Kids

This week, I had a birthday milestone that has me a little freaked out: I'm the same age my mom was when she gave birth to me, and I'm nowhere near having a kid.  To be completely honest, that fact breaks my heart. 

I am not child-free.  I am childless.  

I want to have kids and to be a mother.  I love my brothers' children with all my heart, but I ache to have my own child.  My Facebook feed is filled with pregnancy or birth announcements, and each time, I feel like I've been punched in the stomach.  I scroll down other people's happiness, and I feel this void.  I hide the fact that some of my friends' announcements have caused me to walk away and cry.  I'm happy for them, but at the same time, I'm sad for me, and I'm angry at my body for failing me.

In a week, I'll be meeting with my oncologist, and I'll start receiving monthly Lupron shots to shut down my ovaries for at least six months.  This might happen for a year (that is, if I can tolerate the side effects), ending when I'm 34.  Since my breast cancer was so strongly estrogen positive, he wants me to have some estrogen-free time under my belt before I start procreating.  I agree with him, as does my boyfriend.  We are both 100 percent on board with Unibrow's Death to Estrogen plan.  I will never be able to pursue having children unless I give this Breast Cancer Plan B a good try.  I couldn't tolerate Tamoxifen and so therefore, the odds of me having a distant recurrence (i.e. metastatic breast cancer) are higher than those who do take the five years.

Because of my inability to take Tamoxifen for more than six months, I often worry about my future, but not in the ways most early-30 somethings worry.  Not a day goes by where I don't second-guess my decision about Tamoxifen.  I'll feel a pain in my hip or lower back, and immediately think, "Oh my God, what if this is mets?"  

www.nataliedee.com

Sometimes I imagine there's an alternate Lara, one who has never had breast cancer, out there in the universe.  I imagine she's happily married (to my boyfriend - what a whore, I should beat her!) and has one, maybe two little rugrats to take care of.  She's traded in her reliable four-door Sedan, and she's driving around the suburbs in a used mini-van with a kid-friendly iPod playlist.  This alterna-Lara doesn't go to the hospital or regular doctors' visits - she goes to playdates.  This Lara doesn't suffer from depression and has to talk to a therapist every other week just to be able to deal with day-to-day life.   Alterna-Lara looks at her daughter with love and pride, not fear and trepidation that a horrible disease has been passed down to her.

This isn't my reality, and I'm losing faith that this will ever be my reality.   

File under: things I need to bring up to my therapist.

"I will wonder on...."

Now that I'm back to working full-time and I'm not all cancer, all the time, my life is beginning to resemble that of a real life.  However, every time I have felt that way, something has come along to pull the rug from underneath me (see: double-freaking-mastectomy).  I've been back to work for a month now, and I'm probably a month away from my last surgery to finish off the reconstruction, which I will call....

The Boob Finale.  

I really hope this surgery is the last one for awhile because frankly, I'm sick of the hospital, dealing with anesthesia and becoming a "regular" at the hospital.  Next month will mark my second cancer-versary, and I'll probably have The Boob Finale before then.  That will be five, FIVE, surgeries within two years, and lord, I am tired.  

I'm so tired.

My body is just so unrecognizable from my neck down to my belly button.  From my five surgeries, I have 11 new scars on my body.  The double mastectomy added six to the Scar Count.  My chest looks like a road map to hell, with  my boobs the Mountains of Pain.  I go through periods, and I'm apparently in one of them now, where I just don't recognize my own body on the inside and out.  I consider times like this mourning periods where I miss what I used to look and feel like.  

I miss happy, care-free Lara, who occasionally had to deal with anxiety attacks and no drive to succeed.  Now, I feel like I should constantly be doing something, anything.  I feel extremely driven to finish my cancer memoir so I will have put something out into the universe, a legacy of some kind.  What if something bad happens to me again - will anyone know I have existed if the Big Bad C word comes back and I'm done for?  I have to get my mind off things and concentrated on something.  

