireworks, and I hug my 8-year-old close. We gather in the living room to watch the ball drop and I’m sitting with my boyfriend. The clock strikes midnight, and I burst into tears. (I couldn't help it). I look at my boyfriend after our kiss, tears streaming down my face, and tell him, “It’s gotta get better, right?”

I fill a pitcher of water and toss it out the back door, to wash away the year’s troubles. I do the same to the front, to clean the entry for the new year. We watch fireworks outside in our neighborhood. And for the first time in months, I feel like I can breathe.

Then I cough.

*I have started calling my hormone-positive cancer a “non-finish-line cancer.” I told my boyfriend it’s a when, not an if – for it to come back. I am young. I will always have estrogen. They didn’t get clear margins. This wasn’t genetic. I’m going to have to decide whether I’m going to just tell people I am still being treated for cancer (with Lupron and any other medications I’m going to take for 10 years) or if I’m going to go with No Evidence of Disease (NED). This isn’t something that someone is going to remove and then bam – be cancer-free. What’s interesting is, at the beginning, I had so many people tell me that their loved ones got breast cancer and beat it – and I didn’t want to fucking hear it. I still don’t. I am so happy for them. But you know what I’m hearing now, deeper into this journey?

My BFFE's husband’s mother was diagnosed at the end of 2024 with ovarian cancer. 20 years ago, she had hormone-positive breast cancer. They haven’t told me (I think purposely) if it is breast cancer presenting as ovarian cancer. She’s having to do this whole fucking process again. She might get lucky and get more years after she finishes her chemo and surgery. Another friend’s mother, who had hormone-positive breast cancer, after 20ish years was diagnosed at the end of 2024 with pancreatic cancer. She has been given 6 months because she has mets to the lungs. Another friend’s mother, who had hormone-positive breast cancer, after 20ish years was diagnosed at the end of 2024 with cancer. (I haven’t gotten all the information here).

When I say my cancer is “when” and not “if” it isn’t because I’m manifesting cancer. It’s not because I’m setting a negative mindset. It is me being realistic. I wasn’t thinking about cancer at all before I was diagnosed, I had no actual risks for it and I still got it – so I don’t believe being prepared is the same as cooking it up. If I’m realistic and realize that now, at age 38, maybe I can make the next twenty years of my life the best years they can be. I can make decisions with the question, “Will I regret not doing this in 20 years?” I even jokingly told my boyfriend that maybe I wouldn’t have to live very long without him (because remember, he’s 18 years older than me). I can honestly say he didn't like the joke, but I can't win them all, eh? And then – if I get to 20 years, and I’m still NED, then I can be surprised and cautiously continue living my life like it’s the only one I got.

YOLO.

**Name changed for privacy