Cancer Fatigue | after five years
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I am so sick of talking about breast cancer.
In fact, Grandmother Willow and I recently had a fifty minute-ish chat about it as I crawled all over my psyche looking for clues to my blues. This little Suzy Sunshine was très dissatisfied with her last months of little black rain cloud funkity funk and darn it, I told her, I needed to find the source of my gloomy river and fix it pronto. I speculated, as I have during several recent chats that the business of tiptoeing around the mine field that is cancer while writing this blog has had a little something to do with my sad state of affairs. Maybe even a big little something to do with it.
A minefield indeed; a desolate battleground from a long ago war. A place where still, even years later, I must tread carefully as mines are left that have yet to be detonated. Shards of shrapnel remain, ready to slice into my still tender skin as I wander through, and the remains of what was lost still litter the ground creating sometimes massive obstacles to my progress. A land where I occasionally find a bullet in the soil; a tiny yet lethal missile that missed its mark many years ago, which in my hand weighs heavier than I would speculate of its tiny mass, as I mentally gauge the potential it carried as it was fired in my path all those years ago.
I spend most of my days in my professional life seeing and talking about very ugly things; cesspool of human failure things. Over the last 20 or so years in working with abused wee ones, I have learned a little about the cost of caring, the cost of going over and over traumatic events and quite awful things. Compassion fatigue has often been an unwanted traveling companion in my life. It takes a toll on your psyche to care and listen, and it is the high internal price you pay for dealing with highly emotional traumatic events of others over a long period of time.
Like with the artist formerly known as Prince, PTSD is the reaction formerly known as Battle Fatigue, (the cost of dealing with your own highly emotional traumatic events over a long period of time.) And you know what? Cancer is a long ass battle for sure, its got physical and mental staying power. The endgame (that is really the never-ending game) is that dealing with cancer and thinking about cancer and worrying about cancer is freaking exhausting. Revisiting the war zone that is and was cancer, even years later, is exhausting.
I my friends, have cancer fatigue. Cancer has done wore me out.
Because even after five years, there are still bombs that have yet to detonate and that scares me. Daily, I find a bullet in the soil and pick it up and realize how close it came to taking me down; while that act of holding the bullet in hand is in itself is frightening, more terrifying is the realization that there may still be bullets in the gun.
As I write this blog, I realize that I have been anxiously and cautiously tiptoeing along, carefully calculating each step and holding my breath even as I sleep. I’m feeling physically exhausted and mentally fatigued by the constant mindfulness to cancer, from the perpetual heaviness of the armor I attempt to don as I write, and by the tiny yet constant effort needed in the hunch up of my shoulders as I tread.
Years ago, when I got fired for having chemo brain and then opened my own practice I found, as cliché as it sounds, a gift in it (I mean besides not having to work with really dysfunctional people anymore.) I made my own schedule, and likely worked 100 more hours a week but all the sudden one day I realized that my 20 years of amassed compassion fatigue had virtually disappeared.
Now, statistics people could find all kinds of confounds in the causal nature of this phenomenon in my life, such as I was so focused on cancer that work ick seemed small next to it, or it was because I had a break from all the yuck during treatment. But because I know me better than anyone knows me, I will tell you my theory. In owning my practice, I can schedule cases as I like. I can review quite ugly photographs when I am ready and I can say no to the task when I am not ready. I can set boundaries about when and where and how I talk about the sometimes very violent/graphic details of sexual and physical abuse. I can set the pace of cases I see, and take breaks as needed (although I find I don’t need as many breaks as I thought I would.)
The compassion fatigue evaporated as the trauma was more in my control. Work and trauma no longer controlled me; I controlled it. I could control the ebb and flow of kids and cases, and set boundaries about not talking about child abuse in the walls of my house or on weekends or at cocktail parties for that matter (and not look like a bad/rude/chemo brain employee for doing so.)
When I first got sick, my oh so wonderful Pop and bestest friend MJ called me at least once, if not twice, if not three times a day through diagnosis and in those early weeks of the crazy firehose of test results and treatment plans. Cancer was coming at me from all angles, as you all know it does when diagnosis is fresh, and tests and results are being done, and war strategy is being made. I talked cancer, and ate cancer, and I slept cancer, and like poor Jan Brady lamented with sister Marcia, “Cancer Cancer Cancer,” was all I heard.
One day I just got to where I wanted to talk about something else, anything else, but cancer. Heck, discussing toenail fungus or dead pets would have been infinitely better than talking about cancer at that point. I had to set the limit and say, “Look, I want to take a week off of talking about cancer okay? Let’s take a break and talk about something else, anything else for a while when you call.” And because they are good people they did just that, and it helped. A lot.
The moral of the story here is that sometimes you just have to take control and set a boundary with cancer, even after five years. Sometimes, you have to place a moratorium on cancerspeak, and that goes for you, the people around you and for that neurotic little voice in your head.
One of my girlfriends told me that right after she was diagnosed and just before chemo started, she and her 12-year-old daughter (with her onc’s blessing) took a long before cancer came a knockin’ planned trip to Greece. My girlfriend really has the coolest kid; I adore that little cutie pie for her effervescent and eccentric grooviness. Don’t you know that girl took a piece of paper and wrote “CANCER” on it, put it in a box and placed it on the mantle in the house. As they left for the airport, this cool kid was pulling the front door shut and she turned back and said to the box, “Cancer, you are too heavy to carry all over Greece. We know you will be here when we get back and we will be ready for you.”
After five years, it is sometimes still all about cancer. Some months it’s worse than others (if you get my potentially ungrateful sounding drift.) So for the rest of this week, I am declaring a moratorium on cancer. I am instead painting my toenails a delightful shade of robin’s egg blue and with my sweet daughter, I am boarding a plane to Disneyworld.
And with that I will say, “Cancer, you are too heavy to carry all over Disneyworld…even in an elephant that can fly.”
But seeing things you know that ain’t, can certainly give you an awful fright
Chase ’em away! Chase ’em away!
I’m afraid, need your aid
Pink Elephants on Parade~ Disney’s Dumbo
Tags ambigous loss and cancer, breast cancer, breast cancer humor, emotional support inspiration, grief and loss in breast cancer, psychological impact of breast cancer
YOU ARE GOING TO DISNEYWORLD!!! I love Disneyworld. I want to draw swirly hearts and unicorns all over this comment right now.
I am already having moments when I think that I’d like to just drop all of the talk and set up camp by the pyramids and pretend I’ve never heard of stuff before. But, for reals, I’d totally rather go to Disneyland.
I love disney too, and I’d rather talk about its a small world any day…
You’re so right — he idea of there still being bullets in the gun is way scary. Let’s talk about toenail fungus now, k?
Gosh, I can really identify with this post..but am unable to express it as eloquently as you – thanks for being such a great writer!
Thanks, I think we all can, those that bury themselves in BC even after it is gone….
[…] a post which I know many of you will identify with, Lauren is discussing cancer fatigue, not the physical kind, but the “I am sick of thinking and talking and being surrounded by […]
thank You marie, I was away so am just getting to respond to this!