My apologies for ghosting y’all the past few weeks. I think it just shows where I am in this journey called Cancer. My last post was about the monotony of this next phase after I got to ring the gong signaling the end of treatment. It has for sure been monotonous. But in the past couple of weeks the slow weight of depression has also crept in. Being a mental health counselor, I know all about depression…how insidious it can be. It’s like that analogy about how to boil a frog… you put the frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat. By the time the frog realizes it’s too hot, it’s too late. I think that is the best way to describe my head lately. This phase of my cancer journey went from monotonous to depressive. I’m not writing any of this to gain sympathy…in fact it’s the opposite. I really debated writing about my depression. But then I thought, what about what I tell my clients all the time… “it’s not your fault, there is nothing to be ashamed of, it doesn’t mean you are weak.” Well I needed to remember that myself. My faith in God is very strong, but that doesn’t mean I’m immune to thoughts of depression, agitation, hopelessness, and sadness. The depression I’m experiencing is part of this journey. I know that I will climb out of it, that this is temporary, but it’s still hard. I think it was easier going through the actual chemo and radiation because there was an end in sight. There was a countdown. And having that countdown really helped give me something to focus on. This phase of the cancer journey is tough because there is no countdown. It’s just one endless set of mornings and daytimes and evenings over and over again. I know that in July we will get to find out if all of the treatments worked…we will do a PET scan to make sure that the cancer is gone. And yes, I suppose I could use that as my new countdown, but it doesn’t seem to have the same meaning. I’ve never been a patient person, and my patience is definitely being stretched thin and is definitely being tested. But the endless days of medication 3x/day, tube feedings 3x/day, nausea, throwing up, wretching, sleeping, expect is getting really old. Every time I do a feeding I’m afraid I’m going to throw it all back up, because that’s been happening for no reason we can pinpoint. my tastebuds are still screwed up and I still don’t make saliva, so trying foods by mouth has been very discouraging. I want desperately to be able to go back to work…I miss my families I work with, and I’m afraid I’ll be forgotten after all of this time gone. I’m hoping to be able to return to work this summer, but I have to be able to drive myself down to Sugarland, but I have to be off of these pain meds to drive. I also have to be able to stay awake (at the very least) during a session which I’m afraid I might not be able to do. And then there’s the fear that I’ll projectile vomit all over the session which would be worse than horrible. So instead, I sit here on my couch watching yet another show on Netflix, coloring in my coloring books (I now have 4!) and monitoring the drip on my gravity feeding bag so that it doesn’t go too fast and cause me to throw up. 

I’ve added a quick video of the newest therapy I forgot to mention to y’all. MD Anderson has added acupuncture and massage therapy for me which I do twice a week. I don’t know very much about acupuncture but I’m open to trying anything at this point to get my body back to “normal”. If any of y'all have had success with acupuncture, I’d love to hear about it. 

I know I’m all over the place in this post, and I know unsound like a Debbie downer l, and for that, I apologize. I just figured a scattered imperfect post is better than no post. Thank you all for your continued thoughts and prayers that this too shall pass. 

 

Jenni 🩷