Chemo Begins

I am now in my first 24 hours of being on chemotherapy. I am starting to come off the wave of steroids they pumped me full of and the nausea isn’t horrible. Thank goodness, I have kicked my habit into full gear of taking medicine to say ahead of it. So far, knock on wood, so good. There is an additional therapy I get 27 hours after chemo infusion to help boost the white blood cell counts in my system. It’s pretty wild what this treatment is doing. For 24 hours, the poison hits it all. Then the catheter device they attached to my arm triggers to replace the damage.

The series of symptoms I must be mindful of is daunting. I have a humidifier in my room. I have mouthwash to keep my mouth from getting dehydrated. Every time I wash my hands, I swish. I am drinking more water than I have in months. Not a bad thing. But good grief. Making sure I actually eat is proving to be more of a challenge than I expected. Mostly because I’m terrified of being nauseated and throwing up anything. I’m super hopeful I am able to keep the nausea controlled and not have to worry about it too much. But the underlying fear is there.

During the first infusion, I had my daughter with me (she’s the rock of my world right now!) and I’m so glad I wasn’t alone. I had nervousness about all of it. I didn’t watch the arm the nurse manipulated to get the IV set up and then began the chemo. Tears filled up in my eyes as I felt the cold liquid enter my veins. This is real life. Dammit. Two hours-ish later, I as done and headed back home. The anti-nausea medicine kicked in and wow did I feel tired instantly. I discovered that if I push through it, I only feel tired for about 20 minutes then I’m all good to go. That is nice to know. It means I should be able to handle work without too much issue. Again, knock on wood. It’s still very early and this is only the first infusion. It’s going to definitely get worse.

The boys are coming to spend most of the month of July with me. It’s going to be an experience for us all. Ben has been very honest with his opinions so far. Alex is showing me his strong man front (adorable). They are prepared for me to be tired and needing their patience on activities and energy. I am doing my best to keep the information real but reasonable. They don’t need to know every gory detail, but enough to keep them realistic in expectations. I hate this for them. I hate this for all of us.

This is the most fragile I have ever been. The ease with which tears develop in my eyes is frustrating. I want the full-blown meltdown, but alas, that damn optimistic person keeps it all at bay. The truth is crying won’t change a thing. This is my new reality for a while and accepting it is easier than wallowing.

Metamorphosis hurts. I imagine there is severe discomfort for the caterpillar. The metaphor of the butterfly is not lost on me. However, this is the first time I have put the metaphor into physical context. I am physically going through a wild and radical change. A sweet friend told me the person I am on the other side of this will be unrecognizable and trying to picture it now is not fair to my psyche.

The boys will witness the chemo doing its next level of work. They’re going to watch the hardest parts unfold of this metamorphosis. We’re going to learn some stuff together. I hope and pray this is a bonding experience and not a trauma that is difficult to overcome. Teaching strength is difficult to articulate, but best exhibited. They’re about to see their mom be a beast unlike they ever witnessed. What is even wilder about this idea is they won’t really know what they’re seeing until they’re adults.

The layers of acceptance continue to manifest. In truth, I feel like it’s gotten a little easier each time a new blow comes to pass. It’s funny what happens when you just throw your hands in the air and relent. The amount of “fuck it” I have running through my bones right now is fun and scary at the same time. Ironically my buzz cut grew a newfound level of that very attitude. I’m certain when the patchy balding starts I am going to have a relapse. I have my caps ready to cover it up and I’m considering having fun with wigs. We’ll see.

I have been documenting this experience on TikTok as well as here. If you’re interested in seeing the video posts, here’s the link:

Emma Stange (@emmastange6) | TikTok

Tantrum

It’s funny how we reconcile the shit life throws at us. We have this magic ability to adjust perspective to cope with whatever stupidity we’re faced with. Delusion takes center stage in the name of self-preservation. As a self-proclaimed optimist, I have made delusion an art. The knack I have at this stage in my life to find the sunny side of anything is truly concerning sometimes. These past couple of months, my brain has been processing so much input that I have a hard time nailing down any specific emotion to identify long enough to feel something solid. So, everything flies through my head like a drunk fly.

When I came out of surgery, the doctor was confident they were able to get all the cancer out of me. The lymph nodes came back clear. No radiation therapy required. I was told that chemotherapy didn’t look to be necessary. Shame on me for taking that and running to Australia with it! I did err on the side of caution because I have a severe tendency to get my hopes so high for something that the disappointment when it doesn’t come together, the crash is equally severe. I absolutely held my breath! Surely, I wouldn’t have to go through more trauma with this. The exhale I released when my oncologist told me I would need to start chemo came out as a scream.

