The Breakdown

HAPPY EASTER! Nick has recently started e-mailing. He e-mails and IMs his friends at school, his cousins, and even his grandma. So he e-mailed this to all of us in his address book this morning: "Happy Easter! I hope everyone has an awesome, choclately, breakfast stuffing, candy shoving, pizza inhaling Easter! But u have to remember that just because food is the best thing God ever created, Easter is all about Jesus Christ rising from the dead! Happy Easter. Sincerely, Nick." Completely made my day! : ) Did I really create this wonderful person? Amazing!

Back to the breakdown....I realize I just shared the beginning of my cancer journey with all of you in the last post, but I feel compelled to share my present state of mind - or at least the fairly recent events before I go any further. As I go back and forth between the past and the present, my hope is that you'll see the relation between the two and see why my husband teasingly (and I think not so teasingly, sometimes) calls me "crazier that an out-house rat"!

I guess the change in me started about two years ago. Since I was only four years old, I don't consider myself having a live before cancer. My life has always been about cancer. About tests and waiting and recurrences and remission and joy and fear and courage. I would say 98.8% of the time I chose to have a positive outlook. More than that I felt the need to get involved. My resume of cancer-related events is impressive, I assure you. I was involved with organizations such as Camp Quality and CureSearch (see links). I gave lectures, wrote articles, and visited patients to encourage them. I craved the involvement, and it made me feel like my life as a survivor had a definite purpose. It was the reason I survived. I absolutely was NOT going to waste the life I was given.

I honestly have no idea what caused a change in me....I could/may possibly discover it in therapy, but one day a couple of years ago, I changed. It happened gradually, I guess, but in my mind it doesn't seem so. Lots seemed to be changing in me...I will write more about the specific events in posts to come.

However, you've probably seen the movie Christmas Vacation. I love it. There's the scene in the movie where Clark brings out a beautiful looking turkey to an anxiously awaiting family. He sets it on the table. Tension from a long list of foibles fills the air, but this turkey, it is going to save the whole holiday. Except when Clark cuts into the turkey, it explodes and there is absolutely nothing inside. It has been overcooked.

I hate to say it, folks, but I am the turkey in this scenario. I definitely felt that people expected things of me - why wouldn't they when I had delivered time and time before and enjoyed doing so. I still looked the same of the outside, but on the inside - NOTHING. NOTHING. Not anger. Not fear. Not joy. Nothing. After 31 years as a cancer patient, I was finally numb.

The numbness didn't last long. Slowly feelings started creeping back. Unfortunately, they weren't good feelings and the circumstances around me didn't help. In a span of less than two years, I fell and broke my tailbone, I had pnuemonia three times, I found out I had to sleep with a CPAP machine, my husband had quadruple bypass surgery, I had shingles above my eye, and most recently a severe, severe drug reaction that caused blisters to cover my entire body. Now, I'm not including any professional information or information about role as wife and mother. Add those factors in and I was more than anything PISSED off and in close second came GUILTY.

And about a year ago the thought started whispering in my head, "things would be less complicated without you."

In early January the thought filled every crevice of my brain. I knew I needed help. And that's when I finally, finally, finally let my guard down. That's when I finally let the cancer, and all the shit that goes with it, win. For a moment, I let it win.

In tomorrow's episode: What Happens When You Let Your Guard Down! (Dramatic music in the background - DA, DA, DA - would be good here, but I don't know how to do all that complicated stuff).