I did not! I had a Mediport inserted Friday and it was causing me much discomfort yesterday and today. It hurts when I swallow and I feel the Mediport in my chest and the site is tender to the touch and now the incision is starting to itch. I’m regretting getting it and hope I get used to it soon or I might be tempted to get the thing removed!
I start chemo this week, I’ll be getting two drugs (Taxol and Carboplatin) for 5 hours at the oncologist’s office, the following week I get a shot that will boost my white blood cells. I’m so thankful I don’t have to take the chemo home like the Jolly Blogger does, I can’t sleep now, that would make it so much harder.
The trajectory of my mood since I talked to the oncologist about my treatment was straight down and then a very slow incline up. When we left the oncologist’s office, I realized that this wasn’t just an inconvenience in my life that I had to get through to be healthy again, this may now be my life. I may go into remission this summer and never experience cancer again or I may have to go through another round of this later in life or the treatment might not even work and have to try another drug. Even if I do go into remission (which is what the oncologists are predicting), I’ll be living in four month intervals as I get tested to see if the cancer has returned. That kind of uncertainty is something that is hard for a control freak like me to take (and yeah, I realize that I have no control over the length of my days — I just liked the illusion 🙂
But I’m slowly beginning to accept my situation and I agree with the Jolly Blogger that you have to do that to get though it. You have to realize that your life isn’t what it was before cancer, that you are no longer following the path a normal life would take:

One of the most important things that Deep Survival says is that when you are lost in the woods or adrift at sea or in some other survival situation you have to accept your current situation as it is at the moment. I’m not sure he said it in exactly this way, but his point is basically that the map is not the terrain. In other words, maps are our ideal pictures of the way the world should look. But when you are lost, i.e. in a survival situation, you’ve gone off the map. Those who don’t survive are those who try to conform their reality to the idealistic maps in their heads. Those who survive realize they have gone off the map and adapt themselves to their current situation and do what is necessary to survive in that situation.
That’s where I’m at. Cancer has thrown me off of every map of my life I ever had in my head. Right now I have to admit that I am a bit disoriented. Although I refuse to complain against God I do wake up most mornings thinking “I can’t believe I have cancer, I wonder how long I have to live.” And, since the surgery I haven’t been able to sleep because my mind is racing and most nights I need to take something to help me sleep.

I can’t continue to kick against the goads or look back at my life before cancer wishing I could return to it somehow, I have to walk the path that I’ve been given whether I want to or not. I haven’t cried (much) about my situation this week and the only time it gave me pause was when I was looking at the paperwork for my Mediport and noticed that under procedure they had written “Mediport – Ovarian Cancer.” It hit me anew that I had cancer but I was also watching the coverage of the Buffalo plane crash and I couldn’t help but think how blessed I was to be alive and get a fighting chance to survive. No tears, just acceptance.
I think what’s helped the most is that my body seems to be doing a lot better with the whole menopause thing, I couldn’t tell if the emotionalism of the last two weeks has been the enforced menopause or dealing with the emotional impact of having cancer but it probably was a combination of both. Last week was better than the week before and hopefully this week will be even better.
About a week after the office visit I was going to blog about feeling like my life has become centered on this one aspect of my life, that I had become a cancer sufferer and that was how others now viewed me and how I viewed myself but my world widened again and I realized that I didn’t have to think that way. I could continue other aspects of my life (being a mom, wife, student, etc.). Cancer was a new path but it didn’t mean I had to leave everything else behind. I started to resume some of my duties around the house (cooking. laundry, etc.) and I even started class this week (a very wonderful friend from church came to my house at 7:00 am and drove me to seminary and then took me home). It was grueling sitting on the seminary’s hard plastic seat for two hours (I even had a pillow and my jacket and still the seat was too uncomfortable) but I made it through and I was so pleased to be there learning about Hebrew poetry 🙂
Cancer has rocked my world but it hasn’t ended it. I’m still here and so is God. He hasn’t left me or forsaken me. He is very much here and holding me up during this very difficult time. Romans 8 got me through the emotionalism of the last two weeks, it has been the rock I’ve been clinging to:

Romans 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.