Photo: taken sometime during the latter half of my chemo treatments. At this time I weighed just over 70 lbs and had lost all my hair (including eyebrows and eyelashes). I'm wearing my wig in this pic. I was using crutches to get around much of the time, still unable to use a prosthetic limb comfortably following my amputation surgery a few months earlier.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I'd never had cancer. It's a big question, one that looms every morning as I get out of bed and put on my prosthetic leg.
I wonder how having had the cancer has held me back in so many ways. I deal daily with pain and sores. I have chronic issues related to the toxicity of the chemo. I limp. I am often tired and somewhat prone to depression. Every time I have an ache somewhere I wonder if it is the cancer again. Currently I am avoiding doctors and I haven't had a physical exam in three years.
I just want to be me and not a cancer patient.
But I also wonder if I hadn't had cancer, would I be a totally different person? Would I still be a gardener, a locavore, a mother, a lover of John? A Mormon? A Quaker? A teacher and writer of academic papers?
Would I love cats? Chocolate? Or meditating by candlelight? Would I have rowed the canals of Canterbury or clambered up The Great Wall? Would I be afraid of rodents? Would I relish simple living?
I suspect that I would be a wearer of high heels and a swimmer in oceans. And a cartwheeler in meadows of green grass. That I would be a hiker of the Narrows and walker of the Pilgrim's Path.
But what if not?
And what if my cancer came back tomorrow? Or my kitties run away? Or I run away? Or what if my latest insurance claims are denied and my leg breaks and I lose my job and the Mormons excommunicate me and I make John miserable and I am unkind to my children and I am just so so so tired that I never get out of bed again?
What if?
4 comments:
It's amazing that this picture looks like Catgirl's cousin.
I really feel your what-if pain.
What if... Indeed.
OK, I am struck by what a beautiful smile you have in this photo.
What if's are scary.
All the pics I have of me when I was undergoing cancer have this same huge smile. I suspect that it's partially because I felt so showered with love and supported during that time (really my family and friends were amazing and the hospital staff was absolutely unbelievably kind to me). It's also probably partially due to the fact that I only have like 3 or 4 pics of that whole year...(taken, no doubt, when I was feeling good and not puking 15 times/min or so weak that I couldn't even sit upright in my bed).
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