As school starts and summer ends, the weather shifts, and annual transitions begin again, I’m experiencing intense emotions about my diagnosis and treatment.
Previously, I didn’t understand the anniversary trauma that others felt about deaths, divorce or other losses. It confused me—surely you feel grief at any and all times of year? Why is an arbitrary date on a wall calendar more upsetting than any other day?
Now, I get it. For me, it’s not the specific date but the repeat of the markers of time. The return of the same season. The repeating events like back to school, getting mums, putting up the storm windows. Those things you do now that you did then too, or at least until your world stopped.
Cancer owns your schedule. The first thing it does is stop time. Then it overtakes all your plans, current and distant.
I’ve mentioned invisibility before, it is here again. I feel physically better than I have in months, I have been able to enjoy many more activities and look more like “myself” now. My skin isn’t so grey and my hair is back, though ironically it is more grey. I am visually much “better”.
This pain now is inside, invisible, and it is intense. I’m reliving the diagnosis, the walk down the hall to ultrasound, the devastation of hearing stage IV, the excruciating wait for bone scan results.
I will never “graduate”, I will never get a clean bill of health, I will never “beat it”. While the path after diagnosis was relatively clear—a treatment plan is a plan after all; the road ahead of me now is unknown, and I’m really scared.