Rebirth

Decreasing Words
10 I scrolled backward in time, all the way to her.
9 She looked nothing like me, for the obvious reasons,
8 But also for reasons not in plain sight.
7 The auburn locks with perfect, straight fringe.
6 Scarless, porcelain skin, glowing with health
5 But the look in her eye
4 It indicated a stranger
3 I thought, bluntly,
2 "That girl’s
1 Dead."

How did I arrive here?
17 days before the start of my “Jesus year”, I am more suspicious than ever about the fate of the human race and yet, I feel grateful to be alive. I’m transformed—reborn. Spent two years killing off this adorable redhead martyr and now I’m Incredible Hulk-ing my way into my present incarnation. (As a blonde, no less.)

I stopped teaching. That vocation finally beat me down to a pulp and one day, from my bloodied pile of defeat I watched all the marbles roll out of my head across my classroom floor. After giving my resignation on a Thursday, telling my class parents the following Tuesday, and breaking the children's hearts that Wednesday, I returned to my home on June 7th, 2018 feeling that I had relived the mental version of the near-death I had experienced the previous January. I felt cut open—the contents of my heart draining through an apparitional tube into a sack below my bed frame. Nine years of studying, working, volunteering, and paying out my ass to become a Waldorf teacher and I had failed. My entire identity, my philosophy, my ego, my community were all contained in this career and I was leaving it behind. I could no longer sacrifice my own health and well-being in service of others, and I felt like a fucking asshole. But I literally had no energy left to care.

I buried myself under the covers and began setting my alarm for the final day of school, wondering if the meager leftover contents of my brain would manage to sustain me through what would surely be an incredibly emotional day. I turned on the 4:30 alarm, as well as the 4:45 for good measure and exited the clock app. Out of habit, I tapped my thumb on the Instagram icon adorning my home screen in an attempt to find momentary, surrogate joy in the visually perfect lives of my friends of whom I’d seen little since the start of the school year. Oh, a message! Someone sent me a message! Joy! Instant gratification via the tiny computer phone! I opened it.
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My first thought upon reading his message was, “I don’t know what a brain aneurysm is but it can’t possibly be terrible because there is no conceivable way I could endure any more pain in this moment of my life.” The thought was punctuated by a tightening of my chest and a subsequent dialing of every phone number I thought could give me an answer. The flood gates broke and I couldn’t catch a breath. I hoped I was overreacting due to my own fragile mental state, but I suspected that wasn’t actually true. I felt my etheric body trailing like a silken flag in a current of wind above my physical one, which mechanically sprinted out the door. The route to the hospital was traumatically familiar. The scene that awaited me was worse than the one in my own shell-shocked memory—the one in which I was in the hospital bed. This one felt like it would actually kill me.
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The children lingered in long hugs and the parents cried lovingly at me, staring into my bloodshot eyes in longing expressions of gratitude. I faked smiles, continually shifting my weight in emotional discomfort and checking my phone for updated predictions on how many hours she had left. Someone forgot to pick up their kid and I shuffled him impatiently into the office, furious, rather than sad, that my last goodbye would be this abandonment on a tiny chair to reluctant staff ready for summer vacation. I burst briefly into tears in the parking lot and then quickly squelched the hysterics in order to equip myself for driving. The 19-minute ride was agonizing and I suspected every car in front of me on the freeway was trying to ruin my life. I was in such a hurry to be there—to arrive and find a scene different than the one from the night before. I felt I was owed a different scene. Like…a bitch should be able to trade in her cancer card for a 1-Up Mushroom for a friend. That’s only fair.
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The day she died, I finally understood.

I’d spent the previous year and a half feeling completely indifferent to the idea of leaving this earth. 75% of the time I actually felt enthusiastic about the prospect. When I got my diagnosis and found out I wouldn’t physically survive the cancer without chemo, I said “bummer” and accepted my fate. As a card-carrying melancholic and general weirdo, I had never been super stoked about day-to-day human stuff. Life on earth was mostly bogus when I really thought about it. Work is exhausting, capitalism is bullshit and we live in the Matrix. I much preferred hanging in the astral plane amid evening dreams or floating in a ball of light during meditation. But despite all my own controversial opinions, I knew my friends and family members were devastated when they found out I was sick. I knew they were broken by the idea of cancer and frozen in fear of my decision. I saw it in their faces--I was killing them. So I did the damn thing. Despite all my bohemian instincts screaming at me not to poison my body with Western medicine, I fucking went to chemo. And goddamnit, that shit saved my life.

