I have mentioned Brene Brown’s books before and highly recommend as thought provoking reading material.  In her book Daring Greatly she talks about “getting into the ring” or showing up in our own lives.  The above quote is from her most recent book.   I’ll get to the point in a minute.

So this past week was Round Two of chemo and I am dealing with it “solo”.  I have to admit two things – the first is that I missed having company in the days after AND I didn’t bounce back quite as well as the first round.  I still feel wiped out five days later and I don’t take that to be a good sign.  I did manage to walk the dog just over a mile this morning and do the laundry but I have had to lie down several times to gather up the strength to keep moving.

Which brings me to….the comments people make about how I have to “fight” this disease.  I have been stewing about these comments for over a week now and just have to get out some thoughts.  No one could ever know – unless they have been through this or any other chronic/serious illness – how much I fight this disease every waking moment of every day in ways never before contemplated.

Let’s take Thursday for example – the day I knew I would be feeling the worst fatigue and general crappiness.  I had to go back to Spa Infusion to have blood drawn in the morning and then the cleaning ladies were supposed to arrive shortly after lunch.  Seems like a pretty “no big deal” day until you feel like do not have the energy to walk, let alone drive somewhere.  But I did.

Of course, the county was doing some sort of mock disaster drill in the parking lot and there were no parking spots left.  People were circling the lot three or four times to find a spot somewhere close to the building.  I wanted to cry.  Luckily, someone was backing out of a reasonably close spot and disaster was averted.

So I crawled into the office thinking it would be a 10 minute deal. Nope, they were unable to get blood from the port (will not say what happened…TMI and it would likely make you queasy) so it turned into an hour long process getting stuck with four different needles.  Yeah, I don’t fight hard enough.

The cleaning ladies then arrived and I was just about down for the count.  All I wanted to do was lie down in peace but I had to wait until they left.  At least the house was clean.

So what sounds like “nothing” to most folks was an ordeal for me…and yes, I find that somewhat depressing.  It’s hard to accept feeling like crap for days on end when you know there is stuff that needs to be done.

Now back to the quote.   What I take from it is this – don’t stand on the sidelines yelling at me to “keep going!” or “fight harder!” or “you can do this!” unless you are willing to get in the ring WITH ME.  It’s easy to stand on the sidelines and shout what you think are encouraging words but far harder to get IN the ring, stand next to someone and say something like “we’ll fight this together”.  And yes, I totally count myself in with the first group of people who shout from the sidelines.  I have learned so much already about empathy and courage.

I fight this disease every morning when I convince myself to get out of bed hoping to feel better than the day before.  I fight it every time I do “normal” stuff and try to act “normal”.   I fight it every time I stick a stupid hat on my head and plant a smile on my face to pretend it doesn’t matter.

‘Nuff said.

I hope to go back to work tomorrow for a few hours.  I see a radiology oncologist on Tuesday morning to find out more about the fun plan for radiation therapy.  Radiation will be Part Two of the three part Fun With Cancer ordeal.

Wish me luck.