"Are you ever not happy?"
"You are always so energetic and enthusiastic" I hear these comments daily. Affirmations from others of my positive, happy, bubbly personality and view of the world flood my conversations. I notice myself acting engaged, excited and eager in every social circumstance when minutes earlier I was fighting back tears. I feel disassociated from who I am inside and who I am perceived to be. At camp they call me Bubbles but I feel like the suds on the bottom of the sink. Washed out, drained and exhausted from the trauma I have faced. Flashbacks of repressed experiences are starting to come to the surface. One second I'm at the gym and the next I'm in the hospital. Wires are attached to every part of me. I'm limp, weak and discouraged. I see the hair that covers my pillow. I watch each piece of hair leave my head as I watch the cancer take over my life. My feelings of helplessness, numbness, heartache and struggle are resurfacing. I am healthy but I feel sick inside. Throughout my treatment I pushed traumatic experiences down the drain. I pushed each experience down as far as it could. This week the drain of my memories started to overflow and each memory began to resurface. Each experienced slowly crept up to the surface again when I least expected it. Flashbacks of me screaming and crying from the immense pain I endured. Numbness and defeat as I sat in silence for days on end. I am starting to feel it all again. Visions fill my head of events that I don’t even remember happening. Did they happen or is my imagination taking the wheel of my brain and steering me into my worst nightmare? I'm having trouble deciphering between reality and my imagination.
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One year ago I had cancer. Chemotherapy was pumping through my veins as I fought fatigue, nausea and heart break of the diagnosis that was taking over my body and then slowly took over my life.
One year ago. It seems like a second ago. It seems like 10 years ago. It seems like another life time ago. Did that really happen to me? Did I really have cancer? I find myself denying my fight. Denying my battle. Denying my diagnosis. I am constantly disassociating with that person- the person that had cancer. I find myself putting up a guard when I meet new people. I find myself trying to hide from my past. I find myself hiding from sharing one of my biggest accomplishments- beating cancer. Why do I feel like a victim to cancer when I should feel like a warrior, a fighter, a winner. Telling people about my fight used to make me feel so proud and hopeful of the future. Now, with each person I tell I begin to see their eyes shift from interested to uncomfortable. They begin to feel sorry for me and shift around to find something else to talk about. A conversation that was so stable, engaging, and full of life suddenly disintegrates into silence. Why was my accomplishment suddenly turned into a loss? I wish people viewed my diagnosis as something I overcame, not something I became. Earlier this week I went to the dentist because I was dealing with gum discomfort. I had to fill out a form of my medical history. Past diseases, illnesses, and surgeries filled the pages. In my case, I had to check the "cancer" box. I wrote down my diagnosis, stage, and various surgeries that came with it. As I was filling out the sheet I noticed I was disassociating with that part of my life again, I felt like I was filling out the paper for another patient, sharing their story and not mine. I walked into the dentist office and they looked over my paperwork. I noticed myself watching them as they reviewed my medical history. I was looking for some sort of body language to show that they read about my diagnosis, why was I so nervous about them knowing? I quickly assured them "my oncologist said this has nothing to do with the chemotherapy or my diagnosis". Why couldn't I say cancer? They looked at my gums and had nothing to say about my dental health. I saw a switch flip in the dental hygienist eyes as he says "I don't mean to scare you but worse case...it could be a development of cancer". Memories flooded my head. Flashbacks of treatment. Flashbacks of numbness. Flashbacks of nothing. Why was he bringing cancer up when I just have gum discomfort? The doctor came in and said "Hodgkins Lymphoma huh! Whats the 3B stand for?" I was here for my gums but all they could talk about my cancer that I had one year ago. The doctor looked at my teeth for under 60 seconds and began to ask more questions about my cancer. He then sat down and said "Well, we are going to have to keep a close eye on this... it could be a sign of the Hodgkins". What started as a dentist appointment became a cancer appointment by dentists. I started to feel mortified, interrogated and speechless. They kept looking at me like I was a cancer patient. I felt vulnerable and numb. They began to reach for my neck to feel my lymph nodes. I did not even question it, it was so engraved in my brain that I am a cancer patient and doctors feel my neck for signs of my cancer. I began to believe every word that they said. I began to believe that my cancer was coming back, that this was a sign that the hell that I just lived was coming back to haunt me. But it wasn't. My oncologist said I was healthy and my labs looked great. So why were these dentist treating me like a cancer patient, like I was cancer? Why were they making me feel like cancer defined me? It made me question who I am and it has made me realize I have been struggling with identifying who I am post treatment. My entire world was shattered and I am trying to decide which pieces I want to pick up, leave behind or find replacements for. I am trying to define myself while I am still broken. I know cancer does not define me but who am I? The past week I have been heart broken by this experience. I hope that moving forward this can help others know that they are more than their diagnosis. Their diagnosis is something they have or will overcome, not something they became. |