April 5th, 2019 by Janine
Hello you. Is anybody out there? Sorry I have been so silent for so long; it’s been a heck of a hard eight months. That’s not to say there haven’t been some good times, some great times, times I’ve felt adventurous, happy, even peaceful. There have though, been times when I’ve thought this is just too much. Too much everything. I may have been giving this blog the silent treatment, yet in my head, I have written so many, many, times.
If any one thing had happened, gone wrong, been challenging; I would have been able to cope. Life doesn’t work that way, though, does it? One thing happens, then another, and while I get my head around those, another and another, like multiple, side by side dominos tracks; they all cascade, one by one and at the same time – bang, bang, bang.
After about the third bang…my ability to do the helpful, healthy things went out of the window. I fell of the tracks… I struggled to get back on. For a week, I managed it, then I fell off again. I picked myself up, recommitted but only for a day … and then I …gave up.
Sugar, alcohol, copious amounts of coffee, long periods of not eating, then eating crap, withdrawal, duvet days, not wanting to socialise, wanting to be on the couch with TV and the cat…all re-entered my life with a vengeance. I was no longer walking the psychologist and cancer care talk.
Except I couldn’t escape the knowing. I knew what was happening. I watched it happen. I watched everything I’d built up to support me, over the previous year since diagnosis, slip away. Despite this, somehow, I was still managing to function, to help others, to turn up at the cancer centre and be the psychologist, I knew myself to be. The cost was high. Exhaustion kicked in. Overwhelm. Then the next domino fell, and the next and another.
So, I fell off the tracks and self-care plans. I stopped walking my talk. Out went the green smoothies and in came caffeine and Pisco sours. I was in cope, any way I could, mode.
Turns out I am very, very, human after all. Who knew?
And the dominos…Well, one you already know about, if you caught my last two blogs,
Isoflavones and Tears on a plane
The others were a shock to me, maybe to you too.
The first set;
1. My hands stopped working.
2. Mum got cancer.
3. An internet troll joined my party.
I’m not silent anymore.
Posted in Cancer in my family, Psychology for Cancer, Symptoms and Side Effects, Uncategorized Tagged with: Cancer, Family, Fatigue, Mother, Psychology, Side effects, Troll