Perpetually Healing

For me, side effects are just that, to the side of it all. Brain cancer wrecked my body. From night one in the ICU until I was transferred to inpatient rehab 7 weeks later, everything from daily hygiene, dressing, eating, were all done for me. And the next 7 weeks in rehab only reduced those things marginally. Safe to say, after close to 5 months of being stripped from a free 20 year old to the mute equivalent of a toddler, was a dehumanizing change. I wanted nothing more than to regain some semblance of independence. Relearning how to simply put on a sock, early in my time in rehab, was intoxicating enough that I put a lot of my success during that time on that pivotal moment, but this came at a cost.

From first hand experience, a whole body physical transformation takes a blinding share of commitment and focus, all of it, and rehab, if nothing else, taught me better strategies, yet I was still missing the forest for the trees, because I was so focused on each individual step, each small win, and each visible change, that I never stepped back to see the bigger picture. The trees seemed large for years, but the lurking forest reared its ugly head and ripped off my blinders. One bout of cancer opened a pit in my life I thought I was refilling, but it turns out I was using quicksand, unknowingly burying the very things I would be pulled back to face. See, I would push myself, take chances, and retry tasks over and over again. When I finally made visible progress, I immediately wanted to keep learning further. Everything I tied my success to was my visible, macro level changes. This went on for years, and I’m not saying it was an entirely bad thing, after all it did lead me to lose 16 pant sizes, have a job, and to meet some of the most impactful and supportive people in my life, but I was treating myself like I was solving a puzzle. Everyone knows you establish the outside first, then the inside goes together better, everything has a specific place. I had made impressive progress on the outside, but when it came to the inside, nothing seemed to align.

Over 5 years in remission, the day in, day out grinding only on my visible side effects led me down the wrong path for real restoration. My blinders were hiding the more important, yet totally undeveloped skills. The side effects that needed to be treated more like a painting, perfectly imperfect, fluid, open to interpretation, and creating a sort of balance without needing it a certain way. I was totally out of balance, but I didn’t see it that way. I just pushed away what I didn’t recognize, and kept getting dopamine hits from striving for external success. Almost as troubling as my initial diagnosis was the realization, all this time later, I was still broken.

I never saw the stress and anxiety about what I would face everyday as a side effect. Every single day, as soon as I wake up, I have to be on guard of sorts, being aware of my surroundings at all times to avoid an issue with my walker navigating a very non ADA world. Frequent motor control issues in the kitchen or at work, dropping or breaking things. My least favorite, the ignorant, begrudgingly innocent stares from strangers in public. When daily life always had me mentally anticipating what inconvenient things would be next, everything outside is the problem, but the build up of internal worries is ignored and will topple eventually. I was used to actually falling, but totally unprepared for the mountain of stress to have an earthquake.

The aftershocks cancer dealt me devastated my already fragile foundation even more. Admitting that I have, and deal with, mental health issues as a side effect has been freeing in a way, after living in ignorance for years, but knew how to build goodwill, the change brought out a balancing act my life needed. It shouldn’t have taken silent sobbing, blinding unwillingness to change what worked, and years of repressed stresses to address the other effects, but I’m doing what I can to make the best of a shitty situation. Even though I have adjusted meds, practiced multitudes of mitigating techniques, and learned to live in a more balanced way, I have to mind my limits. My sole focus at first was so different, and I rode that to unimaginable heights. At the same time, my body was functioning semi properly again, but the thing controlling it still relied on his fingers to tell left and right. When it came to squats or curls, I was experienced, but thinking about a choice for dinner seemed confusing and upset me. I’ll always be broken became a toxic mantra, one I deemed innocent enough, for I had made unfathomable see progress in the face of it, right? Eventually that became a sort of truth to me, everything goes wrong, deal with it, and I did, until I couldn’t.

I don’t know about you, but washing the dishes can be enjoyable. Something about the routine, visible, dirty-to-clean process that is satisfying. It’s become a bit meditative for me, not at first though. Like learning to walk, there were many mishaps and mistakes. My mom bought a whole new set of glass cups, 4 coffee pots, two fiesta plates, a ceramic bread pan, I could list them all. Just like I have heel, arch, ball hammered into my subconscious after taking feeble steps. You see, the repetition- the good and the bad -permanently instilled these vital blueprints I learned. I feel like at my core I embody them. I have to in order to live again. I need to walk, I need to cook, and eat. But I learned that I don’t have to be the metaphorical drill sergeant whenever I missed a step, messing up the process. The side effect hurting me the most was being fueled by my ignorance. 7 years removed from cancer, and this unstable mindset was established early. I didn’t learn how to deal with all the effects immediately. I really only learned I had them a couple of years ago. No longer living in ignorance. I full-throatedly acknowledge I have more issues than meets the eye, but I don’t and won’t live in silence about them anymore!