| It was a long hard weekend. I was at my bleakest and most craziness trying to come to grips with this thing. It hit me like a ton of bricks, as the saying goes. My skin crawled, my head hurt, and my sense of stability went hoof's up. All the time I was sitting quietly at my computer or lying in bed watching TV, these waves of despondency rushed over me. No one could really tell how frenetically racing my thoughts were until the tears started dropping. They dropped a lot. But there were moments of wonderful hilarity. I could tell Bill was stressing although he said he wasn't. He went into high class clown mode. Thank heaven for him that he does although it can be a little annoying at times. I can't think of one witty thing he said now, darnit, but they were really good.
I do remember one of them but it was said by me, not him. It involved a little ceramic cow I have sitting on a shelf in the kitchen. It was lying on its side by its companion cow. Bill looked up there and said something about if I was going to keel over like that little cow up there. I replied that, "Yeh, I might go hoof up." I never know when I say something inane like that if it will send him into spasms of laughter. I never expect it to but this was one of them. We had fun with that one the rest of the day. I like crying. And laughing. They are both great healing moments. I knew that most my crying was because I was feeling sorry for myself. But, dammit, I had good cause this time. The other part of the crying was to relieve the stress. Although I like crying, I thought it would never stop. Sunday was even worse than Saturday. It was like it had built up steam. I have to admit that it had been fueled by all the words of good wishes I was receiving every hour from people, mostly from this online group I am on. I was awed and moved by the response. So much so that it was overwhelming. Then I had a visitor. It was Eunice from the UU church that Amy and Todd go to. I know Eunice pretty well. She came by directly from church because she had heard that I was having surgery for breast cancer and how shocked she was to hear it but wanted to offer any help she could give. Seems my drum group leader, Pete, had lit a candle of sorrow for me during the service. I was so touched to hear that. When I had told him on Friday about me, he looked like all the air had been sucked out of him. Before I heard for sure it was cancer, I kept saying to myself, "It's just another thing to deal with, another disease or disorder that chose me. No big deal. Deal with it, move on." But when the word cancer was uttered officially, yes, it did get under my skin. And it gets under everyone's skin when they hear that someone they care about has it. The reaction was all the same. A look of despair on their faces, a bowing down of the head, sinking back into their chairs, or if they were standing, the need to sit down. They are in great empathy for you but it seems to go much deeper than that. I felt like they were seeing the end of my life and then I saw it, too. That had the most impact on my emotions, seeing their reaction. I didn't want to focus on the tragedy of it, I just wanted to move on. But here it was tragically in front of me being played out on their features. Then they didn't know what to say, knowing whatever they said would be not be enough. And lastly, there came the offer of support, the spreading of good wishes, the emotional hug. Some had tears. All said it was going to be okay, I was going to conquer this. I was overcome with how much anguish it caused others. What got me through the weekend was all the e-mails I wrote to my best friends Lizzy and Mel. One lives in Florida, the other in Montreal. We all met on The Sims' Yahoo group quite a few years ago. We have also met several times in real life. They are officially my new sisters. I poured out all my concernss and emotions to them over those two days. It really helped to calm me down by Sunday evening. Made me realize that I was projecting way too much. They listened to my stream of consciousness and replied to it all. They are true friends. Come Monday morning after I woke up and was sitting at the dining room table, I realized how much calmer and refreshed I felt. I felt amost like I did before I learned I had cancer. Then I counted back how many days had passed since I had gotten the dreaded news and realized it had been three days. Ah, yes, the usual 3 day rule that is a trademark of my life. It takes me three days to get over things. Three days to process a change. That has held true all my life and here it worked again. I thought it might take longer this time since this was the most damaging news I had ever had but, thankfully, the process came right on time. The initial shock had processed. Whew. Now for round two. |