"Anyone can give up; it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength" - Unknown

Aug 5, 2015

So I just kept putting one foot in front of the other.

I tried to focus on The Ride which was in a few weeks. It was my light at the end of, what felt like at times, a very dark tunnel. As was camping. We went camping the weekend before the Ride. Just us and Daisy (our dog). My inlaws were also camping at another campground that wasn’t too far away.  It was exactly what our family needed.

A few weeks earlier we noticed a bump on Daisy’s head. I thought maybe she had an infection. Her back legs had also started giving out every now and again. It was few and far between but she didn’t get up on our bed anymore. So I thought we could get that checked out too to make sure it was just the normal process of aging since she is an 80lb Rotti cross who was 10 years old. Andrea came with me.

Man I was not expecting what the vet had to say.

The back legs issue was a degenerative disease sadly common in larger dogs. Not hip displacia, but a disease that is progressive…and leads to eventual paralysis, and death.

As for the bump…The vet strongly suspected bone canser. Like 99% sure. It was on her eyebrow and there was a bump on her head too. Not operable because of where it was located. We could look into chemo or radiation, but that would not cure it. Just buy time, (potentially only weeks), and she cautioned if the canser was slow to progress, her legs could take her before the canser did.

WTF?? How did my dog go from being a frisky 10 year old, to a dog with not 1 but 2 terminal conditions in the span of a night? I was so shocked I couldn’t even cry. The vet gave us pain meds, and off we went to essentially provide our dog hospice care.

Buying our trailer a few years ago was one of the best decisions we made. Every time we’ve gotten bad news, we’ve been able to escape to nature. I know I’ve mentioned it lots, but camping really has been so rejuvenating for our family.

Especially with the additional stress of being back at work.

I wasn’t at work full time. I was on a graduated back to work schedule. This was put in place by Dr Taylor at Breast cancer Supportive Care Foundation based on my treatment. What a life saver…It’s a schedule that works in 2 week increments over about 3 months. I started at 2 half days, then after 2 weeks, I’d increase to 3 half days, and so on. Once I’m at 4 half days (4 hours a day), I go up to  4 days at 5 hours…2 weeks later, its 4 days at 6 hours etc. Wednesdays are my recovery day. Once I’m at 4 full days, I move up to half day Wednesdays then 2 weeks later I’m full time again. After only a few weeks in I was VERY glad it was graduated.

I wasn’t having fatigue issues yet per sae – which I had been expecting and prepared for– though I was definitely tired by the end of my shift. But it was the mental fatigue I wasn’t really expecting. Between chemo brain and headaches from being on a screen for 4 hours straight I was getting frustrated. Plus I had been away over a year, and my job is the kind that the longer you are away from it, the more you forget. I was feeling like with each problem that came into the inbox, the answer was just beyond my brain capacity. I may have shed a few tears over it, because I was so frustrated with myself. I guess I was expecting it to all come back within the first few shifts.

It was making me doubt myself. My confidence started to slip. I went from feeling like this really strong person right before I came back, the kind who could do anything I put my mind to,  to the weak link on the team. That’s a hard mental & emotional adjustment. I felt the frustration with myself at one of the last team rides too before the Ride – like I had gone backwards in training. I got my “riders high” as usual afterwards, but during the ride I could feel the frustration with myself, which formed as a lump in my throat. It’s amazing to me how self-doubt can cling to you like that and seep into other areas of your life. Positive thinking is so powerful, but so are the bad emotions. At the time though, I didn’t see it like that. I just felt like things were starting to unravel and my life was spinning out of control.

It made things seems completely overwhelming. Which was probably completely normal with going back to work and all that entails,  but at the time, that thought never occurred to me. I thought I was failing at being back at work.

And just to add a little more to my plate, I had a follow up physical appointment with Dr Kubic the Wed before the Ride. My very first physical appointment after treatment (in April), I cried before she even laid hands on me. I was terrified for the physical part of the exam. I felt really stupid for being so emotional. I tried really hard to stop the tears from flowing, esp since it was the first time meeting this doctor but they just kept falling down my face. My heart was racing and my hands were ice cold. This Aug appointment was my 2nd follow up and I think I was only slightly less nervous than the first appointment. I didn’t cry. But as we were going through any concerns I had and her list of questions, she wrote a requisition for me to get an ultrasound. Cause I was having an ovary type pain – which seemed cyclical (good thing if it was just menstral related), but seemed always just after my period instead of when I should be ovulating, so she offered to do a peace of mind ultrasound to make sure all was well.  I would say on a scale of 1-10, the idea of an ultrasound put my terror at  level 100. To be fair, the last ultrasound told me I had canser…

I wanted to take that piece of paper and tear it up.

When I got up on the table for the physical part I think my heart sounded like I had just run a marathon. I actually closed my eyes and started to use the relaxation techniques I had learned at Wellspring and at the Breast cancer Supportive Care class. After about 10 minutes the doc said:

“Everything feels and looks good! All done”.

My heart was lighter with those words, but the pit of my stomach was in knots over the ultrasound that she wanted me to book…all I kept thinking was “I haven’t gotten my BRCA results yet but what if I have ovarian cancer?”.

Thankfully we had had that long weekend of camping and then only a few short days till The Ride weekend. I could hold on till then….I knew that weekend riding with Phil and my One Aim team would be deeply healing.

And boy was I ever right.