Too Much, Too Soon.

Sometimes in life, when we go through something that's traumatic and stressful, especially when it happens over a longer period of time, we have to push it to the back of our minds in order to even get through the days. I know I was guilty of that during the Katrina aftermath, and when my beloved friend Franki took her own life, and when my first love passed away on the same day another friend chose to end his as well. In the immediate aftermath of all these profound traumas, I pushed it all back and down, in order to keep moving forward.

Cancer has been similar, except that there are certain things you're forced to deal with in real time, and all too quickly, if I'm to be honest. Treatment decisions must be made with not even 5 minutes to think about things, just so you don't lose your place in line.

The gravity of the situation all around, combined with physical discomfort, the trauma of your treatments, of losing your old life and knowing you'll never be back there again, and the fact that you're forced to make so many sudden decisions and arrangements that will affect the outcome of your treatment, not to mention life as you know it moving forward, is the perfect storm to set you up for a massive stress-fail at some point.

I had mine this Saturday.

My Fairy Godmother Anne (and lifetime Honorary Fairy Godfather Brian) came up to Boston to visit me from New York, and we had a great day, took a nice walk with Phosphor, had yummy Cuban Sandwiches for lunch, and then agreed to meet up again after my MRI. I drove myself out to Chelsea, not stressed at all. I checked in, changed into the all-too-familiar hospital gown, got my port accessed, etc., all laughing and joking.

Side note:

I want to preface the next section by saying that ordinarily, I am a model patient.

I am not freaked out by pain or blood or needles or gross things that freak most other people out. I slept through the first few radiation treatments and through all of my past CAT scans. I have been cut and poked and probed and injected and infused, and for the last 6 weeks I've been burned with radiation daily. Between the cancer and the fertility preservation, I have had multiple surgeries in multiple areas of my body, and have been all kinds of naked in front of all kinds of strangers in all kinds of machines posed in all kinds of compromising positions for the last 9 months. Looking back, it's been a really pretty extreme life of near-daily physical torment, but I know this is all for a better future, and so I suck it up each day and am very pragmatic about it. Not one procedure thus far has brought me to the edge.

But we all have our limits, I suppose. Even me.

Back to the MRI.

(FYI the tube in this pic was WAY bigger than mine was. Jussayin. )

I was led to the room that turned out to be, essentially, a travel trailer containing an MRI machine, and I got on the table. Nothing wrong. They gave me the panic-bulb to squeeze if I needed to get out of there, and I chuckled and said I'd probably be asleep, so no worries. They started loading me into the machine head first.

Without warning, about 8 inches into the machine, I was in full panic attack mode. I had thought that I'd had panic attacks in the past. Turns out I had not. This was a panic attack.

It took less than 10 seconds of being loaded into the machine before this sensation took over my entire mind and body that can only be described as an utterly overwhelming combination of terror and frenzy.

I was suddenly aware of how tight the tube was and how large the machine was, and how close to my face it was, and how my head was moving deep into the tube and meant to rest against the far wall of the trailer, and how once my arms were fully in, I would be physically unable to squirm my way out of there if anything happened. My lizard brain took over and it was sheer blazing fight or flight.

I had to get out and there was nothing that I wouldn't do to get out. I felt like I was drowning on dry land--like I was being buried alive--and that my heart might physically burst in my chest.

I truly believe I would have passed out screaming if they hadn't immediately heard the shift in my voice and me muttering something like "um, um, wait, um, wait you guys, no, no, no, f*ck, this isn't going to work, I have to get out of here, no NO NO NO NO NO. F*CK F*CK F*CK NO GET ME OUT RIGHT NOW HOLY SH*T..."

It went on. Not my finest hour.

They got me out and offered an eye mask or some sedatives if I wanted to try again, and all I could say was "Nope. No. Nope,nope,nope,nope,nope. Nope. It's not happening today. I'm never going back in that thing. This is not happening. Holy sh*t no. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to inconvenience everyone, but no."

I think apologized to everyone about 20 times, as I leapt right off the table before they could get it lowered to a normal height, tossed the earplugs at the trash and ran out of there, hospital gown a-flowing in the breeze, back to the nurse to take the needle out of my port, which she had just inserted 10 minutes prior. She was surprised, and said it happens sometimes but that she didn't think I would be one of those, and didn't I want to calm down and give it another go? All I could get out was a series of nopes & f*cks, and she acquiesced.

