"I, Cancer"

I feel like my advanced stage 3B cancer is at times, all encompassing of who I am. There's not a day that goes by where I don't wake up in the morning worried about my cancer. Really though, what can I do, but to go through my day? After all, I won't be able to have any scans done until the end of August or the beginning of September 2018. The reason I can't have any scans until then is because of all the radiation I received during my cancer treatments.

Having cancer has traumatized me to say the least. Before I was diagnosed with it, I used to think that I would never be strong enough to handle a disease such as cancer. Being diagnosed with cervical cancer started with me going into the emergency room one evening in January 2018 because I had not stopped bleeding in over 30 days. My bleeding episodes were right up there with bloody crime scenes, and trust me- I'm not exaggerating. One time, I was on the concord trail bus with my husband when we were coming back from meeting doctors in Boston and heading back to Maine. I went into the bathroom and I just could not stop the blood and in a moving bus- it was all over. Trying to clean it all up in the moving bus was even worse. By the way, have you ever seen a horror movie where the person is in the bath tub and then it fills with blood? Well, I had that nasty experience too. Then, of course there was the cancer pain which they gave me hydro-morphine for. As ironic as it sounds, I started watching the show Intervention. I'm watching these people nod off and here I am wide-awake still writhing in pain. At best, opiates for me felt no different than relief from Tylenol. That's just to give you an idea of horrible it was. 

Other parts were not nearly as horrific as I thought they would be either. My chemotherapy was for 4 hours on Tuesdays every week. My loving, amazing, husband and Co-Author James went with me for each session. According to him, I was the only patient he saw for multiple weeks eating meals during their treatments. The anti-nausea drugs they gave me helped me with not puking and using medical marijuana kept me eating healthy. However, I still didn't escape that unscathed as I still have deep bruises in my arms from being pumped with Cisplatin.  

Since my treatments have ended I've not had any massive bleeding. On most days, I'm pretty functional and think I am in better health but I just never truly know. At the end of my chemo-radiation they did surgery and the doctors were able to get a look at my tumor. They were very pleased at how much it had shrunk down. However, it's still there... 

For obvious reasons that keeps me terrified. Hopefully, my health will stay improved.

In the words of Taylor Swift "Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time."

One bright shining point is that going back to writing has been amazing. Instead of thinking about cancer all the time, I have an outlet and I'm excited that the novella long serial "Twins" will be released soon. If you're a fan of romance and/or fantasy, check out our series 'A Chronicle of Rebirth'

Cheers!

J.M. Fletcher

A Chronicle of Rebirth Series- Buy Link