The many colours of cancer
One of the things they tell you early about coping with cancer is that you shouldn’t expect your life to go back to “normal” after treatment. Rather, you should prepare yourself to accept a “new normal” that might include lifestyle and identity changes. In many ways this is a bit similar to what I was told before I went on my “gap year” exchange in 2007. Basically, you’ll have a better time of it if you let your new experiences change you rather than fight against it. The idea is to find ways to adapt your new lifestyle to your existing values and let yourself grow and change into it, perhaps changing your identity a little along the way to incorporate new values and habits. So I’ve adopted a fairly similar approach to coping my cancer diagnosis and generally I think it’s helping.
As with the expat experience, the first few weeks are filled with the sensory experience. I’m more observant of the sights, smells, textures and colours of all the new things I’m being exposed to. The colours associated with surgery really struck me. Blue dye used to find the sentinel lymph node, dark green surgical gauze of “anesthetist shame” when the 4th year medical student messed up my cannula insertion, fuchsia antiseptic paint covering my wound site, the pastel colour-codes on the test tubes for the interminable blood tests, all seemed remarkably bright and vibrant against the otherwise beige hospital surroundings.
I find I’ve been quite sensitive to changes in pain or sensation too. I’m carefully taking note of any changes or new feelings. It would be easy to become paranoid about what that tingling or discomfort might be, when previously I might not have even noticed it. Thankfully the online support groups and forums have been a good resource for getting an idea of what is normal, so I haven’t inundated my nurses with questions every time I notice something new.
But sometimes I wonder if my strategy of embracing the strangeness is a mistake. It can make the things that are still the same, like going to work when I can, seem surreal and out of place in my new world.
As the flush of newness fades, the reality of my situation sets in. I’ve been confronted in the last week with the idea that some of the side-effects of treatment may continue for months or years after it finishes. In particular, the effects of chemotherapy on memory and concentration. About half of chemo patients report a deterioration during and after treatment. Those who are in demanding, face-based, high functioning careers — like mine — tend to notice it more. That and the fatigue can last for up to two or three years after treatment finishes. There is a good chance that returning to the life I had built for myself, the life and career I wanted and worked so hard for, might not return at all, or only after another long and difficult fight.
Suddenly I’m not so okay with change. I was fine with a difficult year. I had accepted a career break. But I realise now that was on the condition I could return at the end of treatment and pick up largely where I’d left off. I was fine with adding new values and priorities, but not with letting go of old ones.
Perhaps a year from now this won’t seem so bad. Perhaps by then I’ll want different things and be more accepting. But right now I don’t want that life. Right now I’m afraid of who that person might be. Right now I don’t want to be her at all. Right now this a change too far and I don’t see how I can reconcile it with my current values and my idea of who I am and what qualities are important to me.
