MOVING ON AFTER CANCER: SUE (SECOND IN A SERIES)

The Rubies are back! Diagnosed with breast cancer within weeks of each other, we were a string of strangers that met via breastcancer.org. We jelled like a good marmalade, forming a cohesive support system for each other that saved our collective sanity. We grew close, as real besties do, and I have since dubbed them The Rubies (read more about them here). 

As you can imagine, each Ruby has her own unique breast cancer story to tell, and I want to give each Ruby space to share her story on my blog. My first guest blogger was the marvelous Melanie, our youngest Ruby. (You can read Melanie's story here.)

Today I am introducing you to my second guest blogger, Sue. You'll soon see why Sue wears the "inspiring" crown in our group for making the most changes since her diagnosis. Sue is a military spouse who took stock of her personal circumstances, pushed through her limitations and pursued her dreams in the face of breast cancer. I'll let her tell you how she did it. So without further ado, here's Sue!

"One thing that being a military spouse has taught me is to take control when I can, and give up the desire to control when I have no other choice. We learn to just deal with it, uncomplaining, silently carrying on. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, I sucked it up and decided to just deal with it like I did everything else. No one told me that was impossible. You don’t just deal with cancer...

HUMPTY DUMPTY

Surgery day is getting closer, and I'm beginning to worry about everything. (If you knew me, you'd know I have been worried about everything for forever, so how could I possibly worry any more? Well, I do because I can. Or is it I can because I do?)

My older sister has flown into town to help with whatever is needed while I'm having surgery and recovering. YAY! She is also here on business (she has a client nearby), but will provide the greatest benefit by assisting my mother (who no longer drives and is dependent on me). In theory this is a splendid idea — move the load of responsibility off my shoulders and onto my sister's. 

However, sister doesn't know how much there is to be done. She tells me in an email that she will call me during the car ride to her work appointment to discuss any details. There is no  way we can go over everything on the phone and without her writing it down. 

So I write up some lengthy notes and take them over to my mom's. The three of us — me, mom, sis — sit at the kitchen table as I try to explain everything that I'm worried about: my mother's medical appointments, her upcoming taxes (which haven't yet been started), her bills (which I facilitate paying), her bank statements, her prescriptions (which I pick up) ... the list goes on. Both my mother and sister tell me the exact same thing: do not worry about anything. Huh? Aren't they listening? I'm the only one who knows how the bills are currently being paid. I'm the one who knows what's currently happening with my mother's health. (My mom, bless her heart, tries not to think about any of these details and therefore does not remember much about any of them). 

But somehow, I'm now supposed to simply stop worrying and focus on my surgery. Everything will be taken care of. Just like magic.

Well, I'm not buying any of it. 

Because here's what will happen: I will be out of commission for a few weeks while my mind is on my own healing. My sister and mother won't know (or recall) what is supposed to be taken care of if I don't tell them. Things will fall through the cracks. And when I finally re-surface, I won't remember anything either. Then my sister will fly home and I will be left with the fallout and the pieces.

What, me worry? That's crazy talk.

Maybe if I allow them to help me solve a small problem I see on the near horizon, they will "get it." So I tell them how friends and neighbors want to bring me meals, and that I would love that, but if I can't make a sandwich for myself, how will I be able to get out of bed and go downstairs and answer the door while also getting our two adorable but ferocious barking machines (otherwise known as dogs) to go outside so I can let "person with the food" inside without their being pounced on (or worse, if the barking machines don't like them, nipped at). OH, they say. That IS a problem!

These are but a few of the details I am stuck on in the days preceding my surgery. I am consumed with worry about everything because I somehow feel everything is my responsibility to worry about.

Then it hits me. Things are going to have to change or I will never get through this ordeal. I'm going to have to learn how to let go. I'm going to have to give up worrying. Cancer's going to have to "cure" my desire for control.

Right. Just like Humpty Dumpty learns to effortlessly dance along the edge of a brick wall.

MANAGING CHAOS

I have a surgery date. Yeah! The scheduler gives us one of the dates my husband requested. Guess it pays to slow down, keep your wits about you, and ask for what you need.

A sudden calm melts over me when I hear the news. I haven't felt this focused since before I learned my mammogram was weird. It's amazing how having "a plan" brings with it such a feeling of control. It's like stumbling on a well-worn trail when you've been lost for weeks in the woods.

But in order to keep my calm, I have to learn how to manage my chaos. I took cancer from an angry rolling boil down to a simmer by determining the who, what, when, where, why and how of my diagnosis. This not only gave me a path and a direction, but a sorely needed compass.

Once you figure it out, managing your cancer chaos gets much easier.

The who, of course, is your medical team — who will your surgeons and physicians be? Your life depends on your choice and their expertise; choose wisely. Make a list of every question you can think of (I found The 10 Best Questions for Surviving Breast Cancer, by Dede Bonner, M.D., to be very helpful).

