Happy and scared

When Camryn started nursery school nearly five years ago, one of the daily tasks at circle time was to analyze the weather. I remember those drives home from school, engaging my shy little girl in conversation about her day and inquiring how the class had voted to describe the conditions outside. The situation she found most intriguing was whenever “sunny” and “cold” happened at the same time. It was a complete contradiction to a three-year-old. How could a sunny day still be cold?

Weeks after I’d received the amazing news from Stanford’s pathology lab that the entire encapsulated tumor had been removed from my chest and I was – dare I say it – cancer-free, I would lay awake in bed at night with a similar contradiction. It had nothing to do with the weather, but everything to do with my emotional state.

Of course, I felt happy – overjoyed, even shocked by such an obvious miracle – but I was completely scared at the same time.

I just couldn’t shake the idea of “What’s next?” Maybe there would be more cancer, reoccurring in my chest or showing up somewhere new. After all, exposure to all those scans and radiation could kick-start something. Then there were the side effects of my three chemo drugs, linked to heart and kidney damage and possibly other problems. My Stanford endocrinologist, Dr. Katznelson, had warned me that health screenings would be a necessity, given the likelihood of that “fertilizer” (otherwise known as growth hormone) my pituitary tumor had been cranking out for so long.

Everyone around me was ready to celebrate – and who could blame them? – but it felt premature to crack open the bubbly. My conflicting emotions told me to hold back. It hardly felt like time for a celebration, not when I still felt fragile and was losing sleep over the unknown.

Instead, I became obsessed with finding a cause for that dreaded thymoma and desperately tried to find any correlation between my lifestyle and my initial diagnosis. It became critically important to read every food label to reduce my exposure to anything with a possible link to cancer. Still focused on my new job as a professional patient, I feverishly scheduled appointments with preventative health care professionals and renewed my interest in cancer prevention diets. I embraced vegetarianism and launched a diet based strictly on my blood type.

Oh, and I cried a lot. Just not when anyone could see me.

For all outward appearances, you see, I was a woman on the mend. After my month-long driving restriction was lifted, I relieved dear Josh of the job of taking our children to school and attempted small talk – about things other than cancer – with other parents. We stopped receiving all those fabulous meals on our doorstep (thank you to every single person who provided this tremendously helpful and delicious gift), and I started cooking again. I even got myself a new, stylish wig – with long, straight hair! – and attempted to embrace the new cancer-free me.

But thanks to that lovely tumor in my pituitary – also known as the second pebble in my shoe – I remained in “patient mode.” To reduce the tumor’s size and suppress that excess growth hormone, I continued receiving shots of a drug called Sandostatin. Unfortunately, this shot is the consistency of wet sand and is administered to the rear end. (The nurse has to literally jiggle the needle to prevent it from clogging.) Fortunately, I could get these shots in a familiar setting at the office of my local oncologist, Dr. Blair, and he could continue to keep an eye on my condition.

During one of my routine appointments, I found myself in an emotionally raw state. Josh typically accompanied me on these visits, but this time I was alone. As Dr. Blair entered the exam room and greeted me with his typical, “How are you doing?” I burst into tears. He looked a little shocked. This was not at all the behavior he’d observed since I was first tossed into his care last September. I was usually the upbeat, sassy girl who sat cross-legged on his exam table and rattled off a list of questions or health accomplishments.

I explained my fragile emotional state and how I’d become obsessed with nutrition and all things related to my health, and now spent my waking moments waiting for the other shoe to drop. “So is this what it really means to be in remission?” I asked through my tears. Dr. Blair gently reassured me that what I was feeling was similar to that of his other young cancer patients, and it would ease up over time. “But how much time?” I asked. “Honestly,” he said, “it could take years. But you’ll get there.”

I let that information soak in, though one nagging question still remained. “What caused all of this to happen?” I asked. Dr. Blair looked puzzled, so I rephrased my question: “I mean, what really caused my thymoma in the first place?” Now he just shook his head. “We have no idea,” he answered. “But we do know it was the cause of all your other problems – the sinus infections, and all the other illnesses you experienced because of your compromised immune system.” I nodded, shedding even more tears at the thought of all those years of poor health and the innocence of thinking it was all normal.

“Look,” Dr. Blair continued, “I’ll be honest – I was really worried about you when I first met you and we learned what kind of cancer you had. But,” he paused and looked me square in the eye. “I’m not worried about you any more. You’re going to be fine.”

Then he gave me a big hug. And I cried some more. But at least they were hopeful tears. What a gift – to allow me the chance to grieve everything I’d been through and give me the hope I needed to go on with my life, all in good time. I just love that man.

Since then, I’ve turned to therapy to get some help with processing what I’ve lived through so far and what’s to come. I was foolish to think I wouldn’t need any help, and instead could just snap back to where I was before all of this happened. (I’m not even sure I want to go back there, I’m now realizing.) After all, it’s taken me many months to get to this place and my perspective about everything has understandably changed. Embracing a “new normal” is harder work than I ever imagined.

For those of you who’ve wondered why I’ve fallen off the blogosphere, my apologies. I hope everyone can understand my need to take a break from blogging for a while, as I have needed to focus all my introspective energy away from the computer and into the comfy chair of my therapist’s office. Plus, I am just physically exhausted.

Thank you so much for all the cards, emails, invitations to socialize and all of the other thoughtful gestures that continue to come my way. I have been given a perspective that many do not get until a ripe old age, and I can attest to this: All the material things in the world are insignificant compared to the wealth of meaningful relationships. Not a day goes by that I do not recognize and give thanks for the bubble of pure love I feel around me.

At one of our earliest sessions, my therapist told me something that has remained with me ever since: “Your life is like a vase. When you learned you had cancer, that vase was shattered. Now you are trying to put the vase back together again, but you’re finding that all the pieces no longer fit.”

This is the best analogy I’ve come across. And yet it doesn’t disappoint; instead, it inspires me. As for that broken vase, maybe I don’t want to put it back together at all. Maybe it’s okay to pick and choose the pieces that make a spectacular mosaic. I’ve always loved mosaics anyway. : )

I’ve also learned that happy and scared need not be mutually exclusive. They are as complicated – and as beautiful – as a sunny and cold winter day.