Post-Treatment Stages of Emotional Health

This was posted by a someone on the YSC boards the other day and I thought it was worth sharing. I'm not sure if I've gone through these in this precise order, but most of them resonate.

Stage 1 after treatment: What do you mean there is nothing else I can do? Let me do more chemo. I'm never going to eat sugar again and I'll eat flax seeds everyday. I've got to raise $10,000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation and ride my bike 200 miles in 4 days to help people with cancer.

Stage 2 after treatment: Shouldn't I feel happy? I'll cry at my post chemo party if I want to.

Stage 3 after treatment: I feel agitated and annoyed at everything and nothing. You mean that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not just for soldiers? Lack of sleep is not helping anything.

Stage 4 after treatment: I'm pulling out all my retirement money and doing whatever in the hell I want. I envy the mundane problems of everyday life but have very little patience when it comes to listening about them. No tolerance for bullshit and shitty family and friends.

Stage 5 after treatment: I have all the symptoms on the internet. I just know my cancer is back. If the cancer is not back, why do I feel this way? Am I a hypochondriac?

Stage 6 after treatment: Is there pink everywhere? I hate pink. Cancer follows me everywhere. I wish people would quit asking if my hair is naturally curly ..... no it's unnaturally (there is nothing natural about chemo) curly and it currently looks like a sheep's ass.

Stage 7 after treatment: I just need to get away from all this cancer stuff. Did all that stuff really happen to me? Maybe if I stay off the boards and stay busy I'll "get over it" faster. See ya everyone .... I'll be at Target.

Stage 8: The person looking back in the mirror looks and feels very different. I don't think things will ever be the same. The "old me" is never coming back (sniffle). How come everyone else doesn't realize it and why do they keep saying that I am back to normal?

PSA: Become a Bone Marrow Donor

I would really be remiss if I didn't post about this...

A woman I know from "the boards," Danica Martinez, developed leukemia as a result of her chemo treatment for breast cancer (crazy, but true).

She is the single mother of 3 kids and desperately needs a bone marrow transplant, but has been unable to find a match.

Now here's the cool part: ANYONE (well, anyone who hasn't had cancer) can be a bone marrow donor and the actual donation process sounds way easier than, say, giving up a kidney.

For more info on Danica and how to become a bone marrow donor, go here.

Heartbroken

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, I didn't want to join a support group because, let's face it, in a disease-driven support group, not everyone is going to have a good outcome (or, in blunter terms, survive).

But, somehow, I found the Young Survival Coalition bulletin boards and joined an amazing online community of women going through what I was going through.

I've written about it before in this space. It's an amazing place. It's also a horrible place, because on a site with thousands of members, you're bound to come across those who don't "have the good outcome."

Today I learned that a dear "virtual" friend of mine died on Sunday.

When I first joined the YSC boards, there was a small group of women who became my de facto mentors, essentially by virtue of the fact that they were done with their treatment and I hadn't yet started mine. They were the ones out there as living testaments: this is doable, you WILL make it through this, and you will come out on the other side strong and beautiful. Lola was one of these women. She was tough, she was fiery, she liked to stir things up on the boards--she did not placate. She was straight-talking, funny, flawed, smart, sassy. Her nickname was "the Tartan Terror."

I never met Lola in person, primarily because she lived in Scotland, but I've read (and probably responded to) hundreds of her posts and we had exchanged a few emails over the last year.

In November, when Lola was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer, I was one of hundreds of YSCers who sent money to Scotland so that her darling daughter could have a great Christmas.

Now, contrary to popular belief, metastatic BC (aka "mets," aka Stage IV) is not an immediate death sentence. There are lots of women on the boards who've had it for years, some who've had "no evidence of disease" (aka, been "NED") for years. So for Lola to go so quickly is just an unfathomable shock.

I am so sad for her, her family and all the other YSC sisters we've lost this year: MamaCath, Shabana, Jayme, Jessica...

I generally try not to write about the sad YSC stuff in this space because I don't want to depress you, my Dear Reader, by writing about the deaths of people you don't know. But I also assume you read this blog because you're interested in how I'm doing and so you should know that, today, the answer is, "heartbroken."

What a Sad, Crazy Day

As I've mentioned, my main "support group" is the YSC bulletin board. It's an amazing, wonderful, horrible place.

It's amazing and wonderful because the women there are so open, so giving, so knowledgeable, so strong, so honest, so funny...you get the idea. Any question you have, there's someone (usually several someones) there who can answer it. If you're having a bad day and need cheering up, someone will do that. If you're having a good day and want to share, you'll find lots of welcoming virtual ears. It's also wonderful because you see women on there with "late stage" BC (Stage IV, aka "mets") who are going strong (sometimes 7 years, 9 years or even further out), having fun, getting married (and, yes, dealing with the incurable version of this disease and the truly crude and harsh methods we have of treating it).

It's horrible because you also see the worst-case scenarios all the time. When I started chemo, the doctors told me about all the weird, rare possible side effects that "1 in 10,000" people get. Same thing with radiation. Same thing with surgery. Well, on the boards, it seems like there's always someone who gets that side effect (for example, one friend lost all sensation in her legs from the knees down after 2 doses of Taxol--a condition know as neuropathy--and had to stop treatment; she's currently wearing leg braces to walk and can't drive).

And it's really horrible when someone dies. Which happened yesterday. Melinda, 35 years old, first diagnosed in 2005, relapsed with mets in May this year. Too young and too fast. Too sad. Oh yeah. And she was an oncologist. Which, to me, makes it seem even more unfair.

Moment of silence for Melinda and her family.