It’s January again, a difficult month. I fall into the ’’anniversary’’ pattern, thinking things like ’’three years ago I was getting ready for student teaching, little did I know...’’ I’ll do it again in September, when the BMT anniversary is, but January is more startling. I still look back on the first few weeks of January 1993 as the last days of my ’’normal’’ life - even though I know that I was a sicker person then than I am now. What I’m saying is that I know better, and I know that I need to move on from it, but somehow I keep managing to get stuck it in, just like our cars all along the East Coast of the US are stuck in the snow. We can work at it and get out, but it isn’t easy.
Last November I began pulmonary rehabilitation, trying to strengthen my breathing muscles and body as a whole in hopes that I will be well enough to work again, ideally by mid spring 1996. I am making some progress but it is slow-going. The truth is that I’m so tired, it is hard to get my heart into it. The drive and will to live that pushed me through chemotherapy and the BMT in 1993, radiation and fibrosis, and the motivation to complete my education in 1994 seemed to wither away to nothing in 1995.
I never really managed to be angry or bitter, emotions that I’ve seen both help and hinder other cancer patients. As I recall it, I did the best I could, and took a whatever will be will be attitude when I could, looming into a sad resignation when I was unable to feel cheerful. 1995 is the year that it caught up to me emotionally, I suppose. While I plugged away through the recurrence scare in early 1995 and attempted to keep a strong outlook, I secretly questioned if it might not be easier to just have it happen, and be done with it. In late spring/summer, I even wrote a story about a woman who knew she had recurrent disease, but intentionally hid it and did nothing about it. It is a depressing story, but it was therapeutic for me - the main character is so resigned, pathetic and misguided that I know I don’t want to be like her!
By mid-summer I was feeling particularly lonely dealing with the disease. Seems that those around me, even those closest to me, now seeing that the crisis was over all managed to put it behind them, while the issues and fears stayed with me all the time. It had been talked out to death by 1995, how many times can you go over the same issues? I set up this page looking for empathy and reassurance from fellow cancer patients online, and was not disappointed. As I later added to the beginning of this page, the response generated from it has been very helpful and my heart goes out to so many people who are bravely dealing with the same issues I have dealt with, and in some cases with so much more. Again I thank you for your replies; they helped quite a bit.
The fall was difficult as well. I thought I was finally strong enough to try working part time, figuring that once I got going I would be able to build my strength as I went along. I was very wrong. In a month period, in late Sept-Oct, I attempted working a few days as a classroom assistant. When that failed, I tried a temp job in an office environment, and was not successful there either. I was stunned by this, somehow I thought I was stronger. I fell into a sort of depression, doubting my abilities and reflecting on what opportunities might be left for me. It looked bleak just then, but I visited doctors and eventually got set up in the rehabilitation program I am in now.
Now it is a new year, and I am trying to put the weariness of 1995 behind me, even though I know 1996 is not going to be easy. I am hoping that it will be a year of rejuvenation for me, and though I’m not confident enough to predict where I’ll be a year from now, I plan to try to make something happen for me this year, so that I can stop mourning the person I was in 1992, and move my normal life back into the present.