When she died and I felt that insane, strangling loss and feeling of helplessness, I did not say, “bummer”. I took a breath and exhaled. I realized with such clarity that surviving someone else’s death is one billion times more painful than accepting your own. And from the bottom of that deep abyss of sorrow, I felt so grateful to be alive for all those that wanted it.

Thanksgiving

I've noticed that cancer people like to celebrate cancerversaries: diagnosis, end of chemo, remission,"rebirth". These might all be the same thing, I'm not sure. My own experience of cancer has been so ape shit bonkers, I haven't had any psychic space left to mentally file my cancer dates. I don't remember when I was diagnosed or when I got my first biopsy--I just remember it was before Thanksgiving because the subsequent holidays and birthday were a total bummer. I know the date I was in the hospital only because I got so many preposterous bills afterward. Frankly, the dates aren't super significant to me, but as I navigate through another chaotic year as a Waldorf teacher, I bask in every singular difference from this year to last. On Tuesday, for example, as I bent over to pick Babybel cheesewax out of the carpet in my classroom (gawd, I need to write those fools a cease and desist letter on behalf of all elementary school teachers), I thought of how totally marvelous it is to reach toward the ground without losing your eyesight. Each morning, as I shake my student's hands at the classroom door, I think of the month before I took medical leave, when I was so weak I had to sit on a stool to greet them. I remember all the autumnal walks that were cut short last November by my minimal lung capacity, and it's safe to say this is the most epic level of gratitude I've ever felt on Thanksgiving.

So I guess this is the season of my own obnoxiously-titled cancerversary. It's kicking up a lot of emotions, both happy and somber. It's certainly generating a lot of unscripted crying.

In review, this year I did a lot of things I never thought I'd do:

1. I asked for help.
2. I surrendered.
3. I received chemotherapy.
4. I went out in public looking fucking terrible.
5. I uttered the words, "I'm happy to be alive."
6. I let a stranger wipe my ass.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
7. I got a 2nd tattoo. A cancer tattoo. (But not a stupid one.)
8. I developed a love and sympathy for cancer patients.

Most of these things still bring me a certain level of discomfort to admit, but the last item is particularly humbling. Prior to this year, I believed that cancer was just a manifestation of one's own terrible baggage--a total karmic thing. I felt invulnerable to it because of my own life choices, both physical and mental. When the universe cosmically bitchslapped me upside my face, I had to contemplate a lot of things that were bigger than myself. I realize now that surviving cancer isn't as simple as eating cruciferous vegetables or shifting one's consciousness. It's not something to shrug one's shoulders at and assume the universe is teaching cancer patients an important existential lesson. (Not that I have to tell you. You are probably not a heartless shrew, like I am.) Cancer is not to be fucked with. Cancer is a Demagorgon and if it doesn't kill you, it's definitely gonna kill Bob. I am so damn happy not to have a giant lump of cancer in my chest, but the bullshit doesn't seem to stop. There's peripheral neuropathy in my fingers and toes, there's painful degeneration in my spine, and now there are pre-cancerous cells in my cervix. I'm going in for surgery on my birthday weekend and I can't help thinking that this is crossing the line from karmic into RUDE. Regardless, today I am grateful. I give thanks for the chance to reexamine my own beliefs. I give thanks for my continual transformation as a human being on this earth. I give thanks for having been humbled. I give thanks for the absence of an itch. I give thanks for the immense love that is shown to me everyday on so many levels. I give thanks for the chance to celebrate a cancerversary.

