I finished chemo therapy in June.( I've got an endometrial cancer at Grade 111C - it had spread from the womb area to the pelvic and aoarta lymph nodes).
Tomorrow I'll have my very last Radio Therapy treatment appointment.
I've had RT every day since August 5th 2009 (apart from a one week break).
I can't wait. I'm so excited. It will all be over soon.
The scar and the cancer damage was too extensive for one set of 35 days of Radio Therapy, so I had to have two sets. An eternity of daily appointments at the Radio Therapy unito of my public hospital here in Rome. (where I live).
The first set was to the pelvic area and the effects were nasty. Anyone who has had RT to the pelvic area will know what that's like.
The RT to the higher place, more or less stomach area, has made me weak, nauseous and terribly tired. I got depressed a few weeks ago and blogged about it which helped. I'm out of the depression now and enjoying plans for the future.
I realize that I'm writing this - as though it's a list. As though I'm ticking boxes. Been there, done that, here I am to tell the tale (so far).
Where's the emotion, where's the pain, where are all the feelings that when I look back surge in and take over, completely?
Here they are, in part. They are many feelings -
from fear, (of dying soon)
to intense fear,(what does chemo do?),
to the feeling you get when you have to create courage and compliance,
the feelings fo pain (sometimes excruciating, especially in my leg bones, after the medicine to boost blood counts during chemo, the pain going to the loo during the pelvic RT treatments).
And why has this cropped up so low on the list? ( It's not right, it should be at the top, but this isn't the way it works) - The feelings of incredible love and gratitude to my loved ones and friends who helped me and whose prayes bouyed me through the operation, and always until today, whose prayes have continued and whose cards, emails and text messages have never stoped...their love has been amazing. And to my children and partner who have either dashed down for the weekends to help, or every morning take me to the hospital, every evening help me eat, every day rush around getting medicines, or whatever I need.
I remember thinking after the operation, "You know, you could die today you are so loved. What more do you want out of life. Your life has been a success because you are loved SO much. There is nothing more that you can ever want out of life". Powerful feelings of completion and resignation and love of life and of humanity, my own humanity and my own spirit. In other words the recognition of being given a gift and the feeling of peace that came with that revelation.
There are the feelings of frustration, more often than not at the nurses or the medical assistants who have, occasionally, but not always (by a long shot), treated me as though I wasn't there, just a piece of meat on the slab - while they natter on about their normal life (oh lucky imbeciles, oh cretins for being in the medical profession when they are really better suited to counting rollers at a hairdresser salon). But this is anger.
Anger never comes out where it should. It seeps out like volcanic heat. But anger there was I can see now. Anger at noisy neighboursat not having a parking place at having to wait in waiting rooms for hours etc etc....though I kept a lid on it there..
And then there's the feeling that 'you have to work on that; it's not good for you to be angry, you need to be on a better plain than this. "You need to try to get rid of that - get positive".
Then comes the worst feeling of all. It lasted several months with me (through RT mostly) -the crushed out blahd feeling of not wanting to help myslef. I hated admitting this to myslef. I often thought, "why dont you write your diary or do your meditations or follow the diet the nutirtionalist gave you, why dont you get some help with this? Why dont you say your prayers ? Why don't you try to find your Godess again, the one that came to be with you when you were having your operation that you preferred to the male God of your expderience" but immediately I thought,
"Nah, leave me alone. just let me get to the end of this. Just let me get to the end of this.Just let me get to the end of this" I told the thoughts that wanted to try to help to" Leave me alone, please".
Nothing to be proud of. But being ill is just this. It's not having the normal stuffing you can usually draw on do much about how you are or how you feel, or what youmight want in 'well life'.. It's a sort of porrigy greyness and it took over with me. I pretended alright to people; they worry if you don't - but inside, no, I wasnt where I thought I should be AT ALL.
I was worried about it too. Is worry a feeling? It's certainly a nag! My cancer is the kind that will probably come back so I need to be doing everything I can to be well, emotionally,physically and spiritually - but nah, during those 'bad weeks/months, I could't get there inside myself. Porrigy, porrigy blobby mushy grey person.
I got into a depression which I blogged about and through it found the way to come back up.
I'm taking some iron pills because I became enemic (spelling/ help!!) and they have boosted my pathetically low blod counts - so I'm feeling better. Also because I finish tomorrow.
I finish tomorrow and then in a month or two I will have a scan to see if the cancer has gone for now or if it has come back somehwere else (because this is the sort of cancer it is). I've made plans to go on holiday to Ischia with my friend in about 10 days, to see my family in Hereford just before Christmas and to visit my mother inCalifornia in January. I've ordered some CD's to listen to and which will helpme get back into daily meditating (I do hope).
I'm feeling happy and I'm also a bit worried about the future, but I'm hoping that when I feel well again, I'll know how to handle it a day at a time. It doesn't help with the worry, but it does a bit. The tusstle is on. "Can I fight for the right way to deal with my life, or will I lapse back into the porrigy person?"
Perhaps bit of both. But it's good to blog about it.
