My Crazy Day, or The Worst Day Ever

Saturday, Jan. 3, was a really hard and bad day. It was awful. A lot of things went into making it one of the worst days of my life, let alone the worst day of treatment, and I am so thankful that day is gone and since then, many new suns have risen.

How do I start this? I don't even know how to start.

I'm usually not a person with so many... feelings. On my "Crazy Day," as we'll call it, my feelings went all wonky-- I had so many emotions at once, almost all of which were negative, and most of them were pretty unfamiliar. For the most part, I am happy and strive to be positive. So when I get to feeling down, it's very difficult for me because it's unfamiliar terrain.

The day started out fine. I went to breakfast with my brother and parents. Big Brother #2 was leaving for New York (well, Detroit, but that's all details...) and my parents were taking him to the airport. My sister was out of town on a ski trip with her boyfriend and friend. So my usual buddy wasn't around. I went home, took a long and satisfying bath, and then... got really... bored. Not "Gee-what-should-I-do-now?" bored, but "What-is-the-point-to-anything-I-feel-like-I'm-wasting-my-life-waiting-to-go-to-bed-and-it's-3:00-in-the-afternoon" bored. Which legitimately scared me.

I thought "The Ghost" had vanished already, but looking back on the day, I really wasn't feeling back to normal. I think I probably still am not, but am hoping it's coming any day now.

My friend Amber called me, which was perfect because I was about to go insane. Unfortunately, this didn't prevent insanity from ensuing, but it was nice to hear her voice, to know she keeps me in her thoughts. She's been so great at keeping in touch and checking on me and taking care of me in her own little Amber way.

I felt so lost, so bored, and so weak. It's a bad feeling, knowing that you WANT to do something, but that your body is too weak to muster the strength to do it. The weakness is very hard for me to deal with. Not that I was a body builder before, but I did have the energy to do the things I wanted to do. On my Crazy Day, I had very little strength for anything except wallowing.

It started with the boredom, which led to me thinking to myself, "Why don't I have anyone to hang out with today?" Which led me, again, to my thoughts about friendship, and to a lot of neglected feelings. When you're going through chemotherapy treatment (and by you, I mean me... heh...), you really have to focus on making it through treatment, one day at a time. And with my neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (that means chemo before surgery, for those of you who aren't down with the fancy terms), I have no idea when anything else is going to happen. So focusing all my energy on finishing chemo was certainly the task at hand. And focus I did. But then once chemo was over, the emotional blinders keeping me focused were suddenly removed and I could suddenly see and feel a lot of things that I had kept bottled up.

I was suddenly VERY angry at a lot of people, some who deserve it and probably some who don't. But I realized that I felt that a lot of people whom I really thought CARED about me weren't THERE for me over this past five month period-- one abandoned me, one screwed me, and one really hurt me over and over. I think I'll talk about this part in a later post.

I guess I don't know what to do with this anger. While I don't feel it all the time, I am still pretty angry that these three people let me down. But on my Crazy Day, I was angry and had no one to direct my anger at.

Amber suggested I go for a walk. This was a really good suggestion because a little walk might have helped clear my head. So I get all ready to walk, but it's almost 4:30 and I'm worried it's going to get dark. I call my ex-boyfriend #1 (sometimes referred to as "the good one") to see if he'll go for a walk with me. It turns out he was in Steamboat, which is where my sister was too, and said he would take me if he could.

Right. Because you've been there for me so much in the past five months. Moving on.

So I go outside to try to get a quick walk in before it gets dark. When I get outside, it's REALLY cold and it's starting to snow. A bad sign, I figure. So I go back inside, feeling very... defeated. And I'm starting to feel really desperate. I felt desperate to feel differently, and just couldn't change how I felt. I felt very alone, very upset, very angry, very sad, and very helpless. Very scared. Very anxious.

I got in the car to go to Whole Foods to get this lip gloss I've used before. I thought it would help with the dry mouth issues, plus it would waste a little time and maybe help my mood. I called my mom to make sure I could maybe come over if things didn't look up, but I didn't indicate to her that I was freaking out and my world was falling apart. She was sleeping but of course said to come on over if I wanted to.

At Whole Foods, things didn't improve. I got the things I needed, and then a pizza and salad because it was clear that I needed to go to my mom and dad's house. While I was in the store, I felt so weak and anxious, like the last leaf on a tree, trembling in the wind, potentially about to snap off and drift away. Standing in line I thought I was going to lose it. I got taken over by feelings of panic and fear, so strong I felt paralyzed. I was so scared that even though I did all the chemo they told me to, it wasn't enough. I felt so afraid I was going to die from cancer, and soon. I felt so helpless.

That's the thing now-- I've done all the chemo that has been shown to be effective and beneficial. And if that wasn't enough, then... what? I know I'm not done with treatment and still have surgery and radiation to go, but chemo is over. And there's no way of knowing whether or not it was "enough." The only way you know is you wait. And if cancer hasn't come back, you keep waiting. Or cancer does come back and then you know the answer.

Anyway, I went to my parents' house. I sat down in the living room with my mom and just started crying. I told her about how angry I was with the people who broke my little heart. I told her how I was scared to be done with chemo. I told her how bored I was, and how I felt all panicky at the store. How I was worried this terrible feeling and this terrible day wouldn't go away, that I was scared I'd need to be medicated for a mental disorder or something. I cried and cried and told her how I wanted to go back in time, how I wished so badly that this had never happened. How sad I was that I would never be same person I was before cancer. She just held me in her arms, and she listened. At some point my dad came in the room to see what was going on. I told him I was losing my mind, and my mom caught him up to speed.

I was freaking out. Bad.

But the wonderful part of all this was that I KNEW they'd be able to somehow fix it. They were able to make me feel better about everything. They gave me reasonable reasons that people weren't there for me, but they didn't discredit my feelings. They didn't lie to me and tell me that everything is OK and that I will be able to go back to being the same old me. They told me I would be a different person than I was, but that my new normal would be good. Or even better. They listened and they talked and they soothed and they calmed. For the past many years, I've felt love for my parents but not need. On my Crazy Day, I needed them, and they were there. And somehow they were able to shrink my head so my problems weren't so huge. I felt a lot better at this point.

Then we made the pizza I brought over (it had spinach in hopes that the iron would help my feelings of weakness) and ate it while watching a light and funny movie. I was pretty much cured of crazy. I went home and went to sleep, and the next day, everything seemed brighter.

So most of my days, I feel pretty normal. I think about cancer less and less it seems. Maybe that's because I've been trying to keep myself busy since then. If you've been wondering where I've been, I went skiing for four days and then down to Denver to spend some time with friends. I had a great time all around! Skiing was really difficult and a little frustrating because what should be a snap is actually very tiring and difficult. But I got back most of my form and technique, and now I'm just waiting on some red blood cell development and getting back in shape. In Denver, I went to dinner and a Nuggets game with some good guys and then some partying in LoDo. Sunday was a lazy day to recover, even though I was supposed to go skiing. Whoops.

One last thing-- Michelle Gray, you commented on my blog but I don't have any way to write you back! I'd love to get in touch with you somehow...!