I was in tears as I all but sprinted to my car, fleeing that place like I was being chased by a dragon. It took about an hour before the immediate sense of danger eased out of my body. I called my parents on the way home, who talked me down a bit. I kept it together enough so that they couldn't tell I had tears streaming down my face while I was driving and talking to them.

When I got back to the Hope Lodge, I laid down on the bed and Phosphor came up and put his whole body across mine, which is pretty unusual for him. (Who says he's not my emotional support animal?) He totally knew that something was wrong and this wasn't his normal Kate. My energy was all over the place; maybe his instinct was to just try to hold it all down.

As I lay on the bed under my dog, part of me was thinking "so this is my first panic attack." I wondered what triggered it, as I've never been claustrophobic before.

For the last few weeks, life-stress has been creeping back in. I found myself last Thursday in the acupuncture chair with a dozen needles in me, being told to relax but finding my heart & mind racing because of the overwhelming sense of all the things I have to do.

(You're supposed to be relaxed once they put the needles in.)

But instinctively I know what did it:

I think my return to life is too much, too soon.

I'm back to working full time, remotely, and it's really too much for me, but the department is short-handed, and after my employer's generosity this summer, supporting me through chemo, I felt an obligation to return to full time. My hands were tied, in a way. But my life with a full time workload means that I am either working or going to and from the hospital, in treatment, catching a quick bite to eat, or sleeping. I have zero time to rest. I have zero time to make connections at the Hope Lodge, which everyone here says is the most important, most therapeutic part about this place. I need that kind of therapy, and I feel like I haven't been able to get it because of all the time I have to spend holed up in my room working until the wee hours every night, trying to keep up.

My daily schedule is this: I get up, work for a few hours, bring the dog to daycare, go to MGH for between 1.5 & 5 hours, depending on how many appointments I have each day and how long they take, then go get the dog, go back to the Hope Lodge, and work until after midnight every day. I'm still unable to finish all my work during the week, so I'm having to catch up on weekends, when I have family and friends in town.

On the rare occasion that I get to go down for meals with everyone and mention that I'm working full time, the most common reaction is "What? During radiation? How? That's really not good for you." This, from the people who are going through the same thing that I am. They know the toll this takes. They're going through it, themselves. And they're all shocked that this is why they never see me.

I know I should be taking this additional time off of work, but this summer, my beloved copy department lost three out of seven people, and I feel a responsibility to come back and pull my own weight.

I also feel like I don't want people to think I'm milking it, which is an underlying fear with all of this. But it's been six weeks of radiation, with this being the seventh and last. I'm freaking exhausted and in constant pain from the burns, and as the dates of my return to New Orleans approach and my active treatment nears an end, the fatigue combined with all I have to do before going back, combined with the massive amount of work I have every day are pushing my limits. I'm also on the phone daily for at least an hour with the insurance company contesting tens of thousands in charges for things that should be covered with a minimal copay. (Humana is the worst.)

I think that the stress of it all came crashing down on me on Saturday night going into that tube. I've been through so much physically over the last nine months. I've been through so much emotionally. I've been fighting for my life, and using every ounce of energy I had just to stay afloat during this whole mess.

It wasn't just me being loaded into that tube. It was the increasing stress of preparing for the medical team transition back to New Orleans. It was nine months of making ends meet with the added expenses of medical bills and being away from home. It was the lack of the rental income I normally use to make ends meet. It was the stress of the logistics I have to figure out about moving back. It was the underlying fear that active treatment is coming to a close, so what the hell do I do now. It was the massive daily workload, and it was the radiation fatigue. All of that was crammed into that tiny little tube with me, and somehow my body thought that being in such a small space with all that stress could kill me.

So I ran.

They rescheduled me for late at night on Tuesday & Thursday of this week, but I had such a PTSD reaction when I got the calendar alerts that I ended up cancelling the rescheduled appointments and calling the doctor to tell her I might get them done when I come back for my follow-ups & the last surgery, which might be January.

Tonight, we had a house meeting for the Hope Lodge and I was invited to hang around a little bit to have dinner. A lovely young lady named Cristina came in with her art tonight, and I ended up winning a tiny little painting she did. It's a sunset with teeny flowers. Her mom told me that it's called "Take Your Time; I'm Here for You," and I unexpectedly got choked up a bit.

Take your time. That's the lesson of the week: take my time. Allow myself to take the time I need. I've been doing my best and working my hardest and fighting every day for the last 9 months, and somehow I'm winning.

All the rest is trivial, and I deserve to be able to take my time with it...no panic attack needed.