Since my wife started feeling better she has started reaching out on the internet who have had a similar battle against cancer.
One woman wrote of her depression over adjusting to the changes to her body as the result of breast cancer. My wife replied that she had not gone through any depression over the double mastectomy or losing her air. Throughout her adult life she had considered in solitary reflective moments how she thought she would react if she did develop breast cancer. She had made peace with all the things that matter to most people, but she had not considered the overwhelming fatigue which comes with the chemotherapy treatment.
She has not worried about what was taken away, but has felt frustration and impatience as she was forced to sit at home, month after month. The only places she went were to treatment centers, doctor’s offices and hospitals. She missed going up and down all the aisles at the grocery store looking at all the products she might want to buy to make a new recipe. She missed going to the kitchen and making all of those new dishes and deciding if she liked them or not.
I imagine many women with breast cancer felt the same way, and it was nice to read another person’s sharing their own exasperation of waiting for their energy to return so they could start living their lives the way they wanted to and not be forced into just sitting there, not really keeping up with what was on television, or what they might feel like eating or just having thoughts other than those that centered around the illness.
She’s now getting out to shop, she’s paying attention to the new documentary on anything, everything. She’s planning dinners. She’s gone back to Genealogy.Com to find out more about our weird relatives who lived a couple of hundred years ago. She’s connecting back to the world.
Who knew the internet could play such an important part in the fight against cancer?