Fast facts (if you don’t have time to read the full post): Last Monday I met with my oncologist and signed all the paperwork to start oral chemo. I took my first dose Tuesday morning. Since then things have been rough. Combine my side effects with seasonal PTSD of what occurred this time last year and you have a very physically and emotionally tired cancer patient.

TO THE LONG VERSION!

Oral chemo sucks. It just sucks. The first and biggest way it sucks is I literally gag every time I put those dusty olive green pills in my mouth: once at 8 am and again at 8 pm. I have been told in more ways than one that it is very important that I take my doses consistently, no more and no less than what is instructed to achieve desired results. I like results and I like structure. Next!

The second big way it sucks is it literally illicits a strong emotional response from me every time I need to take them. On the first day I hated what it represented: a return to poisoning myself. Granted, I am poisoning myself in other ways already but chemotherapy just hits differently. It was like going to chemo infusions all over again except this time I don’t get free cheese or get to be held by my emotional support humans or nurses. I cried for several minutes while holding the pill bottle. Here I was, a year out from diagnosis and I still have another year of hard shit to endure. It is all hard and the levels of difficulty vary in physical to emotional and psychological form. Lynparza is mostly psychological with a side of physical. I’ve learned to deal with my body’s responses to poison but I am still trying to get over how psychologically I have been fucked by this whole process.

After crying, I threw the pills back and chugged water as fast as I could. The green pills are two of the five I take every morning. Nothing says “rise and shine” quite like a medical routine. I didn’t feel much the first couple of days. No side effects. No surprise diarrhea attacks. (I was very prepared for surprise poops.) I thought maybe I would be a rare specimen and get to blissfully enjoy taking scary pills with no repercussions but fuck I was wrong.

I think my cells finally figured out what is going on and they are not happy. Friday the mild bouts of nausea hit along with a weird sore throat and a cough that reminds me of the lingering cough you have a few weeks post-COVID. Oh and fatigue. The fatigue sucks so hard. The paperwork says “Rest whenever you need it” as the cure for that side effect which is funny to me. Practical advice but impractical when it is 11:30 am on a Thursday at work and I want to nap at my desk. Simple activities easily trigger fatigue like washing dishes or standing for too long. I was also advised to sleep 7-8 hours per night. Again, great advice but that means going to bed at like 8:30 pm so I can wake up with enough time to exercise and do my morning routine. Exercise and drinking lots of water are also other ways to mitigate side effects. Simple enough. But what happens when none of those things work? And you are just dysfunctional? And your body screams at you that it gives up?

I don’t know how I am going to survive the next year as a functioning human. Insert rant about capitalism and healthcare here.

Long story short I am not a fan of oral chemo. It is triggering and makes my throat hurt and I feel like I am back to being a pile of sludge. I have 359 days left of this misery. The things I do to survive, am I right?

I had high hopes last week of recounting several cancer milestones that led me to my official diagnosis, but the fatigue set in and I became useless. After Discovery Day on February 11, I had an ultrasound and a surprise mammogram followed by a biopsy on February 18. In a nutshell, those were emotionally challenging days. Knowing what I know now, I should have known it was cancer when the ultrasound tech moved her little wand down to my arm pit and said, “Did you know you have a lump here as well?” BIG CUE. Lumps on lymph nodes in the presence of a lump in your breast is a big fat red flag. And here we are, the eve of my cancerversary and I am emotionally scrambled. I am happy I am alive, still fucking pissed about the whole thing, and I really miss my boobs.

I bought myself a cake for my cancerversary that read “Happy Cancerversary” and my friend asked me why I would want to celebrate such a dark day. Fair question.

I can only speak for myself, an AYA and stage IV thriver, but I celebrate this milestone because there are many of us who do not survive cancer and surviving is more than doing the treatment and being done. It is my death date and my birth date. From the minutes and seconds of the last year I thought I would not survive to the long stretches of time that melted together to form a day, a month, and even the past year, I made it. A single phone call was the catalyst of a journey nobody can ever imagine. I celebrate survivorship in honor of myself and all of those who do not get to celebrate. I will never take for granted life and the power tiny invisible cells have in changing the courses we are all on.

We took a few photos of me with my cake to commemorate the occasion. She cooked me shrimp primavera and we ate dinner with her family. It was intimate and warm and nourishing to my soul. In my head I thought this occasion would be a loud party surrounded by loved ones, but instead it was an opportunity for me to just simply acknowledge this moment in my life and reflect on what this new ritual actually means to me. Sometimes I get too focused on sharing everything with everyone else that I forget who I am in that equation. A cancerversary is for me. Everyone else is a bonus.

I feel like this blog post was not very strong and that I literally rambled. My writing powers are not great today. My brain isn’t working and I had a hard time centering my thoughts. Too many tabs open and I am emotionally numb about tomorrow. Whooops. I will try again tomorrow.

Today’s song lyrics of the day are brought to you by Romy and Fred Again…

“You’ve been so strong for so long
You learned to carry this on your own
Let me be someone
You can lean on

I’m right here, I’m right here
I’m right here

You don’t have to be so strong”

– Strong, Romy, Fred Again…