Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘wish’

Blind Spots

Posted in Cancer, chemotherapy, Denial, family, hair, tagged , , , , , , , on August 25, 2012| 10 Comments »

The other night my friend Herb told me about his recent trip to Florida and how surprised he was at how much his ailing father had changed. His mother hasn’t been straight with him on the phone and has been continuing to basically live their lives the same without accommodating for the changes in her husband. As I listened, it occurred to me that it has nothing to do with his mother being mean, neglectful or not loving his father. It’s BECAUSE she loves him so much that she just doesn’t want to face it. She doesn’t want to see how he’s changing and how frail he is, how much help he needs. She wants him to be the same man she fell in love with, the same man she married. Maybe she really can’t see the changes. It is her blind spot  – don’t they say love is blind?

Then I realized: that’s how a few people are with me. It’s not that they don’t love or care about me that they completely ignore the fact that anything is different about me, maybe it’s that they do love me that it hurts them to see me this way and just refuse to face and deal with it. I am still hurt by how they now treat me, but this new perspective helps me understand them a little bit more, and at least makes me feel like maybe I do matter to them.

And then I had another revelation: that’s actually what I am doing to myself. I still get shocked when I look in the mirror. I still cringe when I see pictures of myself bald. I just went for a run (if you can even call what I’m doing running) and got frustrated with myself that I couldn’t even do the whole 3 miles of one minute run and one minute walk – sometimes I had to walk for two or three minutes before doing another minute of running. I don’t want to face that I don’t have hair any more. I don’t want to see that the steroids and eating to ease the nausea are making me pack back on the pounds. I don’t want to be tired after a few minutes running. I want to be the me I was in February…

Read Full Post »

Wishes

Posted in Boston, Cancer, chemotherapy, Denial, Dreams, family, hair, London, prayer, recovery, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I am making a wish on each eyelash that I catch as it falls out. All those wishes have to add up, right? I refuse to waste a wish on anything pointless, like wishing that my eyelashes and eyebrows wouldn’t fall out, although I really don’t want them to. So what am I wishing for? Like birthday wishes, I don’t think you’re supposed to tell or they won’t come true. But I bet you can guess – they’re pretty much the same things that I pray for…

So I guess I can tell you more of the things that I wish but don’t waste the eyelash wishes on:

  • I wish the hair on my head would either all grow or not grow at all – it is so annoying having these patches of hair growing on my head! I really feel like a chia pet. Luckily, Nick is home from London and offered to shave my head again. I think I will be taking him up on that…
  • I wish people wouldn’t worry about me so much. Tonight I told Nick I was going for a run and he looked all serious and said “Really? Ok, but be careful. What time will you be back?” It is sweet. But I really do feel fine, these in-between weeks, after the initial week of hell and the next infusion. I can run, I can babysit, I can work, I can drive. I am good. And I feel bad wishing this – I am so, so thankful so many people care about me. I just wish they wouldn’t worry so much… 🙂 And yes, I am blocking out the incident at Training Camp, but that was also because I was stupid and rushed being better – I was still in that first week post-chemo. I will try to be smarter this next round…
  • I wish I could go to my cheap nail salon and get my regular mani/pedi’s again. Oh how I (and my hands and my feet) miss them…
  • I wish I didn’t have chemo brain. I hate it when I am not at the top of my game. And according to Sue, chemo brain lasts for months and months after the chemo stops. So I won’t be back 100% until well into 2013. Ugh. Good excuse for why I won’t be winning at trivia though. 🙂
  • I wish I had unlimited funds so I could buy more wigs. Now that I’ve started wearing them, they’re not so bad. But I don’t like to wear the same one all the time, I like to mix it up between wigs and hats just to try to have fun with it. Now to buy the electric blue one…
  • And then the most pointless wish of all: I wish I wasn’t sick! I know, as people keep reminding me, I am officially cancer free since the surgery, but the fact is the chemo makes me more sick than I ever felt with the cancer! I do understand why it had to be cut out and why I now have to go through all this chemo to kill all the cancer cells (especially after talking to my friend Laura who had it come back again, even after having a mastectomy!), but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts