It's been months since my last post, because it turns out that I have to sit down to write, and sitting down is not something I actually do all that often. This time of year is significant, though, because it's the anniversary of my diagnosis. So, now I am finally sitting down to write my first post since March.
It's hard for me to answer the main question that brings people here to read this blog: "How are you doing?" I still have medical appointments, and updates that relate to my health, and I've certainly done quite a bit of living recently, but so much of what has happened in the past few months seems to lie in a grayer area, woven somewhere between me and my health. But in the interest of time, I'll do my best to contain and quantify. Jump on the tour bus, buckle up, and let me take you on a ride through Abby-world... first up on our left, the non-medical part of my life, in bullet point form!
- Both of our brothers have moved back to New England, much to our and our parents' delight. Josh and Allie moved into their new house in VT, and Eric and his family moved from AZ to MA. Of course, they both moved the same weekend, so Tom and I went running off in different directions to help them out. (Seriously... did you guys plan that just to torture us?)
- Thanks to Dana-Farber, I won 4 tickets to the Red Sox. Josh, Allie, and Dad were happy to accompany me. I then joined my Brophy colleagues for another game a month later. (In case you were wondering, the Sox won both games... considering their record this year, I'm wondering if I need to be at more of them)
- We hosted our second annual Clam Crawl vs. Beef & Beer events, both of which were very well attended. This year the clammers traveled to the lower North Shore - Peabody, Salem, Lynn, Marblehead, and Revere. While I still don't have the complete stats, the overall consensus was that none of the places this year were as good as last year's... and yet I don't think we were all that disappointed.
- Our new nephew Cormac was born! As excited as we were, we had to wait a few weeks to meet him, because...
- We went to Spain! (Cormac was born just hours before we boarded our flight!) Our friends BP & Marta got married in Marta's hometown of Leon, so we used their nuptials as a great excuse to spend 10 days traveling around the northern part of the country. It was an absolutely fabulous trip, packed with breathtaking sights, amazing celebrations, great people, outstanding food, and buckets of wine. (And once we returned, we were thrilled to visit with Cormac and his family.)
- Besides all the fun stuff, I've also still been teaching! Shortly after our return to US soil, my school had its first annual Art Show in tandem with their spring Open House. We coordinated and displayed over 500 pieces of student artwork all around our school. The kids were pumped, the school looked great, and everyone seemed excited about it. Teaching is sometimes hard on me, but it's been great to be doing it.
- And of course, Tom and I were plenty busy with socializing, chores, errands, and all those regular person things. Now that I'm significantly more functional than last year, and I only work thee days a week, I end up doing quite a bit of the errands and chores on my off days (hoo-ray...).
Now that we've left the non-medical part of Abby-world, let's explore the State of Health! Coming up on your right, my physical health!
Overall, things have been very good. I've been on the maintenance chemo pill since November, with regular scans to check on how its going. My last scans were in April, and they still showed no evidence of cancer. I have another round of scans in a couple weeks, and if those are also clear, I will be able to get scans every six months instead of every three. I still experience some unpleasant side effects from the chemo pill, but I've learned how to manage them and pace myself, so they're mostly just annoying at this point. I was granted a two week break from the chemo pill during our trip to Spain, which probably contributed to my great mood, and it definitely helped me survive the insane amounts of walking we did during that trip.
In contrast, my mental health has been up and down, and since I'm trying to lead by example, I'm going be honest about it. I talked a lot about anxiety in my last post, and I now know it wasn't just anxiety I was experiencing. Sometimes I would have a week or two of being incredibly irritable, cripplingly indecisive, and generally feeling like a super-bitch. I didn't care a flying fuck about other people and their problems. Once I finally realized how I was acting (ok, so Tom called me out), I also noticed how crappy it felt; this was not me, this was not my personality at all. For most of my life I've cared too much about other people and their problems, trying to save the world one person at a time, but now I gave zero shits about anyone's feelings... so what was going on? During one of these super-bitch weeks, I brought it up with my psychologist, and she confirmed that I did not seem myself. I mentioned that it seemed to happen cyclically, and asked if it could be related to hormones. She suggested I see a psychiatrist, saying that sometimes chemo can alter women's natural cycles, and a psychiatrist might be able to prescribe something to help even things out. So I saw a psychiatrist, and he confirmed - after talking to me for just a minute or two - that I was describing "textbook" PMDD, Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or basically, Super-PMS. At his suggestion, I am now on an basic dose of antidepressants to control the symptoms. At first, I was a little apprehensive about being on an antidepressant - not that I'm against medications, but I wouldn't haven described myself as being depressed. But now that I've been taking it for awhile, I can see and feel a huge improvement in my mood. I'm still figuring out how the side effects affect me, and if this is the right medication for me, but at least I know I don't have to be a total asshole every month.
Whew, I'm glad we're leaving the State of Health, but now we're entering the foggy no-man's-land of the Inbetween: the gray area where health and life has intersected, where cancer has integrated itself into places you wouldn't expect it to be.
First off, in March, I co-facilitated a workshop at Dana-Farber's Young Adult Program Conference called Creativity, Coping and Color. I worked with one of Dana-Farber's social workers, as well as her mother, who is a practicing artist on the west coast, and also leads workshops on "mending as metaphor". My connection with the YAP conference is tricky to describe: it's amazing and empowering to meet other people my age who are dealing with many of the same challenges as I am, but it's also difficult to spend an entire day being reminded of those same challenges. Facilitating the workshop and having a job of helping people definitely made it easier for me to be a part of that day.
And finally, last week I completed Dana-Farber's Healthy Living After Cancer Study. Every Tuesday for 15 weeks two other cancer survivors and I met with an exercise physiologist and a health coach for an hour-long class. Every week we discussed strategies on how to integrate healthy habits into our lifestyle, and set nutritional and exercise goals to ultimately lose 7% of our body weight and improve our overall health. The goal of the study was to see whether the class can produce results, and if it would be helpful to patients. If most people had a similar experience to mine, then I would say it definitely would be helpful. Because I was part of this study, I was given a free membership to a gym down the street from Dana-Farber, and have been going to weekly strength training classes that the exercise physiologist offer specifically for cancer survivors. My strength and stamina has increased, as has the quality of the food I eat. Since school started in September, I have lost almost 30 pounds, and half of them have been during the past 15 weeks.
I consider the YAP conference and the Healthy Living study part of the Inbetween because, if it wasn't for my cancer, I never would have experienced them. There's even a cancerous fiber woven through the list of "non-medical" things I've done in the past few months: I could walk for miles in Spain because I was off my meds, the Clam Crawl was originally dreamed up because I was iron deficient due to chemo, and the fact that our families are all close by holds so much more weight. Of course, I use the textile metaphor since cotton is the traditional second anniversary gift, but it really seems fitting to me this year; cancer is slowly knitting itself into other parts of my life in ways I didn't anticipate or notice last year.
Just like we talked about in our YAP workshop, this past year I've been trying to stitch my life back together after it was ripped apart by cancer, but now I'm recognizing the tear itself as a part of the whole; I might be able to sew myself back up and make myself strong again, but the scar will always be there. I'm finding now that rather than hiding the stitches, it might be better to incorporate them into the bigger picture, embrace them and integrate them into the fabric of my life. Then, maybe, I'll get used to the jagged thread marring the surface, and slowly forget that I was ever bothered by it in the first place.
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