Never The Same

It was a year ago this week that I started the radiation treatments and the first round of chemotherapy. As the weather has turned warmer and the trees greener, I’ve definitely been thinking back to last summer and those daily trips to Winnipeg. I’m pleased that I’m in a very different place this summer, even if this summer is different again from every summer before my diagnosis. (Okay yes, every summer of your life is always different than the one before it, but I mean specifically that this summer I’m pooping into a bag, which is something most of us don’t normally do).

Looking back over my blog posts and the timestamps, I had forgotten already that the treatments lasted for just over a month. The side effects hung around for longer, but the almost-daily Mountains of Pills + Car Ride to CancerCare went from June 20th to July 26th. 0.2% of my life, if my napkin math is accurate, but at the time it was everything. I wrote back then about being unable to think about the future, and just getting through the days. A valuable skill that we humans possess! But, it feels weird that I’d have to refer to my own blog posts to bring back details of something huge and novel that happened only a year ago. That’s the other valuable skill, I suppose — to be able to forget and move forward.

I guess I knew about this from when our kids were babies. You’d sit up with them at night as time dragged on, and it began to feel like their little rooms were the entire world and the night would never end. Now, those nights feel like ages ago. To quote a certain podcast I listened to long ago, I’m “…left with nothing but a powerful wonder at the fleeting nature of even the most important things in life”.

So I’m learning that This Too Shall Pass. As with many of the life lessons I’ve learned on this journey, it’s something I already sort of knew. I think the trick is to remember these things the next time a difficult situation arises. Also, in this case, I want to learn grace, patience, and empathy for those who are going through their own world-encompassing struggles. Even if I think their problem is trivial or I know it will pass, I know how these situations can feel like everything, and maybe I can best help by just being there and sitting with them through it.

Speaking of radiation, my posts from that time seem to have glided over the details of the discomfort I was feeling. To tell the truth, as the treatments went on, I was in a lot of pain every time I’d go to the bathroom, and I came to dread the feeling of an impending bowel movement. Pain medication helped with the time between trips, but couldn’t remove the sharp, intense discomfort of actually going. Warm baths helped as well, and I started running one as soon as I entered the bathroom, knowing I’d be clambering into it shortly.

One of my posts mentions a “low point”, which I believe was referring to a moment during treatments when the pain was at its worst. The burning was so intense that I felt like I couldn’t operate my legs correctly, and in desperation I ended up just lying facedown in the bathroom, sobbing. This drew Lori’s attention but there wasn’t much to do except wait for the sensation to pass. I’m telling this story now because I wanted to talk about the thing that helped me get back up, and it was this image:

This is a picture taken of the computer I write these posts on. The image on the screen is a single frame from the volleyball-themed anime Haikyuu!!, depicting its protagonist Hinata, facedown on the floor. He’s in anguish, having run himself ragged in sheer frustration after a devastating defeat. Teeth gritted, with tears on his face, he’s clenched his fists. In the next shot, however, he gets back up, with new resolve to continue practicing and improving himself. It’s a powerful moment that becomes part of the end-credits montage of the show.

I was watching the series at that time as a comfort show, so I’d seen that image many times before the moment I found myself on the floor, teeth gritted and in tears. Yet in that moment of suffering, the image of Hinata came to me, and like him, I clenched my fists and struggled upward and into the bath again.

Until surgery, things rarely got that bad again, thank God. After that, I would often admit to Lori that even though I was uncomfortable or in pain, I wasn’t “lying on the bathroom floor”. I often thought of that image of Hinata as well. It wasn’t really something I drew from again after that, but sometimes unexpected things can help you in a specific moment. I’ll always be grateful to the writers and animators of Haikyuu!!, half a world away and whom I’ll never meet.