Hello lovely people
As I was talking about my struggle with cancer, I told you all about the side effects of the medication and chemotherapy. My doctors and his team stopped all the treatments and started focusing on my symptoms. I am in a phase of depression and lots of brain fog. I feel sometimes that I am losing my mind, I can’t remember names, misplacing words and things, and just want to keep lying down. Not talking and listening to anything. There is no thought in my heads just a weird whooshing noise and my head feels floating. I don’t want to tell my doctors. But I will. I always stretch every thing to the limit. There is a good thing that happened to me even in this testing times. Because there is no treatment going on I have moved back with my children. Children were so happy to see me back home. Oh God, children are so vulnerable and naive. For them mum coming back home means, mum is better. You can not reason with that. They will not hear you saying words like but or however. I am happy and feel good to be around my babies. Things are hard and with terminal illness, you loose your self esteem and pride too. I am not myself and I feel I may loose my mind any second. I have already shared that I am not really a beloved wife. I was fooling myself for a long time by thinking that everything will be fine but it is now evident and out there. It is not that i did not have a clue but i didn’t want to read the signs and accept it. But now situation is such that i am counting days and i am not alone in doing so. There are other people too who are looking forward to replace me and my memories. I sometimes wonder what will my kids do in that situation. I sometimes feel like they have learned to become such adjusting being in all these years that they will not mind having someone else taking my place. I have already become a sick parent in their memories. I don’t think my children now remember me as a gorgeous working woman who they were proud to invite to their school meeting and introduce to their friends. Two weeks back my little one advised me to wear a binnie to hide my badly patchy head because it looks ‘creepy’. That is not his fault. I do look creepy. So scrawny, eyes looking so big and bulgy, one leg swollen, sunken cheeks, bald head, yellow brown patches on teeth and nails. My kids still love me like anything. They were protecting me from these people who are not going to make me feel any better about myself. I immediately remember my time when my dad was sick. I remember telling my friends, “dad is sick.” Dad is sickIt just became a norm and at one stage i realised that I had been using this phrase for almost a year now. Who gets sick for so long but he was sick and he died. He left us, left us children and mum. We were young, lost, saddened, scared and clueless. That void in our hearts and I am speaking for all of us mum and my siblings, that void could never be filled. It always felt like a deep dark black hole, sucking all of our hearts and feelings inside. We were just existing, living from morning to night, then another day and then another. It just kept going like that for a long time. When I look back now I feel shivers. At nights I usually see the same dream over and over. It is about that time when my dad died and I see that it is so dark that I can’t find my mum and siblings. I have my arms and hands stretched in front of me trying to touch and feel my family. I can hear cries. I see myself follow those crying noises. I finally see my siblings but now when I dream they look like my children. The faces of my siblings are like my kids’ faces. Instead of consoling me I am consoling them and assuring them that everything will be fine. But I know it won’t be but I am trying my hardest to make them feel safe.
You know, I have been very proud of my brain all my life, this brain has given me strength to overcome anxiety disorders in my childhood, helped me with my studies and then higher studies, jobs my business venture and ownership of house. In the time of hardship I knew if I try I can do anything no matter what. I have always trusted myself because of the strength and determination in my head. But things are different now. Sometime I have to think twice why did i come here near this cupboard. Don’t forget the efforts I have to put in these little activities of moving around and walking; then you forget the purpose. Ha. May be it is for my own good. I don’t need to feel sadness when I see the life slipping away from me and consequently from the eyes of my children.
Hugs
P
life journey with cancer 