It’s been just over 7 months since my surgery and 6 months since being labeled “cured”. Once in awhile, I have some pain and discomfort (things just take a while to settle when you have an organ removed I guess?) but overall, my physical pain is mostly gone. Emotionally, however, I still have some work to do.
I have been trying to name feelings as I notice them (still trying to find a therapist that takes my insurance and has availability right now, so I’m just doing some of the pre-work for therapy now!) Generally I find myself feeling some/all of the following at different points throughout each day: Anger, jealousy, hopelessness, hopefulness, anxiety, guilt, and relief. I am realizing we really had very little time to adjust to this diagnosis before surgery, and thus really didn’t have time to do the emotional work. I just keep thinking about how quickly the process from totally fine to cancer survivor was. Less than three months. And I’m so grateful we were able to get to the survivor point as quickly as we were – that’s not the case for all cancer patients. But it just left us reeling a bit, and I find we are having to deal with a lot of the emotional stuff now.
I don’t really know what I expected in terms of my emotional recovery, but it has surprised me how emotional I still am about everything. Things that I didn’t even notice before now bring me to tears. I feel angry a lot of the time. Pregnancy announcements, maternity clothes, pregnant women, families with multiple children, pregnancy tests, tampons, breast pumps, etc. are all triggers for me. I hate that they are, it really complicates my life, I hope they won’t always be. But right now, they still hurt. I don’t really sleep well anymore – primarily because we really need a new mattress, but I just find it difficult to make it through a night without waking up thinking about something related to my diagnosis or fertility issues. Sometimes I dream I am pregnant, and that leaves me in a funk for a while when I wake up. I guess not having a period has been nice – but, fun fact, because I still ovulate, I still get PMS. I just have no idea what’s happening because I have no period to clue me in as to why I spent the previous three days being an emotional wreck about everything.
Mason just listens when I get in these moods and lets me cry through them for the most part. Sometimes he interjects with “hey, remember you don’t have cancer, though”, and I know it’s not a criticism of my emotions, but more of a reminder to focus less on our loss and more on how lucky we are to have survived this. We figured out something really important just after my surgery that has helped us understand each other’s perspectives more. When I was diagnosed, I immediately zeroed in on the infertility that would result from the treatment, whereas Mason immediately (and probably more rationally) focused on the cancer diagnosis. He was scared and I was angry. And because that’s how we both went into the surgery, that’s also kind of how we have been dealing with the aftermath. He feels relieved that the cancer part seems to be behind us now, and though that is a relief for me, I still feel very angry about the resulting infertility, especially as we get into the research a bit more and really start understanding what it’s going to take to grow our family.
Life One Step At A Time 