the Terrible Things

I’m not a good patient. I have no patience and expect to be feeling strong immediately. This is obviously not the case in the first days and week after surgery. I’m drugged to the gills, it’s painful to move, it’s painful to sit still. It’s the kind of pain that is always present, and isn’t localized to where I thought it should be. What bothers me most is the waiting.  We’re waiting for surgery, then waiting to hear if I need chemo.  At some point, the reconstruction process will start, and another (smaller) surgery for the implants.   If I’m lucky, I’ll be done in 3-4 months.  If not, this shit could stretch out into next year.  The waiting is the worst.  The unknown feels terrible.

Perhaps I would feel differently if my diagnosis was truly terrible.  Perhaps then the unknown would be more comforting than reality.  I’m not sure.  But I do know this: even a “lucky” and early diagnosis is making me crazy.

The biggest challenge has been controlling my own thoughts.  It’s hard not to see everything as a sign – and I don’t believe in signs. I see a bird flying and think that must be what death is like.  I read to Mackenzie, my adoptive little sister, and think, “will I ever see her read?”

My doctors say YES, ABSOLUTELY.  And I know they are right.  But still, if I’m not careful, I end up living in a world of my own making.  But it’s a terrible world where the breast cancer kills me.  A terrible world where I can’t stop thinking Terrible Things.

My friends want no part of this discussion, and I don’t blame them. They are not nearly as crazy as I am, and are much better at living in the actual world, not the terrible one of my own making.  These things in my head, all these terrible things are crazy, they are self-defeating -- yet they feel, at times, so very real.  So real sometimes I can’t take a proper breath.

So I call my Mom.  My crazy comes from somewhere I figure.  And besides, she gets it.  In fact, she’s lived through all the Terrible Things.  She’s lived through a diagnosis of Stage 3 breast cancer, and a prognosis of only 5 years to live.  She’s lived through a mastectomy, chemotherapy, and she didn’t need me to say what all Terrible Things were, she already knew.

“Mom?”  I whispered when I got her on the phone.  “It feels like….it feels like…..I’m having a premonition.”  I told her about the birds.  About reading to Mackenzie. 

She interrupted me:  “Have you calculated how old Mackenzie will be when you die?  Still in elementary school, right?”

I was quiet.  But in truth, I had.

“At some point” she continued, “you came to a moment of acceptance, right?  A moment where you go ‘I’ve had a good life.  It’ll be OK.’  Right?” she asks.

And there it is.  The most terrible thing of all.  The one where you are sure, so sure that you are about to die that you start to try and accept it.  Accept that your family will be fine.  That your friends will go on.  And they will, but this is truly a Terrible Thing.  It’s a terrible, shameful thing, and how did she know?  How did she know the most Terrible Thing of all?

“I remember, honey.” she says, “It means nothing.”

I sob in relief.

At some point I ask incredulously, “You calculated how old we’d be when you died?” 

“Yep. You’d be out of college, and Scott would be out of high school so I thought, OK.  That’s pretty good.”

And then we both crack up.  It’s not funny, not really, but so crazy that it is.

My sense of humor is becoming a Terrible Thing as well.

Later, she shared something from one of her best friends.  To date, it’s the most helpful thing I’ve heard:

“Peg,” she said, “please tell Kim that she can’t believe everything she thinks.”


And just like that, the weight lifts.