My eyelashes are falling out again. My doctor said that that was pretty normal in the year after completing treatment — that she knew one woman whose lashes had fallen out and grown back again FIVE(!) times in the following year. When my eyes get all irritated a few times a day, it’s just a “hey, stop and reflect for a moment” reminder.
Some days it is reassuring and feels triumphant to think about where I was a year ago. Most days I feel thankful, but it’s an exhausted-kind-of-thankful. An “oh my god, I just ran a marathon and you’re telling me I have to keep walking?!” kind. I absolutely adore my job and everyone I work with and all of my friends and all of that, but there’s a part of me that just wishes I could go live on a beach for about a month, and then come back, feeling more ready for the rest of the world and life and weird times that will require energy, resistance, defiant joy and transformative love each day.
How do people do this — come back from the strange semi-there world of cancer and treatment and recovery — if they don’t adore their job, their life, the world and people all around them? It’s hard enough when so many of those factors are so right that you feel like you’ve won the work/friend/community lottery.
Some days the sadness and anger bubbles alongside that thankfulness. One of my guiding reassurances since my teen years has been that thankfulness crowds out a lot of unpleasant emotions. That’s true, but it only seems realistic to recognize that those other things also have a right to exist, to be felt, to be processed over time, to be channeled (oh, oh, I am SO practiced at channeling feelings), and perhaps, eventually to be let go.
That is part of the fundamental work of healing, but for me — someone who has always taken a long time to process things but a short time to check most things off a to-do list, — it’s disconcerting to realize that that healing has a longer timeframe than I had initially thought or that I would wish it would.
Synthesis is still more challenging than it used to be. Energy/fatigue is still a challenge. It takes me at least three times as long to do most things as I think it will. I know it will continue to get better. When I look back, I can see it getting better, but it’s hard to let go of the fantasy that life after treatment bounces back quickly to what used to feel comfortable and normal. I imagined a different timeframe. I needed to believe in a different timeframe in order to meet treatment with the attitude I wanted to have. My stubbornness/tenacity can be both a gift and an additional source of frustration.
I am changed in ways I did not want to be changed. Besides the big things, the scars and the way my body cracks and pops eighteen times when I get up or sit down, my skin is different now. My immune system still has some healing to do too. I can’t usually sleep on my left side without this weird-and-kinda-annoying-but-nonetheless-helpful pillow thing. But U of M has pretty amazing resources, doctors, and occupational/physical therapy folks with an amazing breadth of knowledge to help folks with quality of life issues after treatment. And for that, dang am I thankful.
My neuropathy in my legs continues to heal, slowly but surely, and I’ve gotten help for some other post-treatment issues/challenges. Through the LiveStrong program at the local Y, I can really see advances in my strength, which is heartening — especially on the days I feel frustrated. And most days, walking down steps does not hurt at all anymore, which is a huge positive too. I can walk to or from work a day or two a week, and my doc says that my daily step amount is remarkable considering the amount of neuropathy I started out with. That’s reassuring, but also just makes me laugh at myself, because I know that part of that is just that I am tenacious (stubborn!), and like clearly measurable goals.
The hair on my head is proving sturdier than my eyelashes, and is wonderfully curly and getting healthier and softer. It’s odd that it’s so dark, but I dig the Rogue/skunk stripe at the front. I just had my second haircut, which doesn’t even seem real.
Time is still moving strangely, but slightly less so with each week. Instead of barely making it through a few hours of Tiny Expo post-chemo-sesh, this year I was actually able to be more involved again in the planning and execution, and I saw and hugged and helped and chatted with so many friends. Jeremy even unveiled a few new prints, and my pride in his accomplishment and refocusing make my heart swell.
The biggest thing I notice in these last few months? It’s been slow (like me!) and gradual… My own life has less moments of feeling foreign to me, which is, I think, a lot of what I’m learning real healing is about.
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