A Girl Named Depression

I have been updating less and less. I have, at least for the moment, run out of witty observations. The ugly truth, my friends, is that I have been fighting against depression for the last month and a half. Part of me doesn't want to admit it and the other part of me recognizes that we all deal with it sometimes...there is no reason to feel shame for it. That only feeds the monster.

I was very confident about my second drug. I really dug my heels into being positive, I was expecting the best. Instead I was told it wasn't working. I was put on a pill, and like that was thrust squarely into maintenance mode. Curative options were off the table and I felt like I had to accept reality...that I would deteriorate, that my life would get smaller and smaller until it vanished from existence.  Couple this with a horrible first month on the drug...three straight weeks of high fevers, little sleep, weakness, extreme weight loss, home bound - hand in hand with my growing feelings of loss and grief- and it was a perfect breeding ground for all the terrible fears and insecurities in me.

Before my diagnosis, I felt like I was finally getting my life to where I wanted it. I had fought through a lifetime of hurdles but here I was...a lovely apartment, financial stability, a wonderful husband, the love of my friends and family. I felt like a new beginning for what would be a beautiful life. Fast forward a year later, I feel like that life has been taken from me piece by piece. I am angry. I feel loss. I have nothing and no one to direct it to. I want my life as it was, even fragmented, even just bits of its shadow.

When you feel loss, you hold tight to what is left. And what wasn't broken, you break yourself in your desperation. You burn bridges to places that feel distant and inaccessible. You isolate yourself until its you, your bed, and the ceiling. You become a black hole that devours what little bits of precious light remain.

I haven't been feeling positive these days. I don't feel strong. I feel like a fraud.

Depression lives inside us all at times. We experience loss - of confidence, of love, of freedom. We feel devalued, unwanted, and incapable of effecting change. We lash out in pain and fight the wind, only to realize we hurt only ourselves and those we love as we took wild punches at the universe. We eat cookies, cry, stare at the ceiling, and try to stuff all the ugly bits back inside ourselves when it's time to step back out into the world again.

I am taking steps to heal. Trying to find hope, even if it means collecting unicorn farts against all reason. If my fears are true, I don't want to live the rest of my life in anger, fighting, and burning the world down around me. And if they aren't, I don't want to wake up one day to find that I was the one who destroyed what good remained out of grief.

Depression isn't something you snap out of. You work on it day by day. You employ logic and delusion in equal measures. Find your friends, seek your family, create, make things to look forward to...forgive yourself for essentially being human. Take the pieces and make something beautiful. Might not be what you wanted, but it will be what you need.

How to Turn into a Lizard Person

Well, I have been missing in action here, no? Just an update on what I have been up to. I need to get some more topics too, I hate just rambling about myself. Why read something you don't relate to? I promise, I'll be back to regularly scheduled programming some.

The Bad: The Last Few Weeks

These last three weeks have not been fun. I am on a new chemo pill (which I alone can handle, it is considered bio-hazardous for anyone else to even look at). When I started it, we thought that not getting infusions would give me some more freedom. Boy, was I wrong.

I have had a high fever for more than TWO WEEKS. I'm popping ibuprofen like M&M's. I am crazy fatigued. At random intervals during the day I get the most violent chills I have ever felt. It's like my bones are made of ice, so even 4 blankets on me does little.

Well, I'm off to bed.

On Saturday I woke up with red freckle like splotches on my face and chest, which looked almost exactly like it does below. I kept joking that I always wondering what it was like to inhabit an Irish lass's body and now I could look down at my boobs and know.

Before

However since then they have all grown in size and spread. Now I know that the lizard people / Illuminati shadow coalitions have conspired to turn me into a lizard person too.  

After

I spend all day in bed, or the couch. It has been hands down the hardest few weeks of this process. I am so fatigued I can't even do anything, and have lost 9 pounds over the course of 11 days. (I guess lizard people have to be lean.) I am hoping at this point that symptoms really even out soon cause this shit's crazy. 

The Good: A Second Opinion

In the beginning, when I was told I was incurable by doctors I was urged to get a second opinion. I knew well that anywhere I went I would receive standard first-line treatment so I decided to wait and see what results came from initial rounds of chemo. Well, I am past that point now, and more creative approaches are now needed. My doctor where I am is a good one but is no longer offering any curative options. So I have to find someone who can.

I have started the new patient process at MD Anderson in Houston, TX. They are ranked #1 in cancer care in the US and recognized globally. They specialize in colon cancer with liver metastases. Many people, like me, that were told they weren't candidates for surgery were told it was totally possible at MD Anderson - and cured where others gave them a death sentence. I am so very very hopeful. 

I am waiting for my appointment to be scheduled. Once they get your records, they review them. You are told that the visit is 3-5 days, during which you will see an entire team of doctors (oncologists, surgeon, radio oncologist) and have testing done. Hope to be there by months end. We will see...

Cross fingers and toes. :)