Anniversaries

I am about as single as they come so anniversaries have never really been something I've had or celebrated.

Someone asked me the other day if I remember much of the last year. Clearly they don't realize the power of my memory. I can tell you the dates of: my diagnosis, my surgery, my port surgery, each chemo, the day I told my students, my port removal, the day Gary shaved my head, the beginning and end of radiation and probably more I'm forgetting right now. Many of these anniversaries are happening this winter.

These anniversaries are making me want to blog again. I always thought I'd just want to forget 2013. However, it's part of the story of my life (insert my humming of One Direction's song)*. Avoiding it doesn't make it go away and there are things I've realized in the last year that I'd like to get out of my head.

So hopefully there will be more blog posts from me. Yes, you are rolling you're eyes at me. Yes, I've said this before. But hopefully, there will be some people who keep me to this! (You know who you are). So if I have any readers here still.....Jenn's back!

*Hey, I teach high school kids. I'm hip with their music

Holly

*Disclaimer: I swear in this post. Cancer makes you do that. (Wait....what was my excuse before then?)
*Names have been changed


I have mentioned before that one of biggest regrets during chemo was not talking to other patients more. I kept to myself, brought friends, and always requested a private room.  On my very last day of chemo I met Holly. I had actually met her about a month earlier, but hadn't really gotten a chance to chat with her.

Holly and I had a lot in common. Both 35, both single, living in Holland, and both had breast cancer. Her's was stage 2, mine stage 1. She even worked with a parent of one of my students. If we had met under different circumstances, we probably would have been friends. She was very easy to talk to, funny and it made me sad that we had only just met.

She finished chemo about a month after me, but after figuring out that we knew someone in common, we would get updates on each other. I heard all about her reconstructive surgery and when she finished radiation. I'm sure she heard all about my crazy curly hair. I hadn't run into our mutual acquaintance in a while and had been wondering how she was doing.

Last night I got the update. Holly was recently diagnosed with non-operable brain cancer. Of course I was told this at parent-teacher conferences and proceeded to have to spend some time in the bathroom pulling myself together. The total meltdown happened on the ride home when I actually had time to process everything. Note to self: sobbing makes you dizzy so you probably shouldn't have been driving.

I didn't really expect the news to rock me like it did. But I'm sad/terrified/boggled for so many reasons:
  -It's not fair that not even a year after finishing chemo for one cancer, Holly has another. She thirty-
   fucking-five years old! Not that anyone EVER deserves cancer but this is a total slap in the face.
  -How did it even get there? How did they not know?
  -Why didn't the last chemo zap it? (yes I know, it probably wasn't there)
  -How do you even face your own mortality that young?
  -Why didn't we keep in contact? How can I help?
and absolutely worst of all,
  -She's my age, she had my cancer, she could be me.

Rational Jenn knows she is healthy. She knows that all of her scans have come back clean. She knows that he doctor told her Tamoxifen is good to be on. It's that irrational Jenn that lost it. It's irrational Jenn that needed a breakdown of every symptom she'd had before her diagnosis. Irrational Jenn started fretting about every single ache and pain she's had lately and convinced herself it was bad.

I realize that this will not be the last time one of these meltdowns will happen, but they are not something I am looking forward to.

I am sending thoughts and strength to Holly, her family, her friends, her coworkers and everyone else in her life.

Cancer, you seriously are a little beeeyotch!