I've never thought of myself as a particularly weak person. My mom will tell you I came out strong willed, with my own unique Grace way of doing things. As an adult, I've made my share of mistakes, but I've always been independent and self sufficient. Having cancer, and the resulting surgery has been incredibly humbling, but it's also given me a steel strength I didn't have before.
The humility has had to come both from emotional and physical sources. From a physical side, the first big slap of modesty flew out the window with the physical inability to care of myself. There's something about having people poking and prodding you, and really not having any way to care for yourself that makes you realize just how vulnerable you are as a human being. Having any sense of modesty stripped away as you're being bathed and wiped is embarrassing, but it's also strengthening. I actually didn't die of embarrassment and now I know that it's not as bad as I thought it would be, which, in a way made me confront a common human fear of being physically helpless.
Of course, that physical weakness has totally gone away (thank goodness! LOL!), but I feel like I have another strength that has developed that wasn't there before. I regularly tell myself, if I can kick cancer, I can do anything. It's not a superwoman invincibility complex, but more of a calm confidence that no matter what challenges I face in the future, none of them are going to be as terrifying and stressful as dealing with cancer has been. I saw my pcp a week or so ago to go over how to deal with menopause, and I told him how great I'd been feeling since the surgery, like I was on a high. He said, "Grace, there's very few things that someone your age faces that is as stressful as dealing with cancer. It's normal that when that stress is taken away, that you feel the way you do." Since then, I think my mood has started to swing back down to earth, and possibly slightly depressed, but I keep holding on to the idea that as long as the cancer doesn't come back, I can still achieve all the goals I have for myself.
It's really hard to describe what all the emotional impact of having cancer has done to me. I'm feeling like I'm finally in a place to start being able to deal with the fallout of cancer, and I'm still going through the grief process, which seems to ebb and flow. But it's really hard to do it alone, and I think I'm finally ready to join a support group and get some counseling to get it figured out. I know people told me right away to do that, but to be honest, I just wasn't ready to start coping, I was too busy just worrying about surviving. Now that my survival seems to be mostly assured, it's like my psyche is saying, ok, now it's safe to put your guard down and let yourself feel everything.
As hard as things have been emotionally, I'm just so glad to be feeling anything, even if it is sadness or fear sometimes. The numbness of those weeks after I was diagnosed was necessary, but not a place I ever want to be again.
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