When you are diagnosed with cancer, you face the unknown. I didn't know that every type of cancer is treated with a different combination of chemo drugs, with different types of administration, different lengths of treatment time, and different schedules. You don't know how your body will react to the treatment, the lasting side effects, whether the treatment will cause other types of cancer in the future, or whether it will work or not. It is terrifying and overwhelming. You start seeing oncologists and they feed you so much information that you can't comprehend because your mind is in a state of shock.
1. A second set of ears and eyes! One important thing I learned was to take someone with me to every appointment who could either take notes or at least be another set of ears to listen and remember what we were being told. After the appointment we could discuss what information we had heard and what questions it created.
2. Write your questions down! When you go into a doctors appointment and they start talking, it is easy to forget everything you wanted to know about beforehand unless you have a list to discuss with them. I continue to use this for doctors appointments now for my baby and myself because I still struggle with chemo brain.
3. "What is chemo brain," you may ask. Well, that is another thing I learned about. One of the effects of chemo for me was short term memory loss/lapses. It was pretty severe for the first 6 months or so where I couldn't even recall conversations I had with people or things they told me. The number of times my husband would tell me something and then bring it up later when I had zero recollection are too many to count. It has now been over two years since I completed treatment and I still struggle to remember things at times. This may have been exacerbated by pregnancy and now postpartum hormones, but I definitely still feel like my short term memory is affected. I've seen much improvement since the beginning though, especially after doing brain games like Sudoku and Scrabble.
4. Your hair grows back different! When my hair first grew back it was curly after I'd had straight or slightly wavy hair my whole life. I had cute little ringlets for about a year and a half until my hair got long enough to weigh them down and I trimmed them off over time while trying to get some kind of styled haircut.
5. The nurses in oncology are amazing! They put so much care and skill into what they do to make the lives of people who are at their lowest, a little bit better. The nurses at my oncology clinic, especially those who administered the chemo were some of the kindest, sweetest, most caring women I have ever met. I often think my job is hard, but I can't imagine how hard it is for them every day to see the struggle of the people around them and not always being able to do something about it. Losing patients you have formed a bond with, seeing the treatment ravage their bodies and fail, watching people waste away... When I completed chemo they celebrated me like family with a small gift, hugs, and getting to ring the bell at the celebration station.
6. One of the biggest things I learned is that stress is a killer. Every doctor I saw reiterated this over and over again. Stress wears your body out and when your body is exhausted, your immune system can't work to the best of its ability. We all have a little cancer in us at one point or another, but most peoples' immune systems are strong enough to fight it off without them being the wiser. Mine was not and this has really given me a different perspective on how I need to approach things in my life. It has made me prioritize my family and over my job. It has made me questions whether the stressors of my job are even worth it. Although, I have not made any major life changes because of this, I do think about it regularly and evaluate what I can do the alleviate stress in my life. I expect that larger changes will come as I try to keep myself more grounded.
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