I saw the occupational therapist yesterday and she was so excited about how relatively healthy I was at the time of our appointment! I'm being specific about this because apparently a lot of the time, the PT and OT only see people when they're closer to surgery and they've gone through more chemo and they're much weaker. This is not to say that I won't get weaker. This is just to say that I went "early" (I thought it was early) and turns out that's the right time to go. The way she explained it to me was that we're seeing how healthy I COULD be, and that way we'd have something to aim at after treatment and surgery. "We know you can get to this point, so we'll try to get you back to this point."
So: hot tip for future cancer friends: Schedule your physical and occupational therapy visits for when you're still feeling good and doing well. They want to help keep you as strong and healthy as possible, and prepare you for the stuff that's coming.
As with the physical therapist, the general notes were that physical exercise are good, moderate cardio (brisk walking but not wearing me out, biking if I feel up for it) and strength training are good and will help improve my outcomes, as well as give me more energy as I'm going through treatment. They'll also help me get to a good place to recover from when it's surgery time. As a note about mastectomies, I am not going to be doing reconstruction, and this apparently makes recovery MUCH simpler. This wasn't an issue for me, I was never bothered about losing my breasts. I don't care that much about them, and I won't miss them when they're gone. I understand that for many, many people, this is a traumatic decision, and I'm not trying to minimize it when I mention that it wasn't a big deal for me. Everyone's different, and everyone's relationship to their body is different.
I'm going back in a couple of weeks and they're going to give me exercises and stretches to do to prepare my body for the changes it's going to be going through, and then I'll continue to see them throughout the process so they can keep an eye on how I'm doing and we can adjust this approach as needed. I continue to be impressed by the team of people I have working with me.
Switching gears from appointments and hospitals, I went to Lawrence to have dinner with a dear friend who I never see as often as I would like. We sat on a beautiful patio and ate delicious food and caught up on the last year, and it was so nice. I had worried that I'd be too tired to go, I didn't know how I'd do driving at night, sometimes I don't feel entirely 100%, so there were all these things that I had considered before even making the plans, and then when I went, I was so glad that I'd decided to go. I was fine. I wasn't too tired, I didn't have any trouble driving, but all these things I have to think about now feel weird and bad and a little bit scary.
I feel good now, but all these conversations with people (medical professionals, friends, internet acquaintances) where they praise how well I'm doing are surrounded with these spaces where I know they're not saying "you won't feel this good forever, other people who go through this have a hard time, what if what if what if." By way of illustration, I have a cane in my closet, and my partner keeps a cane by his front door. I don't need a cane yet. But I might. And so these canes are there, waiting for a moment that may or may not come. And I see them every day.
It's good for me to frame it like "I'm doing so well, I'm doing what I need to do to continue to do as well as possible" but the flip side of that is "It's going to get worse. It's just going to get worse and I'm going to have to keep going because this is what is required of me." It's very strange.
I think that people are afraid of cancer because anything that can turn your body into your own death is very scary. But I also think they are afraid of cancer because we all think we know what it looks like. It's the bald head and the dark circles under the eyes and that strange, waxy translucence to the skin, and it's someone who is VERY BRAVE and trying SO HARD and is SO TIRED and the idea of becoming whatever that is is terrifying because when you're healthy and able-bodied, the cultural messaging is that you never want to be not that.
Fun side note though: eventually we will all experience decline and disability in some form. It's inevitable. The cultural messaging around here (America, Canada, many other places) is that you are valuable when you are healthy and you are nothing when you're not, and this is, very simply, ableism! It takes a lot of work to unlearn it, but I highly recommend that you start, because eventually, if you don't pay attention, you may find yourself casually saying things like "well why shouldn't the people who can't do X or Y just die" (a popular and horrifying statement that was BARELY subtext by public health officials at peak pandemic) and then you've taken a shocking little detour into eugenics town.
ANYWAY, from the perspective of a person currently in a cancer-having body, I will tell you that I'm not excited about it! But I would compare it to getting older. It's just like "oh this is my body now. Wild. Oh I guess I can't lift very heavy things without thinking about my back. Oh I guess the human knee is actually a complete disaster all the time. Oh I guess I have to wear sunscreen and drink more water and I can't have pizza three days in a row or my stomach gets real angry."
You think it's going to be unfathomable until you do it, and then it's just your life.
