Daymare

What do you call a recurring nightmare that happens while you’re awake? Recurring daymare doesn’t sound right at all. Whatever it’s called, I’ve been having it. Guys, you may want to click on over to espn.com or continue searching for pics of Minka Kelly in a bikini because I’m fixin’ to talk about some lady stuff.

This blog has been my outlet for all things cancer-related: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Sadly, the latter two categories way outweigh the first in this trilogy, but that’s when you grit your teeth and plow right through it. There’s been much discussion on this blog about highly personal things, and lots of talk about boobs (sorry, guys; not the Minka Kelly type of talk). Such discussion is brutally honest and at times of the sort that makes people uncomfortable, but that’s how I roll. I could no more ignore the elephant in the room than root for the Yankees (dang, even the thought of that makes me sick to my stomach). I never learned how to sweep things under the rug or look the other way, and I’m not one bit sorry.

So, with the disclaimer out of the way, it’s on to the recurring daymare. Several times in the last few days I’ve had a moment of sheer panic when I think I’ve started my period. Not sheer panic in the sense of it’s gonna be a gusher and I’m in my white tennis skirt far, far away from any feminine hygiene products. No, this sheer panic is in the form of a stark realization that if I were to start my period again, after 17 months, that would signal the end of my chemically-induced menopause.

And that would be bad. Very bad.

Not that I love menopause, not by a long shot. I especially do not love menopause at the age of 42. Going through the ‘pause a decade early is cruel and unusual on many fronts: it’s yet another reminder of having been diagnosed with a potentially deadly disease while my kids were still in grade school; it sucks to be enduring it years before my peers; and it forces me to face all the unpleasantries of how breast cancer can destroy one’s self-confidence and body image at a time in which one should be living large in the prime of one’s life, to name of few.

But menopause for me means that the hormone suppression — which comes at quite a cost — is working. It means that the hormones that fueled my cancer are gone. There one day, gone the next. Hormone suppression causes me a litany of problems, but it means instant famine for my cancer.

If I were to start my period, it would be a red flag (pun intended) that my ovaries were pumping out the hormones that cause a technically-she-should-still-be-fertile woman to start her cycle. And while I’d love to return to that carefree time in which my ovaries pumped out whatever hormones necessary to keep me from being the withered husk of a woman that cancer tries to make me, it would be very bad news. I’m already on the short list at my doctors’ offices (plural) for being a troublemaker. The last thing I need is to ring my onco-crush, as Trevor calls him, to say, “Guess what? The ‘take one pill daily for five years’ Tamoxifen and the quarterly shots of Lupron aren’t working anymore.” I think that sweet man might have a heart attack. And I’d never hear the end of it from Dr S, who not-so-secretly thinks I invent symptoms to have a reason to go see my onco-crush, all the while shaking his head and muttering about what anyone could possibly see in a young, handsome, fit Peruvian doctor when there’s a much-older, much wiser plastic surgeon to adore.

This latest daymare is a perfect example of the PTSD that cancer patients endure. I imagine there are some cancer patients out there in this big, wide world who finish treatment and declare that chapter of their life closed, never to be stressed over or fretted upon again. I’m clearly not one of them. I hear tell that one day, this nasty cancer business won’t be in my forethoughts all the time but will be demoted to a back-burner status. I’m not there yet, but I’m hopeful. For now, though, the thoughts are there, and the fears are many. Things that used to scare me don’t scare me anymore (namely needles, but having been poked so many times I’m over it. In fact, I gave myself a shot the other day, like it was a normal, everyday event) but things I never knew were scary now scare the fool outta me. If that makes any sense.

The other day I was chatting with a friend in the parking lot in the brutal and ongoing Texas sun, and suddenly I felt something that flipped the switch from “I’m a normal person having a normal, non-cancer-related conversation with a friend” to full-blown panic, just like that. The feeling? Something wet was collecting, not quite pooling but definitely collecting, under my newly constructed right breast, site of the infection of the year that turned an average bilateral mastectomy recovery into a shitstorm, for lack of a better word.

I went on with my normal, not-cancer-related conversation, hopefully as if nothing was wrong, but was seriously panicked inside. Visions of hospital beds filled my head; the hospital smell that I dread more than words can say infiltrated my nose; and I could almost feel the 20-gauge needle puncturing my skin to access my port so the army of big-gun antibiotics could get in and fight the enemy. In my mind, I had been admitted and diagnosed with a recurrence of that damned infection within the span of a couple of heartbeats. In reality, it was a simple bead of sweat.

Ahh, yes, a simple bead of sweat. Such a common character in the land of perpetual sun, magnified a few million times by standing on a blacktop surface. A simple, everyday occurrence in the life of millions of Texans and citizens of other hot (but not as awesome) states in this fine country. One little bead of sweat that most people don’t even notice had the power to instantly transport me back to the hell that is included, free of charge, with a post-mastectomy infection.

Somebody wake me from this daymare.