I’m overdue for an update, but, once again, I find I’m not sure what to say at this point in the process. So I’ll give you two versions.

Short version:

My body is doing remarkably well. Recovering from chemo, going for short runs again. My mind is trying to make sense of all of this. I probably don’t have breast cancer any more, and I’m done with chemo, and it sounds like a time to celebrate but still doesn’t feel like it. I still don’t have much hair, but I think I felt it – like a tiny breeze through my tiny hairs – in a way I haven’t in a while. I start my next course of treatment in a week. And I caught myself thinking the other day something like, “I don’t want to be done with cancer because I’ll miss people worrying about me and saying nice things to me.” So, there’s that, too. 🙂

Longer version:

Do you know about the hero’s journey? The one where a brave, single character goes through something terrible, and then emerges on the other side with some great wisdom, earned through the treacherous journey to overcoming? I’m a sucker for that narrative, and I resent that I’m not here (here being mid February, here being back to the blog) with some great wisdom. I’m so disoriented, still, by the fact that I have/had cancer. I don’t even know if I lack the great wisdom because I’m not on a hero’s journey, or if it’s because I’m still in the middle of it all.

Maybe my confusion explains my resistance to using the past tense when I talk about cancer. I still haven’t said to anyone, “I had cancer.” I keep doing weird dances with tense, saying “I’ve been going through treatment for cancer,” or “I’m coming through cancer.” But it’s not just a cognitive dance with narrative. Also, it’s just unclear. 

In early October, my wonderfully over-confident surgeon told me that “we probably got all the cancer!” For a moment I felt hopeful. Maybe all the cancer was gone with my breast? But the “probably” was critical. All my treatment turns on the “probably.” It stands in for, we will never know. Wrap your head around that. There is no way to know if the cancer is gone. That is true for everyone, but it is a lot for someone who had a 10 cm cancerous growth that may or may not have spread its mutation out into my body. And since there is no way to know if it spread, I went through chemo.

It’s been five weeks since my last chemo infusion. I feel physically so much better — the kind of better that I’d want to throw a party for. But the cancer rehabilitation doctor says my body certainly isn’t recovered from all I’ve been through, and that I need to take it slower than I have been. And then, with no time for my brain to make stories to make sense of this “journey,” I had an appointment with my oncologist again, and she is talking about opting for the most aggressive injections and pills to suppress the hormones, “in case there are any cancer cells left floating around your body.” I swear she made little wiggly finger movements as she said it, like dancing fireflies. Maybe it was a bad zoom connection and she was just scratching her nose, but I resented it anyway. Even though I knew this was coming, I hate that I went through chemo only to get here — to take hormone suppressants for five to ten years.

Exactly a year ago I read this great article in the NY Times about menopause, and new research about treatment. Go read it, or listen to it. Anyway, I read it and felt so lucky to be nearing perimenopause and menopause with this new information. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) can be effective, and the likelihood that it causes cancer is so low, and the quality of life benefits so high. Yay! I am of the generation that heard HRT was too risky, but now we have new information. Menopause might be easier for me than women and people with ovaries who have gone through this before me.

And then, crash. I have the most common kind of breast cancer – hormone positive breast cancer. I can’t tell you the science of it yet, but I think of my cancerous mutation as feeding on estrogen and progesterone. These drop naturally in menopause. The HRT puts some of these hormones back in the body, so I can’t do that. In fact, I’m about to do the opposite. Instead of hormone replacement, I’ll be doing hormone blocking therapy. Starting at the end of the month, I’m going to inject and ingest medications that will throw the brakes on my hormones, crashing me into a brick wall of menopause. “Medically induced menopause.” I resent having to take these medications, even though I remind myself they improve my chances of survival. It makes me feel very ungrateful. But if I’m on a hero’s journey, today I’m a whining hero today who just wants an easy way through. 

That said, don’t feel too sorry for me. I am relishing the fact that cancer (plus getting laid off from my job this fall, plus having enough to not be stressed about money – what a wild gift) cleared my schedule, and so I am re-emerging with energy and free time. Some of it I’m using to volunteer. Today it means I get to go chaperone the 3^rd-5^th graders at a school dance! And I’m tentatively joining a gym. The extra time means I’m writing more (I even published a pretty nerdy craft essay in a nerdy journal called Assay about The Undying, a great book about breast cancer.) And it’s allowing me to go away: on a two-night writing retreat with friends in January; to Joshua Tree and Palm Springs with Ida next week for mid-winter break; and to a hot springs in Canada with friends next month. Burke and I are even dreaming of going away overnight for the first time in four years, but we need more nursing hours for that to happen. If you’re still feeling worried about me after reading that luxurious list, please ask the universe to send us a nurse who is willing to work an overnight shift. 

Thanks for reading. I hope that I can return the favor of loving, caring attention to you, too.