A Rollercoaster Ride

(Originally written Tuesday morning, February 3, 2009)

I woke up Sunday feeling a lot better. The journaling of Saturday night seemed to help, or at least have a bit of a therapeutic reaction. For most of the day, I was able to ignore the terror creeping in around my being.

I got the grocery shopping done, menus posted, and caught up on some of the television shows I had recorded to the DVR. But every so often, it became impossible to push the fear away.

I kept going to the internet to attempt to find something hopeful. Something that would convince me that what was in my breast wasn't cancer. I kept coming up empty. Everything I found seemed to point to a worse and worse direction that all depended upon size. The mass inside my breast is 7cm. Anything over 5cms is considered Type III cancer, whether it is invasive or not.

Having no other information to go on, other than size, conclusions in my head were being drawn rapid fire. Too scared to say anything to LJS about any of this, I alternated between crying in his arms and putting on a brave face. "Hon, don't worry until you know there's something to worry about." He would say, while still holding me. "Think how silly you are going to feel when it is nothing. It's going to be nothing."

I asked him how he knew that and he said, "I'm never wrong", which wrung a teary chuckle out of me.

When Monday came, I was relieved because I'd have something else to think about-- work. I had a lot to do, and desperately needed to get it done, but inside I was an emotional mess. I had such a hard time giving full concentration to anything, I'm surprised I made it through the day. Phone calls would come in and I'd have to roll the questions people had around in my head before full focus and the answer would come.

To top it off, I still needed to ask for Wednesday off.

I pulled out the time off request and stared at it. How, exactly, was I going to stress to my boss the importance of an affirmative reply? Should I just write that I was having a biopsy done on the paper? Considering that I didn't really want that many, if anyone, to know about the drama unfolding inside of me, I didn't want to just write it on a paper that everyone could see. In the end, I filled it out and carried it back to him. I handed the paper to him, put on a brave face and point blank told him that I was having a biopsy done, but didn't want to write that on the paper since I wanted it kept mostly confidential. He signed it and I walked back to my office. I went back to work and then a few minutes later left for lunch.

I'd gotten an email that morning from the director of the erotic fiction contest I was entered in letting me know that semi-finals had begun. Since I had misread their latest blog and thought that they were still a week out, I had something else to do at lunch-- send emails begging my family and friends to vote for me. The mundane process of typing email after email filled my lunch and calmed me. I was filled with humor over the ying/yang juxtaposition my life was suddenly taking on with my dream of being published running beside my nightmare of being diagnosed with breast cancer.

By the time I got back to work, I felt better, having something else to concentrate on-- having a few other things to concentrate on since I'd gotten an email earlier that had sent my thoughts into the gutter and left them there for awhile. Plus, I was contemplating my not so healthy lifestyle and the steps I would need to take to right the wrong I had done to my body, quickly concluding that dying from a heart-attack or stroke while running was far more likely than drying from cancer. Or, at least, far more immediate.

For the rest of the day, I was able to ignore the fear. I was even able to finish the few last grocery items needing purchase, cook dinner, and start a new book (reading, not writing).

And then, I blew it.

I went once again searching for hope and came face to face with a nightmare that totally made me undone. I looked up survival rates for breast cancer.

Type III has a 57% 5-year expectancy.

I lost it.

For eight years I had managed to avoid or deter any type of a panic attack, but found myself spiraling into one that I couldn't escape. I went to bed, curled up with LJS, and despite the distraction of sex (which has helped stave off the terror in the past) I spent the next five hours shaking and crying, to scared to breathe, nearly too scared to move, definitely too scared to think. After two hours, LJS convinced me to take an Ativan and drug myself to sleep.

I got out of bed, went into the office and got my computer, and then took the Ativan waiting for it to kick in, hoping someone was online to talk with and get my mind off of the fear at hand. I hadn't wanted to talk to anyone about what was going on, for fear of needlessly worrying people, but I will forever be thankful for Bonnie's willingness to listen and pray. I think I kept her online for an hour, virtually crying on her shoulder :)

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When I was a teenager, I used to go through bouts of utter confusion. Coming from a Christian family, attending church 3+ times a week, I could never reconcile that I could be forgiven for the rebellious (and worse) person I had become. Although I had never committed a murder, robbery, or other felony, my upbringing taught me that a sin was a sin was a sin.

One day when I was feeling particularly hopeless, I remembered a lesson I had learned about Gideon, a man who tested God. I remembered that I had been told if I tested God with my whole heart, he would answer me. He would respond. So, I did. I asked him to give me a sign that he knew what was in my heart and understood me, even if I didn't understand myself. I remember it was a beautiful, sunny day. Not a cloud in the sky. I asked him for lightening.

Hours went by, I started to feel better, and forgot the test. I had to go to work that night. At the time, I babysat for a church. There was usually only one or two kids in there, and I'd play with them while their parents attended bible study. This night, there was only one little boy.

At 7pm, while it was still sunny outside, he started talking gibberish (he was 2) and pointing out the window. I walked over to see what he was looking at and the moment I looked out the window, a brilliant streak of lightening flashed across the sky. I immediately thought I was seeing things. That, in my desire to see a sign of proof, I had made it up.

Until it happened a second time.

In my life, there have been times of trials, but God has always been there when I reached for him, answering my prayers. It has always been such a powerful thing, that I get to the point where I rarely ask for something because I've always known that he knows my heart. He knows me. My prayers always start with thank you and end the same way. Such a powerful thing that the last time I begged for his help, after a series of panic attacks and nightmares that had me afraid to go to sleep for nearly a week, they ended immediately. Save the one I had last night, it had been 8 years.

Last night, for the first time in my life, I understood the poem "Footsteps". I understood the man's question about how he reached out for God and couldn't find him, because in my fear there was a wall there so strong that I couldn't see the other side. I reached out to grasp him and ask him to hold me, only to feel as though he was not there.

It was such a comfort-- it IS such a comfort-- knowing that there are people praying for me, when I cannot seem to do so myself.

On television, I turned on the only ministry program I could find (I think it was in Arabic) and let the Ativan work its magic and dozed. Believing, even when I couldn't feel it, that I was being held.