Thoughts on Motherhood

Most recently, the grotesque head of barrenness has been rearing.  I'm well past the breaking down at restaurants, or stifling urges to indefinitely "borrow" my friend's babies.  But the desire to be a mother is, at times, overwhelming.  I've accepted that the experience of pregnancy and childbirth aren't meant to be. I know in my heart that somewhere out in the world is a little person who needs a mother as much as I need a child, but the hurdles to overcome are staggering at times.

I often ask myself, why do I want a child so badly?  It's a crazy responsibility, and it's not like I'm married, or rich or anything like that.  I don't hold a secret fetish for changing diapers, or being vomited on.  Let's face it, they're germ-vectors, spewing forth the disease and contagion of the world.  A good friend of mine once told me that she hadn't had a good nights sleep since the day before she gave birth.  Anyone who has seen me low on sleep knows that to want to voluntarily consign myself to chronic sleeplessness is a sure sign of mental illness.  Kids are sticky, they can embarrass you, they argue, they're all kinds of expensive, and don't get me started on merely just keeping up with the never-ending energy the little buggers seem to have.  The fear of creepy-crawlers lurking behind bushes, or crazy drivers running red lights at the cross-walk is enough to make anyone with an ounce of sense give pause.

So why DO I want a child?

I want to be there to see the first smile.  I want to soothe a fever and kiss boo-boo'd knees.  I want to teach little Suzie how to ride her first bike.  I want to show little Justin how to hold his fingers in the right position for the piano.  I want to do back-to-school shopping and go to parent-teacher conferences.  I want to lay in bed and teach Janie little hand games like my mother did.  I want to see little Davie grow up to be a proper gentleman (I don't care what day and age it is, chivalry NEVER goes out of style!)  I want to make lopsided birthday cakes with freakishly blue frosting (yes, Sophia, I remember...)  I want to be sopping wet at bath time, and sing lullibies after reading Goodnight, Moon.  I want to see the lightbulb of understanding as we try to decipher the latest math homework. I want to pass on my love of music and theater, and be there for all of the firsts in a child's life.  I want to see my mom holding and loving my child, as only a proper Nanna can.  I want to decorate the house for Christmas and share the child-like joy of the annual picture with Santa at Nordstrom.

In short, despite the plethora of drawbacks, I want to be a mother....and cancer has stolen that from me, or at the very least made it extremely difficult for these experiences to ever be mine.  Fuck you cancer!

The post-cancer "halcyon" daze...err, days

Ok, I know in the grand scheme of all the blessings I've been given recently, I really don't have a right to complain.  I seem to talk to a lot of women at work having cancer lately who are in a lot worse shape than I am.  Even at the Crisis Line, I seem to be attracting all the cancer-related calls.  Not long ago I had a call from a woman with a stage 3 cancer, and she expressed the same anger, hurt, fear that I remember feeling, and to some extent still feel.  What made this call unique to me, was that she expressed anger at women who had lower stages of cancer than she did.  She railed at the unfairness of those of us who were "lucky" enough to only have stage 1 or 2 cancer.  She mourned the loss of her hair, and felt separate from the rest of the world.  I felt and often still feel that same separateness.  I know everyone around me empathizes, but unless you've experienced the trauma of a terminal illness (or in my case near-terminal), there's an unspoken understanding that you just can't know.  I suppose the closest I could describe is for you to imagine you're the only human on a completely alien planet.  You have a settled life, with alien friends and people around you.  Now imagine, even with this life, there is a part of you that is, and always will be different.  Then imagine the connectedness you feel when you happen to bump into another human on this alien world.  Without using any words, there is an understanding that the aliens, no matter how thoughtful or understanding, can't quite grasp.  That's what it feels like to talk with other women who have cancer.  We don't need to use words to express ourselves.  We just....know.

Changes....

Yes, I am officially the worst blogger in the world.  I can't believe it's been 2 months since I last posted!  DOH!

So let's get all up to speed and stuff!  Let's start with the hormones.  Yes, I know I've talked about it before, but let's do a little recap, shall we?

My oncologist gave me an rx for premarin.  As some of you know, this is a common estrogen replacement, which is short for PREgnant MAre uRINe.  Yes.  That's right folks.  Horse piss.  But not just ANY horse piss.  No, PREGNANT horse piss. I'm sure you can imagine that my first instinct is to avoid contact with horse piss (knocked up or otherwise).  Of course, I had to do my google-ing and research on it, and ethically I just couldn't bring myself to do it.  The way the medication is made is by impregnating the mares as often as possible.  Then, for the first 6 months of gestation, they're held in collection stalls, with limited movement/mobility with urine bags collecting all of the hormone filled yellow ambrosia.  Then, just before they're about to foal, they're put out to pasture, have the foals, and then knocked up again as quickly as possible.  And what happens to the babies, you might ask?  As you might not know, there is a veritable glut of horses on the market, and often times these foals end up going to slaughter.   Great.  Not only would I be swallowing distilled horse piss every day, but then I get to have visions of baby horses being murdered.

Needless to say, I don't want to go that route.  The downside is that the way my pharmacy communicated with my doctor, he declined the switch and left me having to figure out why.  I ended up having to go through my primary care doctor (gawd I love that man!), who also had trouble getting in touch w/ the oncologist, but in the end, he switched me over to the estradiol.  And since then, I haven't looked back! We started on the lowest dose, which made a huge difference, although I was still having some breakthrough hot flashes and mood changes.  But for the past week or two, I've been at the higher dose...and it's pure nirvana!!  I've had maybe 2-3 hot flashes TOTAL, and even they were pretty mild (compared to what I was having before where I thought sure my head was going to explode!)

In other news, I had my first followup with the oncologist and I'm still in remission! YAY!  I was SOOOO nervous to get checked (who looks forward  to getting a pap!?!) and I was terrified he would find something.   It's amazing how, after all these months, that even the slightest twinge puts me in freak out mode.  For the most part though, on a day to day basis, I'm really feeling great and just enjoying and loving being alive and relatively healthy (ok, yeah, I know, I need to drop a few...and when I say "few", I really mean a LOT!) lol!