As We Wait

This was one of those "middle"-ing weeks, a seven-day stretch of less important things between more pressing matters. Last week was brimming with birthday activities for Joey, including a Star Wars marathon and a liquid cheese debacle (his idea, not mine) for the birthday nachos. And next week I have "the doctor's appointment."

I'll admit, it's been a strange and overwhelming week of waiting. I am comforted by long phone conversations and snuggles with my dog. I took one day and went into town while the husband worked so that I could have coffee with friends and browse some craft stores. I have rested my mind with documentaries, a piano app on my phone, and writing and writing and writing. I have done all this, and other meaningless things I can't recall or mention, in order to prepare and try to keep myself calm for the appointment on Tuesday.

But among all those things, attempts to find some sort of peace or at least anxiety-free moments, I found these videos.

The first one includes stories from three women who discovered, at varying stages in life and for various reasons, that they weren't able to have children. I resonated with all three of their stories, the mystery of not knowing why, the struggle of feeling like you can't offer to the world what you want to, and the decision to tell the world.

It's not easy to just come out and say it. I spent nearly a decade thinking I had PCOS, and I didn't say anything most of the time because I was ashamed. I'm sorry I didn't say something sooner, because I feel like it would have been even more of a victory when I finally realized I didn't have it.

In the second video a woman describes her experience with having a miscarriage. I have never been pregnant (yet!), nor have I had a miscarriage, but she also explained that she had a D&C (dilation & curettage). This is the same procedure I had during surgery back in February, and what happened to her only happens to about 1 in 500 women. However, the perspective is helpful--now you know what I was up against. The scarring from a mistake like that (you know, puncturing through someone's body) can lead to infertility.

While both videos were heartbreaking in their own right, and watching them could have led towards a depressed mindset, they were truly more beneficial than harmful. As I prepare for yet another uncomfortable and painful procedure next Tuesday, it is so good... so good to know that there are other people, other woman, with stories like mine.

It seems so odd that the appointment is finally here, and I still feel as if there is not enough time before it happens. It was the beginning of March when I went to see my oncologist for the first time, when I first started the drugs, when I stood in the waiting room and stared in befuddlement at the receptionist who said, "You need an appointment three months from now? Okay, let's see... July 28th." She handed me the little reminder card and I thought, I know I'm an English nerd and not a math genius, but this is almost five months away.

FYI, I just paused my writing to play with bubble wrap. This sort of thing also helps.

Often life hands us situations where we don't know what to expect. However, I find that those situations usually involve a handful of possible outcomes, perhaps a whole list of options for things that may or may not happen. Right now I don't have a handful of outcomes. I have two. I just don't know what they'll lead to.

They're going to do a biopsy. (When I say "a" biopsy, I really mean it's a singular experience, because there are actually about 6 biopsies taken.) I don't need to tell you I'm not looking forward to it, but I'll say it anyways. I'm really not looking forward to it. Once it's done, I'll wait a few days for the results.

Outcome #1: All the cancerous cells are gone!

Outcome #2: The cancerous cells are still here!

There is nothing in my mind or body that knows how to move forward from either of those circumstances. I think I know what the doctor's want, if all the cancer is gone. They want to put me on birth control (barf) for a few months and "see how that works." I am not on board with that plan and if I can conjure the courage I will tell them, with all the fierce facial expressions I can come up with, that I want to skip the birth control and get straight to the fertility drugs, since that's our end goal anyways.

I'm all about efficiency, you know.

But if the cancerous cells are not gone, and I don't know why they wouldn't be, I have absolutely no clue as to what the next step is. More of the same drugs? Higher doses? Different drugs? Something scary, like chemo? Something terrifying, like a hysterectomy?

These aren't things you can prepare for. I can barely prepare myself for the biopsy, something I'm already very familiar with.

So it essentially feels, all the time, like I'm waiting for something in order to wait for the next thing.

I'm waiting for Tuesday so I can go to the doctor and wait in the lobby, then wait uncomfortably on the table with the stupid paper towel blanket, then wait for the procedure to be over, then wait for the doctor to shut up and leave, and then wait for the results. And heaven knows once I get the results I'll have to wait for another appointment to figure out what we'll do next.

And whatever we do next, I'll have to "wait and see" if it works. Or doesn't.

Waiting is hard. Sometimes it's the hardest part of life. Sometimes it's the only thing you can hold on to--I don't know much, except that I'm waiting. I don't have what I want, but I'll keep waiting until I do. And most of the time we wait because we don't have a choice, or because choosing to wait is the right thing to do, even if it's the most difficult.

And while I'm waiting, while we wait together and work long hours and agonize over what will happen, we still have hope. We hope for and imagine the joyful sound of that bursting heartbeat, a reluctant first cry, tiny hands grasping for us, a pair of enormous blue eyes. While we wait, we hope, we walk aimlessly through the baby section at Target and sometimes it makes us sad... and sometimes (like yesterday morning) I walk through, proudly and courageously touching tiny baby shoes and admiring innovative baby toys, because my hope is bigger than my fear.

