One Year Ago.
Yes, it is my cancerversery. What a crazy year it’s been and how far we have all come. Looking back on what transgressed over the past 12 months has been at most times scary, boring and mostly overall left me with a nauseous feeling. I was trying to be punny, sorry.
This past year has been challenging and humbling both physically and mentally. Realizing, as I am trying to learn to walk again while in rehab that it could always be way worse. I have pooped, peed, threw up and bleed on myself. No I am not proud of those moments, but they happened. At least, cancer was the reason for ALL of the disgusting things. I hope I never have a stroke again, (technically I had what the doctor’s call a venous thrombosis) that was probably worse that just having cancer. Being immobile is absolutely devastating. I still have some slight differences in my left and right side but I am probably the only one who can even tell the difference. I couldn’t imagine being 70+ years old trying to recover from a stroke.
I have learned to be calm or let things go. I guess that is always a debatable pending who you ask. I just let a lot of things go these days. There will be another day and another one after. Except when I sit in an hour and a half of traffic on my way home from work and am literally down the street from my house and some inconsiderate prick decides to drive down the middle of a two lane street at five mph. Then I lose my mind and not just a little bit. Yes, I may have just laid on my horn and flashed my lights. Just thinking about makes my blood boil, a bit. I say to myself: “you can’t fix stupid”. People never cease to amazing me for all the wrong reasons.
Anyways, not ALL of this year has been bad. I have through my journey met some really great people. The teams of doctors who have been taking care of me are awesome. I am still struggling to understand how they work as much as they do and remember all their patients. It’s unreal. I met my Immerman Angel, Jo, who has really helped through this process to know there is light at the end of the long dark tunnel.
The president of the company I work for said to my husband when this all happened, “this is when you find out who your true friends really are.” Wise words. That statement has rang true throughout all of this process. I know people try to sometimes keep their distance in order to not “bother” us, but the ones that have completely checked out don’t matter and won’t matter. To the people who stuck it out, not counting family, because well they were all just amazing. Friends that came to visit and checkup and send messages of love our way, reminds us how much we are loved and matter. It’s not always what we do that defines us but by the company we keep around us. People want to be respectful, I get that we had a lot of tragedy last year. Both A’s uncle and father passed and I found out I had cancer. Last year was a defining year for us. Lots of tears were shed. On a positive note, I found out my husband loves me way too much. In ways there is no coming back from. We are in too deep.