"Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break." --William Shakespeare, Macbeth Today marks four months since we first learned about Gayle's diagnosis. A lot has happened, including 4/5 of the family coming down with a novel SARS virus, a lengthy holiday, a bizarre election and its fall out, and an attempt to get used to this new way of life. Gayle has had two surgeries--one to remove the cancer and the other to install a port to simplify the chemotherapy--and has now had four bouts with the AC part of the treatment. This is a milestone, as AC tends to be the worse of the chemotherapy treatments. Originally, we planned on continuing the every-two-weeks treatment schedule for the second half of the therapy. Taxol tends to have less extreme side effects, though the bi-monthly ministrations last longer while in the clinic (four hours or so, as opposed to barely two). However, there were some mitigating decisions that we had to take into consideration. See, we had our consultation with the radiation specialist. He explained that, because of where and what came down with the cancer, he recommended broadening the areas of radiation treatment. The idea is to do everything possible to ensure that the cancer doesn't return. Indeed, this is the reason that Gayle's going through chemotherapy in the first place: It's a proactive approach to safeguard her from future problems. It's not to kill or shrink the cancer in her body--from what we can tell, she's been cancer free since the beginning of December. One of the side effects of the radiation therapy is physical exhaustion. Gayle already operates on very little sleep; during normal life, she struggles not to fall asleep in the car on the way home from school almost every day. This was something that alarmed me early on, when we were first figuring out the best steps for her to go through. The last thing she needs is something that makes her even more tired. With this in mind, we discussed how long the treatment should last. Because we want to avoid neuropathy as much as possible, we knew that a lower-dose treatment over a longer time frame would make more sense, which the radiation doctor agreed with. That means that she has twenty-five doses--five a week for five weeks--of radiation to go through. Faced with that reality, we approached the oncologist with a modified plan forming: Rather than taking Taxol once every two weeks, we thought that we should do a lower dose over the course of twelve weeks. The reason for this was two-fold: One, we could shift the day of ministration from Wednesday to Friday. Because of COVID, both my and Gayle's schools don't have any classes being held on Fridays. Though there's still lessons uploaded and work being done, there isn't a need for substitutes or specific, rigid timeframes. The second reason was because extending the treatment schedule for twelve weeks meant that we would be at the end of the school year when Gayle finished her bout with Taxol. Radiation therapy starts two or three weeks after the last chemo appointment, so this means that Gayle would be able to start radiation at the very beginning of summer. And while this means that we'll have a daily commute to the doctor's office for half of our 2021 summer, it also means that I don't have to worry about Gayle being too fatigued to make it home from the clinic. So that's our current update: Gayle has finished with AC (which is great, because it has been about as miserable as expected; she's puked twice thus far and has been so nauseated for so many weeks that it reminds me of her pregnancies) and will be taking a longer ministration of Taxol for the next round. Then it's off to a month-plus-one of radiation treatment. If this plan remains in place, we'll be done with radiation (and perhaps even have the short surgery for getting the port out of her) and this entire nightmare by the time August rolls around. When it's laid out so simply like this, it sounds almost minor. When it's lived through--and still remains ahead of me to live through--it's almost insurmountable. When our oldest was first going through all of the trials of having heart surgeries and trying to plan around what was simply a bundle of chaos, it was easy to let go of expectations. We could hope for the best, plan for what we could, but mostly we ended up hitting the bumps in the road at unexpected moments. This experience has been like looking down a rut-filled street and going forward anyway. Each jolt hurts a little bit more than the last and it's not even any single pothole that's causing problems, it's just the cumulative effect of the poison in the system that's wearing me down. (In Gayle's case, that's literal; for me, it's still just metaphor…and a mixed one at that.) I'm soldiering on because I don't see what I could do besides. People are still wonderfully and thoughtfully helping us with meals, alleviating a major strain on my day and assisting us with an almost anonymous aid (thanks to COVID, I sometimes don't even see who it was who dropped the food off on our porch). Both of our schools have been incredibly understanding, with coworkers picking up the slack for us when necessary. Parents, friends, and family are still fasting and praying and thinking of us. I'm not saying that this is a struggle that we're going through on our own--not by any stretch. After all, we've been spending the night in my in-laws' basement every other week so that Gayle is looked after while I'm at work, to say nothing of how much babysitting my mother-in-law is doing. And, were it not for COVID and the different precautions we have to take with it, my parents and siblings surely would have been extending hands toward us to help out. I'm inexpressibly grateful for all of that kindness, compassion, and thoughtfulness that has been so continuously extended to us. It's been a crucial contribution to this unwanted and unexpected journey, without which I don't know how we would've survived as a family. With all that being said, I don't know how I'm supposed to continue on this way…for me, personally, that is. My depression is getting so bad that I'm actively pining for April 2020--you know, the first full month of the pandemic when everything felt like it was on fire and the anger and mourning and sadness and frustration were at their peaks? Yeah, I wish for those good old days. I haven't felt this disengaged about my work since…early 2008, before I got my current job. I've never not cared about teaching and helping my students to learn. Now, I'm giving them assignments and trying to teach them, all while trying to ignore the diegetic mantra of apathy in the back of my mind. I'm not giving up, but I'm certainly not exceling, either. The malaise of a lingering pandemic, coupled with the seemingly-endless path of pain and misery that will paint over half of 2021 has left me feeling beleaguered and despondent. Yes, I have my highlights, those things which keep me going and helping me along. I got my second COVID vaccine, for example, just earlier today. But I hate seeing Gayle hurting; I hate to see her scowl with the effort of combatting her nausea or whatever current discomfort is afflicting her. I hate to see her struggle to get work done during her "good days" as she tries to do two weeks' worth of grading in three days. I'm tired in a way that no amount of sleep can ameliorate, because it isn't a physical tiredness. I'm weary in my soul and sick of trying to navigate by the silver linings that creep through the darkness. Well, at least I have something approaching a final destination to look at. End of July… …it can't come soon enough. Comments are closed.
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