I gave up.
I am not completely positive when it happened… if it was a week later or weeks but somewhere along the way I gave up.
I did not plan for skin cancer to impact me the way it did.
After a biopsy, PET scan, and bloodwork I found out that my cancer was caught early and not as serious as it could have been. I mean stage 3 skin cancer is nothing to mess with. Especially when your lab results show that it is ‘brisk’ (fast growing).
BUT stage 4 means it has gone into your lymphnoids and chemo is necessary. I was lucky and able to rid my body of the intrusion by the hands of a surgeon with no further treatment needed.
When I think about it there are people who have gone through so much worse. I even became angry with myself that it affected me the way it did.
I froze. It wasn’t overnight. I just knew one day I woke up and I was overwhelmed. Everything overwhelmed me. Dealing with doctor appointments and tests all while driving children to work and school and no help made me feel so anxious. Taking my sixteen month old son with me to appointments didn’t help matters either.
I was tired. So tired I was comatose, zoned out with my head nodding trying to stay awake enough to monitor my children. All I wanted to do was nap. I was experiencing extreme fatigue.
And I wanted to cry but had somehow convinced myself I was not allowed to. Well, because I had to be strong (I was even told by someone) it is really not that big of a deal.
But… If it was not that big of a deal why did I feel paralyzed? And no one understood and no one offered help.
I am not even sure I realized how bad things had gotten until about a week after my surgery. It was almost like I had woken up and saw all that had been neglected.
I stopped fixing my hair and wearing makeup. The house was a wreck. Laundry was piled – not just in the laundry room but in every room. Junk piles of mail and school papers were stacked everywhere and toys cluttered the rooms and everything had collected dust. Where had I been that I let everything go?
I realized what had happened. I do not know how I did not see that I was in a depressive state until it had passed. I thought I was coping. I thought “I got this!” Man was I wrong.