The mastectomy was a very easy decision. By ‘easy’ I mean not difficult to make. There was absolutely nothing easy about the consequences of that decision. It’s sort of depressing how many friends over the years have shared the same sentiment on this choice as well. I’ve had countless conversations where the actual statement fell out of lips so easily it now causes me to truly break. “They’re only breasts.” The rest of that context includes other statements like, ‘breasts don’t make me a woman,’ ‘I’ll get me a perky new pair,’ etc.

Today, I was talking with a co-worker about the pending chemo and the words, “It’s just hair,” came out of my mouth. At the exact moment I realized what I had just said, I also truly felt my heart crack. My pesky optimism stepped in so fast that I wasn’t even permitted to let that feeling set. “My hair doesn’t define my personality!” Good fucking grief. Get pissed dammit! Before you continue reading, please consider what you’ve just read. In fact, reread it and allow yourself to understand how you truly feel about the notion of a mastectomy and/or chemotherapy’s side effects.

I absolutely hate my body right now. I actively avoid my reflection. There are mental preparation exercises I go through to truly look at myself. I close my eyes and allow my hands to get a connection to this change so that my own body doesn’t feel like it isn’t mine. Not feeling energy for quite some time has put weight on that I have worked my ass to keep off for the past 10 years. My hair was so pretty and full before. It has gotten flat, retextured, thinning, falling out, and just disagreeable.

That’s a lot of self-loathing right there. But it’s currently a portion of my perspective. Truthfully, it’s the smallest portion of everything right now. The ability to find the sunny side continues to prevail. Artfully, my brain manufactures such a curated perspective that it makes it nearly impossible to be pessimistic. I am noticing however, the little, loud voice of anger is manifesting in other ways. If I am mildly inconvenienced, I can feel my heart rate skyrocketing. Anger and Optimism tangle until either impasse or external input defuses it. Because of this, I have been extremely quiet. Never have I been this introverted. Deep thoughts brew in my silence that when I speak aloud, I’m truly uncertain of its contents. My tact is locked in a corner somewhere.

After I was scheduled for my first infusion, I was truly burdened with the timing of shaving my head. The hair loss is inevitable. I worried about what everyone would think. My kids. The grandbabies. How comfortable would everyone be with my new looks? Do I want to see chunks of my hair come out at random? Would I prefer to get a head start on how it feels? Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts. STOP. The argument was moot. This decision was also made long ago along with the mastectomy. Tears immediately streaming. It needed to happen right now. I called my daughter.

I sobbed the entire time. I recorded it for myself. The vibration on my head was oddly soothing. As the frame of my face became more and more defined, I recognized my family members. I saw my siblings and my aunt. I saw my father almost instantly.

That introduced a different layer to the tears. The hair tickling my neck and ears stopped feeling depressing and sank into catharsis. This isn’t so bad. Hello, Optimism! Welcome back. I cried some more. Dammit, I really am ok and handling this like a fucking rock star and this hair is going to reflect that. My precious daughter told me to stop justifying things I want to do to cope through this. She’s a remarkable human being.

As super strange as it is for me to not really want to be around people, it is my truest truth. The amount of people that I want to interact with, we do. I feel like I have the exact amount of human interaction I need right now. So, tell me why I am violently lonely? That’s been a super fun introspection to fumble through. Not sure I will be able to figure that one out though. It’s quite the mental pickle. My people bucket overflows with the couple of hours every few nights with my daughter and her entertaining family. Rolling around on the floor with those two cherub babies infuses my soul so intensely I get a headache.

Next week I start injecting my body with chemotherapy medicines to reduce the chance of there being a sneaky bad cell running loose, kill my insides so nothing feeds any possible sneaky cells, and put many more years to my lifeline. I am not happy about it. I in no way want to do this. Every fiber of my essence is throwing feral tantrums. The doctor and nurses insist they are going to do everything they can to ease discomfort. We will be in fairly constant contact to validate my statuses. Four rounds that end in the middle of August.

Bittersweet is going to be the reunion of me with the boys. We are so excited to spend time together. They will be exposed to some hard things. These sweet young men are excited to be able to help take care of me. As absolutely awful as this has been, the clear visibility I have to the loves in my life keeps that very angry portion of this journey at a healthy distance.

We women are so gentle with bad things. We are incredible at elevating hardship. I am amazed that we are so determined to nurture and we forget to be honest when the time is right. We should talk about the shitty things a little more honestly. I think we may find more and more in common with each other than we give credit. They're NOT JUST BREASTS! IT'S NOT JUST HAIR! These are connected components that reflect our insides, out! We buy swimsuits around our breasts. We buy necklaces to draw attention to them. They are absolutely a piece of my personality! I feel similarly about my hair. Nothing more than my hair truly shows you who you're going to meet at first glance. It's ok to let yourself be angry and grieve these resurrections.