NOVEMBER 26 — I asked my oncologist if it was normal, the weakness and stiffness I felt, the aching of my joints and how hard it still is to move.
“It’s the side-effects of your medication,” she said as she looked at me, with what I think was pity.
“You’re in menopause now.”
Then she prescribed me a small mountain of supplements.
She’d asked if I wanted painkillers and I was very insistent about refusing them.
In a tiny drawer I keep a stash of the “good” painkillers, the ones I will only reach for if things have gone badly enough that I cannot go a conscious moment without being bothered by pain.
Sometimes I forget where I keep it, which is fine because I have zero intention of taking them because I know too many people who rely on them in a way that scares me.
Even in the hospital post-surgery the nurse had to hand me my paracetamol before I would eat it; that’s how averse I am to pain remedies.
I think going to Bangkok was necessary — it was a dropkick right out of my comfort zone, a big score card on my current state of being.
My grades? An A in looking like I’m not sick, a solid F in actually being able to walk in any way other than little-old-lady-shuffle.
To stand upright I need to brace my core or my shoulders and head will fall forward, and I know if I succumb to that I might never walk properly upright again.
The recent cold spell hasn’t helped.
I wake up with my fingers feeling like ice and my borked left shoulder blade still won’t let me unzip or unbuckle anything behind me, which, if you’re a woman, you will understand why I’m so annoyed.
As I’m writing this I just came back from a 10-minute walk to the mall near the LRT station closest to my house.
I bribed myself into going by thinking of the fried chicken I was going to eat, even though I was tired from another long afternoon at HKL.
While I think my mind has gotten a lot better I realise now that I might also be deluding myself.
At times my brain just goes on the fritz in the late afternoon, usually after 3pm, the only noises in my head like distant train whistles, rumbling and far away.
There are moments I do not remember, days I do not recall — I stare at my journal and look at certain dates and cannot, for the life of me, remember what I did on those days.
I get it, really, why the women in the cancer forums I see online can seem so sad because it feels like recovery hovers in the distance, in sight and yet somehow, unattainable.
There’s a saying (incorrectly attributed to Confucius) that we all have two lives, and that the second one begins when you realise you really only have one.
Donald Glover recalled that saying when he announced that he’d recently had a stroke, while also discovering a hole in his heart.
I’ve also been reading Tatiana Schlossberg’s story in the New Yorker about her terminal cancer.
Cancer or chronic illness will find you, young or old, thin or fat, rich or poor, healthy or already sick — it’s a devastating spin of wellness roulette that our cells spin every day.
As I near the one-year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis, with four more rounds of immunotherapy and an echocardiogram to go, I marvel how far I’ve come even as I still falter sometimes, with my steps, words and deeds.
Life is made to be lived and I will do my best, even if sometimes it’s so very hard to do.