In which Danielle, in her delirium, ponders whether or not she is a monk

12/28 In 28 minutes it will be Thursday but here is the seal for Wednesday. I'm up itching and sweating. Today I began the 3rd medication prescribed to me by my oncologist for itching, but nothing seems to help. This is by far the worst sensation I have ever felt. And the sweating only adds to the fun. Tonight I began to dose off after a particularly unbearable evening of prickles, when suddenly the itching woke me wide awake and I began to really get a sense that I am dying. This can't be the way one feels when they have many years left to live. I certainly can't live this way for much longer. And I can't imagine this is an early stage of cancer. My breath is short, my muscles are diminishing, I cough as if I'm barking with pneumonia again, and the itch and sweats keep me from wanting to go out in public. I feel I must really start getting my things in order. After tomorrow's PET scan and today's CT scan, I'm sure they will tell me I have stage 4. I feel, more than ever, if it is so late, I will be obliged to say no to chemotherapy. Actually, I feel obliged to say no to that anyway. This is certainly beginning to feel like my destiny. I can accept it, but I really worry whether everyone else can. Upon my death, I would like a celebration to be held in which everyone eats a donut in my honor. I also demand that they play Refused's "Rather Be Dead".

1/14/17 (actually 1/15 at 12:18am)
I haven't slept since last Saturday evening. How am I awake? How am I alive? Am I developing super human powers because I am close to the threshold? Am I a monk? Since I last wrote, I saw my (former) oncologist, who told me my cancer is either stage 2B or 4 (if only I had done the bone marrow biopsy like he told me to) and that if I didn't do chemo I was stupid and I'd die a horrible death. All of which may be quite true, but were not very tastefully articulated. Thus, I shant be giving him my money any longer.
     Friday was last day at school for awhile while Emily subs. I am fading fast, but don't want to leave the page without expressing how infinitely grateful I am for her and the divine presence she has in my life.
     And the children! And their hugs and their sweet cards and their funny little messages: M and his lingering after school. J & T's tight squeezes. All the parents and their meals & jammies and grocery cards and gas cards. My colleagues and their incredibly love, MD especially. I just. I love. I love and I love.
    And thank you for my friends far and wide and the amazing men that care for me at home on a daily basis. And aunt who worries. I love and I love. So much.

The First Holy Night

12/25/16

     This journal comes from my dear friend Rebecca. She gave it to me as a birthday present and it comes at a perfect time, as my current state of being calls on me to begin journaling again. Around the early part of November, I was told that I likely have Hodgkin's lymphoma. That assumption has been confirmed in the past weeks, and I am now waiting to go in for a CT and PET scan to understand the staging of the disease. What will I discover? What choice will I make? It seems the only "choice" they give you is no choice at all. All cancer patients undergo chemo. There are some chances they would like to also do radiation. But no, no one will ask you, "Do you wish to proceed?" Instead, you must find a very different form of courage than one you've ever had to find or use before, and you essentially have to tell your doctors, friends and family to fuck off--because this is your destiny and your decision and one is I am just not certain that chemo is always the correct and only choice to make. This may be the most punk rock thing I will ever do. 

     Last night was the first Holy Night and I cannot remember my dreams. I only recall itching through the night. Damn this itching above all else.

Monday, 26 December 2016

Couldn't sleep last night--too painfully itchy. Therefore couldn't remember dreams AGAIN. Feeling very sick with cough, prickly itch and sore sciatica. Read about curcumin. Hoping to go this all natural route, but worried about itch and dying. 

Your Mom.

If you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you may have been wondering when I was going to write about that First Descents rock climbing trip I went on last month. (Or am I just ego-tripping on some delusion that people actually anticipate my blog posts?) Whatever, let's assume I have a devoted fan-base of readers who recall that my Mystic Medusa astrological scheduler predicted that my trip would be epically transformational and expansive. You remember that, right? Certainly. Well, my dear friends, the prophecy was legit!

It would be accurate to say that that experience brought me back to life. That is to say that prior to this trip, I felt like I had taken a few steps backward. Cancer, along with its massive baggage, had magnified my introversion and thickened my sorrowful disposition. I still found pieces of happiness in my day-to-day life, but inwardly, I felt scared, anxious, ugly and depressed.

