Wrapping my head around a blog

Not sure if a blog is the right thing for me, better said, a blog can be a good thing for me but not sure that's what I had in mind. I can see how this format could so quickly turn into a personal diary, that's all nice and good but I don't think a personal diary would be of much use to anyone, especially to anyone just learning that they are members of my tribe too. While of course it can be inspiring to read about survival stories and positive outcomes when you first start to grapple with this, and believe me, there are plenty of them out there, I want this to be different. I don't want it to be about my story, because to be honest, my story is probably irrelevant to people outside of my circle. Every person's story is different, every cancer is different, every circumstance is different, and when I first began to try to navigate through this what I needed most wasn't reading other people's stories, what I needed was some sort of resource to help me piece together my own, so that's what I'm setting out to do. Even a little bit of information that helps you sort out the experience you are going through can be huge, and I've been lucky enough to have found help along my way, that's what I want to provide to my sisters and brothers now.

Let me explain the Tribe

The days I spent in the hospital after my surgery were laced with dream images that held messages for me, I know they probably had more to do with the happy juice running through my veins but they were meaningful for me nonetheless.

One of these messages was The C-Tribe. I realized that I now belonged to a new tribe, with all the plus and minuses that entailed. This is what I wrote down initially:

We walk among you, you know, we’re not all that different from you, no need to fear us, pity us, reject us or ignore us. We are just like you, except that one day we had the “C” word dropped on us… yes, that “C” word, cancer. It’s the great divider, those with and those without, but is it? And does it need to be? We all walk around with it in our bodies, we all have cancer cells present, its just that some of us have or had more of them, OK, maybe lots more of them. But the minute that scarlett letter is emblazened on you then you become this other person, you are no longer just “my friend, Dora”, you become “my friend, Dora, with cancer”; the addendum typically said in a whisper. And that makes both parties feel odd, different, awkward, needlessly so. So I’m here to say that we can all relax around this, I know it would do me a world of good and would probably be good for you as well.

Odds are that even if you’re not aware of it you know people who have had to deal with cancer, we put our pants on one leg at a time too; we’re just like everyone else. Except that the minute you are made aware of someone’s “C” status there is a social schism that drops down like a weighted curtain, and stays there. Are we really that scary? Is that whole “reminds us of our own mortality” thing really that strong? We have the same probability of stepping off a curb one day and being hit by a bus as you do; the odds are the same for us all.

OK, back to today- I know I walk alone through my experience with cancer (ironically even though I have amazing people in my life that hold my hand down the path, and for them I am infinitely grateful). There's such a push-pull involved in this tribe, the push against pre-conceived concepts surrounding our diagnoses, the pull of a forceful camaraderie that we would no doubt opt out of given the choice. But this is what I have been given in life, some of us belong to the blue eyed tribe, some the left handed tribe, some the alcoholic tribe, you get my drift... me? the c-tribe.

Timing...

I think it's interesting that I have decided to write about my perceptions now, I started this last night and can't stop thinking about getting back on here for some more, that's not like me...

At any rate, timing- I finish treatment this week and I think somewhere in my mind is the lurking thought about the possibility of re-entering my life as I knew it before. And although I know for a fact that my life as I knew it before no longer exists I guess it's a seductive illusion. I have a friend, a three time cancer survivor, who I spoke to days after this thing started and I naively said "I don't think this has sunk in yet", she wisely replied "honey, this won't even begin to sink in for six months", so here I am, starting to process.

The last six months I think my soul has been on auto pilot, and that's not such a bad thing, to begin with, my soul is one that believes unabashedly in the core good in everything and that is a comfort. And also, I've been put through a series of experiences that have been a bit mind numbing, surgery, chemo, radiation... things you just plug through I guess.

I have often been wrapped up in a feeling that I am supposed to "DO" something with all of this, not in the often trite "everything happens for a reason" vein of thought, but rather with a sense of logic, a compulsion to make sense of things not only for me but for others in my tribe.

The nitty and the gritty

OK, so all of this setting up of the blog was a lot easier than expected, now it's time to write. And defining what I want to write about is the hard part. So here are the basics- I'm a 52 year old woman living in LA, I'm overweight, have been all my life but always healthy. Life was plugging right along, sometimes happily, sometimes begrudgingly, but steadily one foot in front of the other. Until one day I went to the emergency room out of sheer frustration with the nothingness I knew I would get from a regular doctor visit, I had a nagging pain in my right lower abdomen, appendicitis? probably not... probably something as unglamorous and humiliating as diverticulitis (anybody old enough to remember the SNL skit?). So I sat there in the exam room, doing everything that was asked of me (drink 4 oz of this contrast liquid every 15 minutes for one hour, etc.), had my scan, read my book, and waited for the very young doctor to come back and tell me what to do to relieve the pain (I won't make the obligatory Doogie Howser wisecracks), but all of a sudden he seemed a little jittery: "when was the last time you had a pelvic ultrasound?" huh? how often do people have pelvic ultrasounds? he made it sound like something as routinely done as a dental check-up... "because the radiology report says they see masses consistent with ovarian cancer and metastases..." yeah, that's about where time stopped. It's been pretty much a blur since then, and that was 6 months and 9 days ago...

It's not my intention to make this blog about my story, I can't think of anything more boring for my hypothetical readers out there. It is my intention, though, to talk about the isolation that is cancer. And to do my damnedest to topple that.

Figuring it out

It's going to take me a little bit to sort out where I want to go with this, with the blog and with my life since I had the C word dropped on me, so please indulge me.

C-Tribe is born

I've been thinking about this for a while... 6 months to be exact, more on that in a bit, first I have to get this blog thing off the ground.