Blog Therapy - Denial (Part 1 of 5)

I was watching Drop Dead Diva the other night. Have you seen it? I can't really decide if the show is insulting or clever. The premise is that a super cute (but dumb) model dies and is sent back to Earth to live in the body of a size 16 woman who is really smart, and she feels like she was sent to Hell. Anyway, Jane, the main character, is a lawyer who was giving a closing argument about a man who lost his wife. She described the 5 stages of grief as Denial/Isolation, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I was thinking about how it is the same for someone who has a life changing illness, such as myself, and how I think I went through each of these stages, and I am just now getting to the acceptance stage. I decided that maybe if I blogged about it and remembered how each stage felt and what I was thinking, maybe it will help me to get to the last stage and get ready for the process of living my life again. I think that being so close to the end of treatment has really made me think about the last 6 months and all the ups and downs (mostly downs).



Denial/Isolation

When I was first diagnosed I was positive the doctors (all 3 of them) were making a mistake. I was way too young to have the C word. I was healthy and in good shape. Surely God wouldn't do this to someone like me. I am a mom for goodness sake. I just had a chest cold. And who ever heard of Hodgkin's Disease anyway? That was just something people on TV got, not real people. Besides, if I were to get cancer, it would be breast cancer, because that was what I had been told and trained to worry about all my adult life. The thought of getting Lymphoma just had never occurred to me. It had to be a mistake. For once, the Air Force was over reacting instead of just brushing me off as usual.



Then I thought that it was a nightmare. And I kept waiting to wake up. And waiting. But every day I would see the ugly port-cath that the doctor stuck in my chest and I would see myself shrinking before my eyes. And the chemo was really making me sick. And still I wondered when I would wake up from this very vivid, long, depressing dream.



Even though I had the support of my family, my squadron, and a few friends, I still felt incredibly alone. I really had never had to watch anyone go through this. Of course I knew people who have had cancer, like grandparents and other old people (and it didn't end well for them), but no one my age or even close to my age. A few friends were really great and would talk to me about it, but most people I knew just averted their eyes when they saw me, or pretended like there was nothing happening. I could feel the eyes on me every time I was in public, and I wasn't even bald yet. I really felt like people could just look at me and know I was sick. An Air Force base is just like a really small town. Everyone knows everyone, and we have been here a long time. I knew the news was spreading across the base fast, and that more and more people knew about it. And I felt ashamed, like I had done something wrong. I knew intellectually that that was stupid, but still I felt it.



It was like walking into a very dark scary tunnel. I had no idea what to expect or how I would feel. Or even if I would come out the other side. No one in the movies or on TV ever lives through cancer, they all have the dramatic death scenes. Even though the doctors told me I was going to beat this and I would be healthy again in time, I was sceptical and scared. The idea of chemo just scared the hell right out of me. All I knew was that no one could do it for me, and I couldn't just walk away from it and quit. That's when I got really pissed off, and Anger set in.