Depression is a helluva beast to try to live with and hopefully conquer.  I'm naive enough to think I can overcome this depression and try to regain some of that sense of wellness I had before the cancer hammer came smashing down.  When I think too much about what's happened to me in the last two years, I could cry for days and not get off the couch.  (Poor Boomer will lay next to me whenever I get this way, like, "It's okay, Mom.  No need to be sad when I'm here.")  

I'm hoping that after the Boob Finale that a lot of this fear and anxiety about my mortality will subside, and I can just live.  I don't want to live a life, fearing death.  Nobody should live like that.  

Anti-Depressants

A couple of months ago, I decided that I really wanted to wean myself off anti-depressants.  I stopped taking Tamoxifen in April after I decided to have a double-mastectomy.  When I started taking Tamoxifen, the medication affected my mood swings so bad that I needed to take anti-depressants to counteract the bad mojo of Tamoxifen.  

To be honest, I was struggling with depression before I started taking Tamoxifen.  I had more crying fits than ever before.  I couldn't see the good in anything and thought that my life would be nothing but illness, hospital visits and then ultimately, death.   Depression made me see everything in shit-colored glasses.  When I started Tamoxifen, that escalated my depression and I wanted to die.   Depression + Tamoxifen = disaster.

Anti-depressants let me go on with my daily life without crying all the time and driving everyone in my life absolutely crazy.  The medication helped me get out of bed, put my shoes on, and live my life the best I could.  It allowed me to see joy in things again.

When I stopped taking Tamoxifen, things stopped being so difficult.   The physical side effects of Tamoxifen quickly went away, and I thought to myself, "Well, maybe the depression won't be as severe now that I'm done taking this god forsaken medication."  It'd be nice to be down to just one daily medication (synthroid for those of you keeping track at home), instead of my record of three medication.

I haven't dealt with a lot of things that contributed to my depression.  Ever since I've been diagnosed, I have never seen a counselor and I've been to a support group maybe five or six times.  In two years.  The main form of "therapy" has been blogging, believe it or not.  I haven't resolved any of family bullshit drama, the feeling like I'm not loved by them, my fears of being infertile after chemotherapy, and the feeling that all this is useless, and I'm just going to die from breast cancer anyway.

So I'm almost done weaning myself off the anti-depressants, and it hasn't been easy.  I've wanted to scream and curse out lots of people but I'm keeping those thoughts in check.  I'm trying to take this day by day and sometimes just hour by hour.  When all else fails, I might just have to hug a puppy.

Three Little Birds

My body is free of any tattoos, but not because I'm anti-tattoo.  At first, I didn't have a tattoo because I couldn't think of an idea that I wanted on my body for the rest of my life.  Several years ago, I thought of an idea for a tattoo, and it's been stuck in my mind ever since.  My idea: three little birds outside a window.  Yep, I want a Bob Marley-inspired tattoo.  Are you groaning?  I bet some of you might be groaning right now and muttering, "Dirty hippy," under your breaths.

Don't worry about a thing.  'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.

Before the big C, the tattoo idea was just because of my dirty hippy past life.  If I had any artistic inclination, I would try to draw this vision I have for the tattoo.  Instead, I'll have to bribe someone to draw it for me if I ultimately decide to get this tattoo.  Now the idea means even more because it's exactly what I believe about my life: "'Cause every little thing gonna be all right."  The song is joyous, positive and just so happy.  I always find my head bopping along with the song.  

During chemo, I would play this song a lot to give me hope and inspire me to power through.  The more I heard the words "every little thing gonna be all right," the more I believed.  I still believe...

Despite life-changing side effects....

Despite the overwhelming fear of cancer's return...

Despite family strife that will likely never see any resolution....

Despite scars all over my body...

Despite depression....

Everything will be okay.