Take someone with you to your appointment who is a great listener and note-taker, and afterward, listen to your gut instincts. Get more than one opinion if you feel unsure about anything. Remember, you know yourself and how you process things; this is NOT the time to shortchange yourself. Give yourself as much time as you need to think things through and talk things over with your trusted confidants. As my surgeon wisely said to me, "Your cancer has been growing for years. Waiting a few more weeks to make sure you are making the best decision for you will not make any difference at all in your treatment."

Ah, the what. Uncertainty is a killer of the soul — and cancer courts uncertainty with devilish and unbridled abandon. Waiting for results that reveal whether or not you have "The Big C" is excruciating and, honestly, the worst part of the whole dang process. 

Once you know what you have, you can proceed to the biggie, when — everything hinges on knowing when surgery will happen. Don't have any procedures you are not ready to have. Doctor's offices will work around your schedule. (See OPERATION WIG-OUT for more on that.)

Next up, where will surgery be? Once you know the hospital, you can start stringing all the missing medical pieces together and making sense of the cancer process. 

Last but not least (and forever shrouded in mystery) is the why and how did you get cancer? My friends, you will never know. But you'll still spend countless hours contemplating what you might have done differently. If only you had exercised more, eaten less, taken vitamins, lived in a less-polluted area, worked at a less-stressful job, had more fun, never used a cell phone, left a bad relationship sooner, started menstruating later, used a different antiperspirant, thought more positively, felt less negatively, meditated more, partied less, prayed more, worried less, slept more, feared less... blah, blah, blah. The list is, well, endless. 

If not getting cancer was as simple as not doing this or that (or even a combination of this or that), then the people that already aren't doing "this or that" wouldn't also have cancer! (And we would have a cure.)

As one who has swum in the wicked whirlpool of why, my advice to anyone struggling with a cancer diagnosis is simple. Save your energy for the positive things you can control. The entrance to crazy land lies just beyond the moment we are living in right now, so stay in this moment as much as possible. Oh, and make time for meltdowns.

Like a 12-Stepper, I have learned to dance with my cancer one day at a time. I make an effort not to get mentally ahead of myself. And in that small space, people, is where my peace resides.

What's next? Pre-op Road Trip!

DITCHING CONTROL

Handling any major life event requires some degree of compartmentalization. (Otherwise, how would we get anything else done?) Dealing with cancer is no different. 

I am by nature a "big picture" thinker. I tend to look not only at the details that comprise my life, but how the sum of those details become my world. And before BC, I would have bet money that this mode of thinking would have been my greatest asset in dealing with this illness. But post BC, I find the opposite to be true. 

If I spend too much time looking at the big picture these days, it creates way too much anxiety. I get all hyped up and worried and filled with fear, and my ability to think rationally marches right out the front door. It's better for me to stay deep within the forest — not looking for the trees so much as focusing on the veins in the leaves. I call this small-picture skillset my blinder mentality. I imagine myself as a race horse, saddled and ready to run, but with special rose-colored glasses that enable me to see just the matters at hand. The stuff I can control today, in this hour, in this minute. 

Because it is all about CONTROL. If cancer teaches anything — and its lessons are unending — it is the new truth that you are most certainly not in control. Here's how the phenomenon presents itself.

You are riding along on the magic carpet ride of life when suddenly the beautiful, fanciful rug that you weaved for yourself and your family, the rug you have loved dearly all your days, is pulled abruptly out from under you. You — family and all — fall quickly, and with a loud thud, to the ground. 

You help your family up first, because that is what you do. Then you figure out how to pick yourself up. You stumble and drag your sorry ass to the nearest chair. You look around but nothing is familiar anymore. Everything has changed: different colors, different smells, different people (who are all those men in white coats?). It's a completely different land. And you never asked for any of it.

You never wanted to move to the edge of the cliff. You don't care to know the generic names of half a dozen prescription meds. You have no desire to spend your day in a waiting room (or, worse, waiting for a pathology report). You just want your old life back, dammit. You want what you had before cancer: control. 

But that is the very thing breast cancer strips away from us. And even though we know it, BC makes sure we never forget that we most definitely do not have control. Never did. Never will. Duh. 

Unfortunately there's no way back to the world we were so comfortable in before (or at least the world we thought we were comfortable in). Cancer leaves us in chaos that will drive us absolutely, positively and 100% completely mad if we focus on it. And so we don't. We can't. That's what The Blinders are for. We pull 'um out, put 'um on ... and off to the races we go.

So rather than worry how many more weeks it will be until I can get in to see the master surgeon who will ultimately remove this cancer growing inside my breast and tell me whether it has (or has not) spread beyond the milk duct in which it has likely been growing for years and refer me to a plastic surgeon who will do his very best to put Humpty Dumpty back together again before he sends me off to see the Wizard of Oncology, I WILL drink a tall, cool glass of water, eat my pesticide-free tomatoes and lay down to take a nap. 

Because these days, in my new small-picture world, that is how I roll.

(See Intuition for more of the story.)