I Feel Cranky

I feel cranky. I feel fat, gross, sick and disgusting. I’ve gained weight during chemo. I’ve lost all the muscle tone and stamina I had developed in the year before my surgery. My abdomen still gets sore when I do chores like unload the dishwasher. I’m getting more hot flashes than ever. I’m having intestinal issues. I’m sick of taking pills. I’m tired of being bald and wearing hats and having hardly any eyebrows and eyelashes. I’m tired of being tired.

This is the point in my chemo cycle when I become particularly restless:  I’m not quite well enough to resume (relatively) normal activities, but I’m well enough to become unsettled. My physical symptoms have subsided enough for my fears to begin breaking through again. At this stage, my tendency toward depression becomes most evident.

When I was a child and would whine about some perceived hardship, my mother would tell me to “offer up” my suffering to God. I was never quite sure why God would want it.

I still don’t believe that God wants our suffering, but I do have more of an appreciation for what my mom was getting at. I do believe that I can learn something from this experience. I believe that there is purpose and value in being open to the lessons available to me today, even if I can’t figure them out right away.

I don’t like how I feel today, but it is how I feel. Maybe one of today’s lessons is to simply accept that fact without struggling against it. I’ve been at this stage four times before, and four times it has passed. Undoubtedly, I’ll pass through it this time as well.