When I arrived in Leavenworth, surrounded by a group of complete strangers, I felt those specific emotions firing off inside of me. I looked around and immediately noticed I was the only bald person. Shit, maybe Dr. Jeffreys was right. One should NOT climb rocks during chemo. These hairy jerks all look really healthy. I looked around again and tried to predict who would be my friend. That one looks like she works in finance--probably a bore. Some of these people are very sporty. Should I have trained for this? Am I about to get voted off the island? Maybe these New Yorkers will be my friends. Wait...nope, we're giving introductions. Soon they'll know I'm a Midwestern simpleton. 

This is how my brain works in a crowd of strangers. I become acutely aware of the Darwinian nature of our world and I start to wonder how I even made it to the egg as a sperm, because I am unquestionably the weakest and meekest of all humans. It's terrifying. Luckily, the next day I got to hold the ends of some of these strangers' ropes and I managed not to kill them. This is the fastest way to make friends, I've gathered.

My helmet fell off and was choking me out, but I still managed not to kill the climber.

Some experiences in life are just too voluminously magical to be contained by human language, so I will just say that the people family I met in Washington inspired me to great heights (literally and figuratively) and the time we shared touched me deeply. Over the course of the week, I heard many people's cancer stories, and I was shocked by my own reaction. Experiencing a story in the third person felt much harder than dealing with my own pain. Even now, I have tears rolling down my face as I think of my new friends and what they've gone through. On the third night, during our "campfire" talking circle, one participant--a single mom--shared how she had been trying to go on a First Descents trip for three years since being diagnosed with a brain tumor. As I listened, I felt the muscles in my chest tighten up through my neck and my nose beginning to run. I swallowed hard, attempting to push away thoughts of my own mother and the tears that were trying to flood in with the memories. I will not ugly cry in front of my new friends, I thought. I wanted to embrace this woman and sob on her shoulder, but that seemed entirely irrational. I wanted to talk to her and connect in some way, but what would I say? Hi. My mom had a brain tumor too. And now she's dead. So your story is making me really sad. I hope you don't die. That's awkward.

Another woman shared how her mother had supported her through her cancer journey, but shortly after she finished treatment, they were devastated by the news that the mom also had cancer. Doctors diagnosed her with a brain tumor, and she died three months later. I listened to this woman explain how her own healing process had been interrupted by grief, and how she had come to First Descents to begin that process again. I dug my body into the couch beneath me in a physical effort to suppress the emotions that wanted to spill out. I felt hot. My throat hurt from the ball of empathy banging around in my larynx. I did not expect this. This was not what I had come to do. I came to deal with this present situation I was in. Me, my cancer--not this lingering bereavement that still messed with me eleven years after my mother's death.

I managed to hold it together there on the couch that evening, but I kept a special eye on these women all week. I sensed that I needed to deal with this shitstorm of emotions that had caught me by surprise, but I had no idea how to begin.

On our final day, the temperatures in Leavenworth reached 100 degrees Fahrenheit. After several hours of climbing, we hiked up the loose rock face toward the summit, fumbling under the blazing heat of the sun. At the top, we all collapsed in the shade and scowled as our guides tried to coax us onto the rappel line. I scooted onto a massive hunk of quartz next to the woman who'd lost her mother. After a few minutes of small talk, I managed to say, "I'm sorry about your mom," and share my own story with her. When she looked at me, I saw the same mix of empathy and compassion I'd felt listening to her a few days earlier.

Despite the oppressive heat, we rappelled that day in honor of our moms. I didn't know I needed to do that, but I did. That evening, during our final campfire, we were asked to light a candle for those we hold in our hearts, who'd never get an opportunity like we'd had that week. I don't think my heart has hurt that much since I heard my mom take her last breath. I couldn't hold it together any longer, but it didn't matter. These people were my family and I didn't need to be anything but honest in front of them. I let the tears fall and the snot pour out of my nose like a tap, because apparently that's what happens when you no longer have nose hair. I thought back to the day I went in for an MRI and was diagnosed. I thought of lying in that imaging tube and believing I was reliving my mother's fate. I thought of how many times I have been FUCKING TERRIFIED during the last ten months and how scared my mom must've felt too. I thought of how she once told me to fuck off when she was sick, and how I took great offense to it. I thought of how many times I have wanted to tell people to fuck off this year, even though I truly love them. I thought, I'm sorry, Mom. I am so, so sorry.