Coping

Around a month after my active treatment ended, I really struggled with something I had never encountered before: depression.  When I first started chemo, my oncologist tried having me take this certain anti-depressant because it was shown to help hot flashes associated with chemotherapy.  I was on it for 10 days and it was absolute hell.  My brain felt like mush, and I felt more depressed than I had before.  I couldn't function at work while on this Hell Drug.  Thanks to information my friend Jo provided me, I stopped taking the drug and felt good about my decision, like I was being proactive about my health.

Cue post-treatment life, and everything feels so different.  For weeks, I was just a wreck, barely hanging on.  I cried over pretty much everything.  While I don't think cancer changes someone, I truly believe it completely obliterates someone's life.   When I was done with radiation, it was awesome.  I got my life back, and it didn't revolve around constant hospital visits and getting blood drawn every three weeks.  (Every time I get my blood drawn - even up until last week - I have to fight really hard not to cry.)  Once that elation wore off, then it felt like nothing was right.

The world became scary to me.  The scariest part of this world: my post-cancer body.  Every new pain that I felt - IT'S CANCER.  A sharp pain in my sinuses - ZOMG, the cancer metastasized into my brain.  No, it's just a sinus headache.  It would take me a long time to get to that logical and reasonable explanation for whatever pain I was feeling.  The panic and anxiety associated with those irrational leaps to conclusion take a lot out of me.  I have to tell myself, "Stop it.  You're not dying."  The dreaded Tamoxifen that I take causes leg cramping and bone pain at times (because it screws with my estrogen).  When I feel those pains in my leg, of course my harried brain goes: "Is it the cancer?"  I feel like I'm being chased, like any day now my life is going to be taken away from me like it happened in September 2010.  I don't want to go through what I did ever again, but I know the stats aren't in my favor.

Of course one of the contributing factors to my depression is my strained relationship with my parents.  I won't get into that here because frankly, I've raked them over the coals enough.  They know I'm pissed.  They know why I'm pissed.  There's not really much more to add about why I feel like they done me wrong.  The state of how things are does make me sad.  I don't want to be mad and have these feelings, but that's just how I feel.  I'm not going to put these feelings in a box, put it away, and pretend that everything is hunky dory with my folks.  La la la.  I just can't do that anymore.  I want to make my dad happy, but I'm not going to put his happiness before my self worth and happiness.

Lastly, in this depressing tale of woe, sometimes I get really bummed out after I hang out with friends.  Whenever I hear of an engagement or a pregnancy or a promotion, I feel like my life is just stuck.  I'm Cancer Girl stuck in Limbo Land.   I want to be like those girls whose lives are changing!  I want to have babies and start a family with my beloved boyfriend, but I can't for at least two years.  I'm supposed to be on Tamoxifen for five years, but I'm not going to wait until I'm 36 to try and have a baby.  Hell no.  Also, for the last year and a half, my life has just been about the boob cancer.  I struggle to think of other things to talk about.  Cancer cancer cancer cancer cancer.  Every time I drop the C word in conversation, I know I just made everyone feel uncomfortable.  I don't mean to do it and wish I could stop.  I think I just have to really focus on small talk until I can train myself to stop talking about cancer so blase.

I never really understood depression before.  However, I knew enough to know the difference between feeling depressed and going through a depression (I always hated when people thought they were the same thing).  I feel like I'm starting to just understand it.  I struggle with how I cope with this current period of my life, but I want to get better.  I want to move forward with my life, which means learning to cope with stress a lot better than I have been.  I need to get back into shape and have a better diet, because that's really the only way I can control my body.  If I want to, then I can make myself into a lean, mean ass-kicking pirate (I know it's supposed to be "machine" but I like pirates).

I also have to accept the fact that I'm not immortal, and I can't control the universe.  (Lots of sci-fi watching lately - my apologies.)  I can't live my life scared that breast cancer is going to come back and kill me like it did my mom.  I can accept the fact that it is a possibility, but if there are factors that I can control to prevent that, then that's what I'm going to do.