These are so many hopes and dreams rolled into one and it is the thing we strive for, regardless of how implausible it might seem. I hope for this and ask for what I want. I could simply ask for health. I could be waiting just to "get better." I could hope that my body would be healed and never expect more.

I'm scared, but not so scared that I'll hope for the lesser things. I'm brave enough to know what I want, and to ask for it, to really beg for it, brave enough to hope for it... because it makes the waiting easier.

Alternatives

I am not a runner. If you're ignorant or insulting, you could take one look at me and say it. "She's not a runner." But the state of my body is not necessarily a reflection of my life, my activity, or even my "health" as some would put it.

For reasons unknown my body started making cancerous cells. I didn't do anything, eat anything, drink anything, or experience anything to cause those cells to spring into life and then cause chaos within me. So some people will try to convince you that the external body is always proof of a person's intentions, or lack thereof--like I intended to be a certain shape or size.

Before I start to react to old messages, old things that make me feel ashamed (because I'm not!) I'll just tell you that I went to the doctor last week.

I'd been having some knee and foot pain, especially while I was "working out" (a term that sounds obnoxious, even when I'm simply typing it). I have a history of sprained ankles, sometimes spontaneously (as in, I spent an hour standing while singing, holding a microphone, and at the end of that hour I couldn't walk and the next day I got x-rays and my doctor told me my foot was bleeding internally.) Due to this unfortunate history, I wanted to see if maybe I was doing something wrong, and if I could fix it.

She took a look at my right foot and my right knee. The left side of me is fine, inexplicably. She laughed and told me it wasn't broken, as if I had expected it to be. I explained my ankle/foot injuries, the traumatic time I hurt the right foot on a mission trip and never got it looked into because directly after the trip I burst an eardrum. She said, "Well, you have weak ankles. Obviously. So you walk a little knob-kneed, and your ankle compensates, and then your knee compensates for the ankle. Also, you have to stop running."

And I'm a nice person so I didn't laugh at her, but I did hold up my hand like a stop sign to confirm that I do not run. Of course, then she asked what I was doing and I said, Kickboxing. If you know me, you know my face when I'm irritated but trying to be polite. Imagine that face.

This is turning into a long, boring story about a trip to my doctor, a woman who likes to assume things and interrupt me, so I'll fast forward: She told me to stop kickboxing or doing anything with my feet. I am allowed to swim, or bike, or stretch. In a few months, I might be allowed to do the kickboxing again.

I have reliable access to neither of the first two options, so I am left with... stretching.

Now before ya'll go into throwing advice at me (not my favorite thing) about yoga or some other mumbo jumbo, don't. I can take care of myself. I'll figure this out.

Because I know how to find alternatives. Because that's how we survive.

Now, I'm not happy about it. I love... love kickboxing. I explained to a friend last week that there's nothing as exhilarating or even empowering about releasing that sort of aggressive energy through a physical action. When I am fighting an invisible opponent, I am in charge of my body, and my feelings. I decide which emotion I'm feeling and its intensity, every time I cross-punch the air or kick my leg over my head... well, almost.

But now I have to find an alternative.

And it just reminds me of all those other things in life, those desires and dreams we are given, the things we long for and nearly reach but must inevitably give up on--however temporarily--in order to keep ourselves safe.

How many times do we start something and enjoy every moment of it, while we're basking in that experience, but afterwards... realize some sort of regret? Or perhaps a downfall that wasn't earlier considered?

How many times do we reach for something and take all the right steps, only to find we are not ready in some other fashion, or it's not the right time, or the rules have changed?

And in those times, do we give up? Do we bury the dream, stifle our desires, forget the thing which might make us truly alive...?

It's not easy to give up either, you know. It may look cowardly to run the other way, but it isn't, not if you're running towards something else. It's simply realistic. It takes a certain bravery to shelve the things we long for, or change the way it looks, and give in to secondary things, to put our energy into other people and other dreams, to find life and satisfaction and fulfillment in something new.

Just think of all the relationships that have failed. The lost jobs. The unfinished projects. The children that never were, the house that never became a home. And how everywhere, for all people, while they may regret for some time the thing they could not have, eventually everyone finds an alternative.

New relationships are formed. New jobs found. New projects conceived, started, finished. Children adopted. Other places become home. The alternative becomes more than second best, more than something you settled for. The alternative sometimes becomes the new dream.

It feels a little weird for me to make this analogy, basing it on kickboxing. (Although, at least it's not about running.) But the point is, even if I have to give up on the one thing that really made "working out" (barf) worth my time, I'm not giving up on it forever. I'm just not going to hurt myself in order to keep doing it. I'm going to find an alternative... even if that alternative happens to be yoga.