Withdrawals….

Sometimes I watch tv.
Sometimes I even watch tv without really looking.
Sometimes I watch TV and I think by myself, “Why on earth am I watching this???”

I used to love Grey’s Anatomy. Bastiaan and I would sit down on Thursday evenings and watch it together. When I got diagnosed and the months after, during chemo, Thursday was the best day. As in that was the one evening where I would be almost completely  “present” and without uncontrollably shaking or sweating, most of the times anyway... Normally Bastiaan likes other shows than I, but this was one of our “Let’s watch together shows” and try to forget about all the bad stuff going on in “real” life.

Until Izzy (one of the main characters of the show) got sick. Guess what she got???!!! Oh, was so mad.

She could have gotten ONE HUNDRED THOUSANDS kinds of cancer. But nope, she ended up with my kind, and that was besides the fact that she was almost the same age and blond too!!!

The ONE evening during the whole week were I would crawl into Bastiaan’s embrace and were we would try to forget for an hour about the fact that we had cancer and just moved to a new country…

They had her, get my cancer!
We stopped watching Grey’s that night.

Getting on chemo is not the hard part. Being on chemo is not too good as in really, really (here you can put your own curse words if you use them) NOT GOOD! But we were in for a real ride after we got OFF the chemo!

On my dad’s birthday, October 9th, 2009 after 64 weeks of chemo I got my last dose. It was a great day and we even had a cake to celebrate. All it wanted was a Big Mac, but the cake seemed more appropriate. In the following days I was under the impression that now that I was off the nasty stuff, life would go back to normal in a swiffy. A girl has to have hope, right?!

That first weekend I got a headache. But I still had some of those great pills from the doc so I could keep going, suppressing that headache. I wasn’t going to let a little headache going to ruin my fine “new” life after chemo!

The next day I still had a headache. I didn’t help that I already to 4 of those “special” pills were normally I would be happy as a pumpkin in a sunny pasture after a half of one of those pills…

BUT I was stubborn and we needed to go shopping, at Menards. After 6 pills and lots of begging, my dad took me home, but it became clear, that home wasn’t the best place to be at that moment. And after my mom, dad AND Bastiaan found out I had eaten my little stash of “special” pills it was time to go to the emergency room…

The Bluffton Emergency room wasn’t the best place either because after a CAT scan and a HUGE needle and syringe of some kind of pain reliever (in my buttocks!) they sent me home… and I was feeling like that fat happy pumpkin again!

The next day, the pain was back! FULL FORCE!!! We skipped the emergency room in Bluffton. We brought out the big guns and went to the big city emergency room! I am not sure but the doctors there were a bit puzzled too. After several scans, including CAT/PET and MRI’s they found nothing, but I was completely overcome by this terrible pain in my head. Finally they gave me a shot (and yes this was even worse than the buttocks shot the day before!) in my spine! I never had a shot in my spinal cord before, and let me tell you this IS NOT FUNNY!

What was even more disappointing was that the shot did not work. So as a last resort they finally gave me a little cocktail… they had checked out everything and anything and were still afraid to numb any symptoms and thus figuring out what was wrong, but they were even more worried about the pain that I was still having. And no that cocktail was not a stiff drink, but a cocktail of pain relievers, and yes some big names like valium and morphine drifted by. 5 minutes after I got that cocktail I wasn’t even a happy fat pumpkin anymore I was just… floating…

They kept me in the hospital for five days.

Three of those five days are a bit cloudy because of my “not to make at home” special cocktail. But the last two were pretty “good”. The oncologist told me that what probably happed was the withdrawal from all these weeks of chemo, had something to do with this headache of mine (I am not even sure if headache is the right word, but for a lack of better word…) Gradually things went better and during the day I would sleep and I had visitors who would come and cheer me up. In the evenings I would watch TV. Books were too much of a strain, but the TV would do the trick and take my mind of things.

I watched my first “after Izzy”, Grey’s Anatomy episode by myself in that hospital bed. The sweet girl was gone, I believe she survived her illness but they “cut” her out of the show by moving her to another town or something. I’m glad she didn’t die. And yes my mom told me when I was little that I shouldn’t believe everything I see on the ‘tellie’, but I was happy anyway. There were just too many resemblances and i thought if she can survive so can i....

When doctors tell you that you are sick, you are sick. Your brain tells you that you are sick and you need to get better. This is a given. When doctors tell you that you are better, your brain doesn't always tell you that you are better... Especially when you can not do all the things u used to do, or have the stamina you had before, or seeing the thirty plus scars on you body. Basically your brain and body are having withdrawals from cancer. And then there is the worry of getting sick again that sometimes  is sooo overpowering that you "forget" that you are actually well.

I found it MUCH harder to be "better" than to be "sick". I know this sounds strange, but i can't describe it any other way.

I do not know this body of mine anymore. And i defiantly do not know this brain. Whatever those drugs did to get rid of the cancer, they, also "messed" ME (as in I ) up. I tell myself not to worry, I'll find "ME" again. It just will be a little bit of a different ME that i was 4 years ago...


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