I can remember the first time I realized that the flair for the dramatic came with it's share of followers and fans. Up until my parents divorce, I had been a shy, overlooked child. I was not overly pretty, smart or memorable for that matter and I was used to fading into the background with ease. At this particular moment, the moment of realization, I was in third grade chorus and having a crappy emotional day. We were rehearsing for our Christmas Program, the first one that my parents would attend separately, and I began to cry. When asked by my classmates and teachers what the problem was, I began to spin a tale that would have the children gasping sympathetically and the adults blotting at unshed tears.
I couldn't possibly sing "White Christmas" I explained, because several Christmases ago, on a particularly snowing evening, I sat holding my grandmother's frail hand in a frigid hospital room, wrapped in an over sized sweater. As the snowfall became heavier and heavier, I would talk to her of memories of catching snowflakes on our tongues and snow angels on the hill and of hot cocoas by the fire. The night was cold and long and as she began taking her last breaths, I began singing that song as she slipped from this earth and made her journey beyond.
Of course I left out the part where journey was Forty-five minutes away to her home where she continued to live until I was in my twenties. But somewhere in that sad, dramatic story of a moment, I was a media darling and I liked it. The rest of my youth went on like that, lots of drama, little peace but as television was showing me, I was living life as I was supposed to. I wasn't dramatic, I was passionate.
It wasn't until meeting and marrying my tremendously stable husband that I realized I was so tired of the drama. I had become a weary traveller on the road to love and had no idea what a wonderful, supportive, drama-free relationship looked or felt like.
My husband and I are fifteen years in and have thankfully not had too many bumps along the way. We have endured sleepless nights with newborns, hospitalizations with small children and the everyday ups and downs that life brings with it. Together.
Enter my Breast Cancer.
One year before my diagnosis, my comfortably stable life seemed to begin unravelling. Having always suffered a couple of days of depression in my menstrual cycle, I began to suffer for weeks at a time. I would sometimes take to my bed for days on end, letting my household chores slip away and leaving my 8 year old to care for my 6 year old son. Something.... I knew, was very wrong.
I began to see doctors. Maybe this was what was known as Marathon Letdown. I had run four marathons the year before and maybe my body got used to the excess in cortisol release and was now depressed without it. I was checked for perimenopause and determined that I was not in it. Hormones great. Then, I was diagnosed with PMDD (pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder) or extremely bad PMS. They put me on Lexapro for the depression and sent me on my way.
After about 6 months on the Lexapro, I was a complete zombie with horrible side effects. I gained weight in my tummy (something which never happens to me) I could not get sexually aroused and I could not remember anything....anything. I once ran in to a friend who I had known for 10 years and I could not remember her name. Something wasn't right here. I called the doctor immediately and began stepping down off of the antidepressant.
Six more months went by and I still had the same "blackness" living inside of me. The depressions were lasting longer and longer and my kids were starting to feel the effects. When my husband came home from work one night and asked where I was and my daughter's response was "where she's been all year....in bed." I knew something had to be done. This was not simply my flair for the dramatic rearing it's ugly head again some fifteen years later. Something. Was. Wrong.
The day that my mammogram results came back that I had calcifications in my right breast that they wanted to look at more closely, I began to feel some relief. Then after the stereotactic biopsy when they told me I had Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia (ADH) I felt more relief. When the surgical Biopsy came back Ductal Carcinoma In-Situ (DCIS), again relief. When the bilateral mastectomy came back back clear margins. Final. Relief.
You see something was wrong. Cancer was in my body and my body knew it, just none of us did. It was fortunately not my youthful flair for the dramatic, that was rearing it's ugly head but an actual enemy that I needed to fight.
I have no "blackness" left in my mind, I still take to my bed once in awhile and allow myself to feel what is happening to me but I am no longer a prisoner to the unknown. When asked by others, I always tell them, if you feel like something is wrong, then it probably is. Don't stop until you find out and take care of it. Don't let doctors label you and medicate you without further testing.
Cancer by it's nature is drama. Luckily it came up against the grown-up me instead of the adolescent me but I still, in the end, wound up screaming, stomping and slamming the door in it's face just for old time's sake.
