My cancer treatment is over for now, so where is my sense of relief?
On a small chalkboard hanging in my kitchen, I’ve kept a tally of each of my cervical cancer treatments. When I made it through all 25 radiation appointments, I crossed that section off on the board.
Two days ago, I was finally able to take a piece of white chalk and mark out brachytherapy, signifying not only my final round of internal radiation, but also the conclusion of my entire cancer treatment.
Whatever sense of relief or simply finality I was expecting to feel after all this was over, has never materialized.
It wasn’t there when the doctors and nurses repeatedly congratulated me during my final session for getting through the last eight weeks. I didn’t feel it when my husband, Eric, picked me up from the hospital, giddy that I was finished, or even later when my kids happily greeted me at home.
Hours later, when the sedation had worn off, I realized that feeling may never actually come. Sure, I was happy to be finished. But nothing about this painful, challenging journey seems built for any type of satisfying conclusion.
I still have follow-up appointments next week and a Pet scan in August that will show if the tumor is completely gone and whether or not the cancer spread. But perhaps even more importantly, I’m not entering back into a normal world where I can celebrate the treatment’s conclusion with loved ones or take some kind of end-of-cancer trip with my family. I can’t even start to find in-person support groups to help me process all that has happened.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that just as my entire cancer journey was shaped around coronavirus, so too will my recovery be.
I’ve spent the majority of the past 48 hours on the couch or in bed, consumed by exhaustion. Every so often, I’ll also start vomiting or have stomach cramps or my head will begin pounding, and I’ll wonder when I’m ever going to feel like myself again.
When I have the energy to move around, I go on a search for the source of the hospital smell that has been haunting me since I got home. I’ve washed my body multiple times, scrubbed the outside of my bag and even wiped off the notebooks I bring to my appointments, but nothing seems to help.
In one particularly desperate move, I searched my entire bedroom in the hopes of finding any medical tags I’d forgotten to throw out. But I just can’t seem to get rid of it. The only way I can think to describe it is as a sick, clean smell.
I still have my chemo port in, so maybe that has something to do with it. I’m mostly used to it. But every so often I forget and bump it and I feel a jolt of unease thinking about this foreign object still inside my chest. There’s been talk this week that with the positive progress Washington state has made with coronavirus, the governor may give the go-ahead for nonessential surgery. I hope this happens soon, since that’s the only way I’d be able to get this thing taken out.
Too much has happened over these last three months: I was diagnosed and treated, and stopped driving and going to stores. My kids’ schools closed and my husband started working from home. And then my dad died suddenly.
Now it’s as if my normal way of measuring the passage of time no longer works.
But as much as the past feels strange, the future feels almost surreal. With absolutely no fanfare, my daughter, who is autistic, finished school, completing the three-year life skills and job training program offered by the district after high school. She’ll turn 21 next week and we will celebrate with champagne, which I hope I can stomach.
I have no idea whether my son’s high school will be open again in the fall. I’m not sure I’d let him go back even if it is.
As for me, I’m looking towards a future that may be virtually void of hospital visits. All I can think is, what am I going to do with all of my time?