Crappy Birthday!

Yes, it’s my birthday!  Or, well, it was when I was going to write this.  I fell asleep.  Sounds like I had a rawkin day, doesn’t it?

Well, truth?

Yeah, not so much.
How’d ya guess?

It’s not that anything bad happened or that I didn’t do anything special.  It was just a tough day.  Another in a string of tough days.  Birthdays don’t always override the sad.  It’s going to be there.  Celebration or not.

So what is the sad about?
Well?
I’m not entirely sure.  I have some thoughts, but I don’t know if that’s what it really is or if that’s all of it or if it’s a “duh, of course that’s it” so that’s why I woke up at 12:30 in the morning to write this. (And 12:30 am the next morning to finish)

My birthday was actually OK.  It wasn’t anything crazy but I didn’t want anything because I had the ginormous blowout last year.  I’m still recovering from that craziness!  I just wanted to hang out and have a low-key day.  And I did.  Kinda.  Nalani was home from school today, so we did some stuff together.  Watched The Dog Wisperer and painted.  We had fun.  I got to go to my art class and we all shared our sadness. It seems to be going around. But I’ll get to that.
MJ and I ate diner, picked up the dog from the groomer, watched the olympics and fell asleep on the couch.  WHoo Hoo!  Do we know how to throw down or what?

So back to the sad thing…

We have time to share about how were feeling in my art therapy group every week.  The “therapy” portion of the group.  As we shared I realized that Ann’s death (Janie) hit me harder than I realized. I also have a friend from high school who has stage IV breast cancer who got some bad news this week.  It was so hard to hear.

After talking in group, I realized I’ve been starting to feel down the last couple of weeks.  Just a sort of blah.
I have been starting to have more pain again and had to go back up in dose of my pain meds.  I wasn’t very happy about that and figured it has a little to do with the blues.
I’ve also noticed my recovery time from chemo is getting longer and longer and it’s been hitting me harder and harder.  It’s super frustrating.  Makes it hard to plan anything because I’m not exactly sure how I’m going to feel.  I don’t mind sucking it up and doing stuff even though I feel like crap, but I can only take so much.
And I think feeling that way made me take a quick look at the fact that eventually a day will come for me when I can’t do it anymore.  When I will fail.  I’ve never really had those thoughts before and they are the saddest, scariest thoughts I think you can have.

I think there are two other big reasons for my blues too.  I have a new scan coming up and it’s on March 4th, the second anniversary of my surgery.  TWO YEARS ALREADY.  That totally freaks me out.  When you are a person with limited time, you’d like to think it would go by at a little more of a leisurely pace.  It’s terrifying to think about how quickly that went.  In cancer world everything is measured by “the five-year survival rate”  Statistics are evil little bastards and even though I don’t believe them, I know what mine are and they creep up on me sometimes just to scare the shit out of me.

I’m not super worried about the scan but I’m not thrilled to be getting it.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to tell us that I’m either stable or I’ve had slight growth.  Based on the new pain I’m having I’m doubtful that it’s going to show shrinkage.  I am hopeful that there isn’t any new spread.  I try to hang on to that thought.

I saw this picture on a website the other day and I thought, I have been riding the cancer roller coaster and some days I just want off!  But when I looked at this picture, the girl laughing caught my eye.  Even more than the hilarious face on that boy.  When I saw the laughing girl I realized that a roller coaster doesn’t always have to be scary.  It can be fun.   I don’t talk about it much because it’s such a personal journey, but I will say that I see God as my lap bar, so I can throw my hands up in the air and laugh and laugh as the dips and turns come and go.  Much easier said than done, but it’s got to be better than screaming and crying in fear.