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THE NARRATIVE ARC
Cancer Took a Bite of Me
Observing the anniversary of my diagnosis
In 2021, I lay on the radiation table. No one in the room but me. My heart raced. What if they turned the radiation on too high? I had to trust everything would be okay. I had no choice. If I didn’t do this treatment, the risk of recurrence was great.
This type of internal high dose radiation is called brachytherapy.
Earlier, half a dozen medical workers placed a radiation device into my body. It was a long, fat wand with a conduit on the tip. Inside my body were three gold ‘seeds,’ and the device — with three conductors — was aligned with those. My Gyn Radiologist-Oncologist joked she bedazzled me.
There’s nothing to describe having pointy items pressed into the soft tissue inside my body. After the radiation oncologist placed the first, I shrieked in pain and she reassured me, “Only two more to go!”
(Can you imagine?)
This is the reality of uterine cancer treatments. And of all cancer. You learn stuff while enduring treatment you never wanted to know or experience. I’ve heard others describe some of the stuff we go through — we cancer patients — as medieval torture.
It’s either poison (chemo), burning (radiation), or cutting (surgery).
And we plod along exhausted through treatments while members of the Toxic Positivity club remind us that “A positive attitude will help you defeat this! They’ve made great advancements! You’ll be fine! Let’s talk about something else!”
I don’t mean to sound negative, but at times, when you deal with harsh realities, don’t you want to feel the real feelings? I do.
This last week has really done me in. January 2021 is when life took a really sharp turn for me, and I remember it. All of it. Rather than ignore my feelings — especially this hard month — I consider that hard year when I got the diagnosis of cancer.
On top of the stress of the scary C word, I dealt with a bad doctor.
My first gynecological oncologist was a senior member of a cancer clinic in Oregon. I tried to get a female oncologist at this clinic, as my particular type of cancer meant…
