A few months ago, I was walking with a young friend. She hated to even mention her struggles in light of my family dealing with cancer. I told her, "Struggles are struggles. Just because yours is not like mine does not mean that it is not a struggle for you." We went on with our walk, and I tried to encourage her.
With each stage of this breast cancer treatment, I think the worst part is behind me as I complete each stage. I think the next part will be easier, but I am becoming less certain of that. I hear of others who did not have to go through some phase that I have and somehow think how lucky they must be. When at the cancer center one day, I met up with a lady a little younger than me who I knew while growing up. She said how long her treatment was. I assumed it was the same type of cancer and was jealous briefly of her four months of treatment compared to the year I am doing, only to find out how intense those four months were for a different cancer. I had to sheepishly apologize.
I knew that chemotherapy and surgery were going to be hard. I thought this month of recovery from surgery before radiation was going to be easy. It hasn't been. I had others who told me about it, but it is like so many other things, you just do not understand until you are in it. I just start to get my strength up and increase my mobility, and then it is time for another trip to the plastic surgeon for further expansion. The "balloons" that were placed in the chest after surgery get fluid added to them each week to stretch the skin to be prepared for the implant at a later date. So I have kind of felt like I did during chemotherapy, just when I am feeling good again, it is time to go back. Thankfully my last expansion was today and was the least amount of fluid thus far, because I had been able to do so much already. It is not easy.
This week I go see the radiologist to make plans for this next phase. I have tried not to think about the next phase before I completed the one I was on that day. In my mind, I have thought it would be easy, well easier anyway. As I look online at what to expect and make a list of things to get, I begin to be overwhelmed. It will have side effects. I will have to manage things. This is not going to be easy.
I made a new friend back in November. She sat beside me when Painting with a Twist came to the cancer center. She was such an encouragement to me because she was at the end of her treatments. She was going in a couple of weeks to have her final reconstruction done. Wow, that should be easy after everything else. Unfortunately, I found out yesterday that there was a complication in her surgery and she is having some severe side effects. She will be going back to the doctor to find out why. That was supposed to be easy. It wasn't.
Never the less, as the resident encourager to all the new lady cancer patients, she encouraged me to encourage others. I told her that I have been trying already to encourage others to get checked out and get mammograms done as well as encouraging those who are waiting for results. She had not even thought of that yet.
Early on, I was told several times that this is the cancer to have, if you are going to have one. It almost made it sound easy. However, after a lady in our church passed away from the cancer spreading from her breast to other parts of her body and a friend's mother who twice beat breast cancer finds out it is in her brain, I cannot agree. The truth is that no cancer is easy. No treatment is easy. Nothing about this is easy!
Nonetheless, I have reason to give thanks. I have a wonderful husband nursing me through this process. I have children, the four year old most vocally, cheering me through each stage. I have parents who help anyway they can to make sure the children have what they need. I have a sister who came to celebrate the end of chemotherapy with me and sisters in this battle who keep me pressing on daily. I have a ton of friends who have brought dinners and sent cards of encouragement. I have a God who knows every day of my life and how many hairs of my head have grown back and who meets me in the secret and quiet place, speaking to my heart, renewing my spirit. I have an assurance of eternity in heaven with my Savior, in light of which these difficult days will be the blink of an eye.
It is not easy, but I will yet rejoice in tribulation.
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