When all the candles were lit, we were asked to turn to our neighbor and share our impression of them from the week. I turned to the woman next to me, the single mom with a brain tumor. This time, I did embrace her and sob on her shoulder.

Sending love and light to all of you. And your mom.

Woke Up Feelin' Like...

"My doom-proof platinum vest absorbed most of the radiation! In retrospect,  
I wish I'd have worn doom-proof pants, but you know us nudists."

 My hair can go ahead and grow back any day now.

I'd Like You to Liberate More Than My Arm

It's my first back-to-real-life Monday. It's the first alternating Monday since February 6th that I'm not cabled to an infusion bag with my ass glued in a plastic recliner. I'm not going to stumble home tonight feeling like I was roofied by Brock Turner disguised as a middle-aged nurse. I'm not going to wake up tomorrow feeling like I need a nap. Goodbye, metallic cottonmouth! Goodbye, vermillion pee! Goodbye, menopausal hot flashes! Most importantly, goodbye, dangly robot arm tube! (I credit my 2nd graders with that apropos renaming of my PICC-line.)

No more tube demons living in my arm.

 Today feels worth celebrating.

I deserved a celebration two weeks ago on my last day of chemo, but my doc's surprise recommendation of radiation treatment sucked the life out of my party. To be more precise, it sucked the life out of me. To be most precise, I wanted to hurl myself off a bridge in order to dramatically illustrate to my oncologist the adverse effects of her actions on my psychological frame of mind.

My trip to Washington had successfully distracted me from the sudden sketchy revision to my treatment plan, which I had hoped was a strange misunderstanding on my part. But when I came home, the story was lamentably the same. Dr. Jeffreys scheduled me for an appointment with a radiologist. I cried. A lot. And then I scheduled my own appointment with a second opinion oncologist at Froedtert's Medical College of Wisconsin.    

Froedtert's Dr. Fenske confirmed what Dr. Jeffrey's had told me: the standard of care for bulky tumors greater than ten centimeters is chemo plus radiation.

"Double turds!" I thought to myself.

Fortunately, Fenske didn't stop there. Radiation, he affirmed, would indeed decrease my chance of relapse, but only by 3%. Moreover, the long term survival of patients receiving just chemo versus those receiving chemo plus radiation was virtually the same. Considering how well my body had responded to the chemo and how great my scans looked, Fenske didn't seem to think radiation would do much more than the drugs had. He warned that the risks of radiation near my heart and through breast tissue could outbalance the 3% chance against relapse. The decision was mine, but he encouraged me to feel satisfied with the treatment I had already received and the incredible progress I'd made. "Worse case scenario," he added, "if--God forbid--it did come back, there are other treatment options ready for you. Radiation isn't your one and only chance to survive this."

This was exactly what I wanted to hear, so I questioned whether I had heard correctly. I'd spent three weeks trying to accept that radiation therapy was my inescapable fate and that I'd have to choose between probably getting Hodgkin's again or probably getting breast cancer later. I endeavored to imagine what kind of criminal fuckery I'd committed in a past life to deserve getting the rug pulled out from under me not once, but twice when I felt I was crossing the treatment finish line. I prepared myself for the humiliation of telling my school and my students and all their parents that I wasn't coming back to work, weeks after I had told them I was. But this Fenske guy was setting me loose! I suddenly felt ridiculous for all the 'nearly every day's I had marked on the mental heath questionnaire an hour prior.

Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by the following problems? a) feeling down, depressed or hopeless, b) trouble falling or staying... ALL THE THINGS, EVERYDAY, GIVE ME A XANAX NOW.

So I left Fenske's office and called the radiologist and cancelled my appointment. I went home and drank tequila. And now I've spent the last week trying to convince myself that this is real--that for now, I don't have to take anymore drugs or get zapped by lasers. I'm still bald, and I still have a lot of doctor appointments on the horizon, but otherwise, I can start to remember what it's like to be a normal Danielle Lynne. A normal blue-haired, rock-loving, potion-drinking, apocalypse-obsessed Danielle Lynne. Oh, how novel.