There are good weeks and there are bad weeks…and then there are weeks that you’re kind of managing and getting by, but know that your stressors will still be there for a while.
Last week was one of those for me. On the bright side, such days are a perfect time to practice stress management techniques. Notice the ups and downs. Ride them like waves, understanding that they will peak and ebb in a cyclical manner and eventually wash up on shore. All of this can lead to personal growth, even though we might not have wanted such a lesson in the first place.
At the same time, you might be thinking, “Thanks, but I’d like to pass on the personal growth for now.” In that case, maybe what you need is a short video of a snail doing something that seems impossible.
Here’s a little clip a friend brought to my attention that provides “don’t give up” inspiration for those times when you are waaay out of your comfort zone and will be having to pull yourself along for some time to come.
Hope you get as much inspiration out of this little guy as I did. Enjoy!
When ya gotta keep going, streeeeeeeetch…and then stretch some more.
In honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I decided to try an “Ask Me Anything” stream on a streaming platform called Twitch.
Twitch is primarily a game streaming platform although there are also art streams, animal streams, science streams and a variety of other worthwhile (and some not-so-worthwhile) streams.
I’ve streamed video games there before—because after cancer, playing horror games in virtual reality is not as scary—so I was familiar with the workings. Additionally, with progressively more younger women getting diagnosed with breast cancer, I felt that it was appropriate to reach out to a younger community.
I wanted to give people a chance to ask questions about the breast cancer experience that they might not feel comfortable asking someone they know who has the disease. This was based on my own experience decades ago; a fellow student was diagnosed, and suddenly I wasn’t sure how to talk to her. I didn’t want to say the “wrong” thing, afraid that I might upset her or otherwise “remind” her about her cancer, as if she had forgotten.
All this was, of course, ridiculous, because she herself was very open about the disease and talked about it to us freely. She’d let us know how it was going, sometimes came to class wearing only a hat on her bald head, never showing any indication that speaking about cancer made her uncomfortable.
The issue wasn’t my friend, it was me, and I honestly didn’t give her as much support as I could have. I probably looked like I was pulling away but the reality was that I just didn’t know how to speak to her for fear of hurting her.
I’m here to answer all those questions that people don’t feel comfortable asking…but want to know the answer to. (Photo by 愚木混株 cdd20 on Unsplash)
There were questions that I could have engaged her with like, “how sick do you get from chemotherapy”, “what does your treatment plan look like”, “what type of breast cancer do you have”, “what are you looking forward to most when you’re done?”
Additionally, I wondered about things like, “what is the survival rate for your cancer”, that I would have never asked her for fear of really being inappropriate. But I was still curious (keep in mind, this was prior to widespread usage of the World Wide Web/Internet, so I couldn’t google the info).
All of those questions are the ones that I wanted to be available to answer on my stream. If you’ve been reading my blog posts, you probably know a lot about my own situation. I’m not shy about sharing.
But a person with a co-worker who was recently diagnosed, like my younger self, might not want to ask them.
So, I gave the Q&A session a try…to a whopping zero viewers. And that was okay because I wasn’t sure how it would go. I talked almost non-stop about what my breast cancer experience was like. It was cathartic to be sure and I was surprised that I was able to speak for as long as I did. Eventually, my throat started to hurt (water? I’m supposed to drink water?) and I called it a day.
It was also a touch out of my comfort zone. I feel like I need to do something useful with my life and I’m running out of time. This stream is one way to shake myself up at the age of 58 and get used to taking risks again. Ouch.
Just for kicks, I’ll be posting the unedited video that I created from the Q&A session although I admit, it took a bit for me to get going so it’s very stream-of-consciousness. I’m still in the process of uploading it, but will post it once that’s all done.
I’m tentatively planning to do this again next Saturday morning at ~9am PDT, assuming my voice recovers by then. If you’re interested it taking a look, you will be able to access the stream here: https://www.twitch.tv/franticshanti.
My last post (I Didn’t Expect THAT: So.Many.Pills) was about the overwhelming number of medications associated with cancer treatment, particularly for someone not used to taking pills. But this topic deserves a closer look…
If I had to choose one of the most frightening aspects of cancer treatment, it would be side effects. This is not like popping an aspirin for a headache. These are medications that can take a heavy toll. One of my greatest sources of anxiety was deciding whether to take a pill or try to “tough it out”.
After surgery, I was given a generic form of something approximating Norco. Some people jokingly commented that this was a “perk” of treatment, but I had read the insert that came with the medication and wanted nothing to do with it. The only reason that I took it (a single half dose) was that by the evening I had a horrible headache, more painful than anything at the surgery site and probably due to a combination of the anesthesia and not being able to drink coffee that morning.
Just…no.
It was a miserable night, since the half dose didn’t do much and I tossed in bed, googling interactions between my pill and ibuprofin, which is what I really wanted to take but hadn’t due to potential bleeding issues. At about 5am, satisfied that enough time had passed from my half dose of pain reliever, I took the ibuprofin and finally got some sleep. Wish I’d taken it first instead of the “oooo-you’re-so-lucky” Norco.
Nausea from chemo was another terrifying thought. The nurses had warned me not to risk it; if I started to feel queasy, take anti-nausea meds. Once vomiting sets in, I was told, it was hard to stop. Of course, the side effects associated with the meds were rather extensive and just reading the label made me anxious. There were two different meds and the idea was this: take the first one (ondonsetron) and then if I need a booster in four hours, take the second one (prochlorperazine). And then alternate like that every four hours, if necessary.
Sounds reasonable, except that a couple of nights after my first infusion I mixed up the pills and ended up taking prochlorperazine first. Prochlorperazine is an anti-psychotic (I guess, with anti-nausea properties?) and it was responsible for one of the roughest nights of my life. It was that night that I swore I’d pierced the veil between this world and the next and decided that death was a fair alternative to what I was feeling.
Somehow, I survived those first nights, but I wasn’t keen to go through that again.
Not a perfect solution, but better than the alternatives.
I live in a state that has legalized cannabis, and was sent a shipment of CBD cookies by one of my brothers who had used them to control nausea from migraines. I was encouraged to try them since I was told CBD didn’t have side effects. Of course, as I mentioned in the previous post, it also didn’t have clear dosing guidelines. I mean, this was a crumbly cookie – how do you dose that? My brother said something like, “I take a couple when I get a migraine.” My brother is also 6’3″. I figured I’d start with one.
Shortly after that, I fell into a weird sleep from which, an hour later, I woke with a gasp because I thought I’d stopped breathing. Mmmm, probably not the right dose for me. Four hours after I’d consumed the cookie I needed to pick up my son from school. I wasn’t high, of course, but I wasn’t feeling normal either. I made it there and back alive. It was at that point that I realized having to play mom while going through cancer treatment just plain sucked, but I digress…
Eventually I worked out a dose, about 1/5 to 1/4 of a cookie, which was 20-25 mg of CBD. This was a game-changer for me and I gratefully relied on CBD for the remainder of my treatment. Yes, I truly disliked the taste, and with the lining of my GI tract gone, eating a cookie was not first on my list but being able to calm my nausea without side effects was well worth it. It probably helped my anxiety too.
What it would have been like to go through treatment without being so fearful of what the medications were doing to me? Anxiety always got the best of me. As noted in my last post, getting to the point where I could limit the number of medications I took was key in helping me get through this experience.
While the physical effects were rough, the psychological effects were what magnified the discomfort, and that had to do with feeling so far out of my element. None of this was close to normal. Of course, my normal is not needing medications. That wasn’t happening with cancer, but once I figured out what was what and how much I could handle, treatment became more manageable.
Frantic Shanti 