love is health
Holy cannoli! Has it been a month since surgery already? Frankly, I have been so overwhelmed in thought that I haven’t settled on what to post about. As you can imagine, going through a mastectomy and healing process forces you to self reflect, so I have been in "existential thinking mode" since. I wanted to share with you all some things that I’ve learned from all this, in hopes you find this helpful. You are not immune, no matter how healthy you are. Vigilance is critical. I am a young, healthy, fit, woman who eats cleanly, doesn’t smoke, drinks somewhat rarely, and not genetically predisposed to breast cancer. Yet here I am. The odds of a woman getting cancer in her lifetime are 1 in 8. Mathematically speaking, that means 2 people on your 16 person roster will have it at some point. In a league of 100 women, that’s roughly 12 women who will battle it in their lifetime. I nonetheless consider myself lucky. I was fortunate enough to feel something, see my doctor, get an early diagnosis, and get treated before the bad cells spread outside the breast. I was diagnosed at stage 1a, thanks to my “vigilance” (e.g. nightly self soothing). I got to know my girls well enough to know when something didn’t feel right. If you don’t self examine regularly, I very strongly encourage you to get in the habit. It saved my life, and saved me from a much scarier path to recovery. Your body will take care of you if you take care of it. My recovery from surgery has been swift and effortless. While I am not about to guarantee that yours would be too (should you ever have to), I will attribute my fast recovery to my fitness and my love of roller derby. Pre-derby, I ate pretty poorly, was a little overweight, and didn’t workout. By joining derby I had the incentive to workout regularly, clean up my diet, and get in shape. My estimated 3 day hospital stay was only overnight. My chest muscles well tolerated under-pec expansion due to their fitness, which expedited a 3 month process to 6 weeks. I was back in skates just 2.5 weeks after surgery. I am now cleared for cardio 4 weeks after surgery. None of this would have been possible if I was in poor shape. Health and wellness are more than just prevention - they can also be a jump start to recovery when life surprises you. Shit happens that you can’t control. Dwell on it at your peril. I had a pastor at the hospital ask me “so what do you make of all this?”, to which I replied, “sorry to be crass, but I file this in the ‘shit happens’ category.” Cancer treatment is nothing like what you see on TV. It would be so relieving if it was as simple as going to a doctor, getting a test, finding out immediately and knowing your treatment plan. Actually, it’s the complete opposite of that. I didn’t know my entire diagnosis until after my breast was removed. Each appointment, each test, each conversation with a doctor only provided me a morsel of information than what I had before. This left me hungry for more control, often lost in a tunnel of speculation, online research, and message boards. I grasped at anything I could to try and equip myself with knowledge, thinking I could predict what’s next before the doctor could. While I was often on target, I realized it was all an effort to gain control when I had almost none. The more I tried to manage the situation, the more stressful it became. The closer I got to my mastectomy date, the more I came to accept all the research in the world would not change my diagnosis. I could be consumed by it, or learn from it. Since dwelling on my lack of control wasn’t doing me much good, I chose instead to see what I could learn from letting go of control. It’s a struggle. I am still striving to accept the concept of letting go. While it is uncomfortable, depression would be worse. You get what you give, though what you get may still surprise you. You reap what you sow. The effort you put into your skating skill, your body, your relationships, and your community, will manifest sooner or later. Use your time wisely. Like many women in this sport, I wear many hats. Teammate, captain, committee member, mentor, wife, employee, sister, friend, daughter, aunt… it’s a long list. However, my maintanence of these roles has played a critical part in receiving support when I needed it. I was often left speechless at the flood of support that engulfed me when I came out of the cancer closet. While I knew my community would help me when needed, I was truly shocked at how deep and rich the support is. I put a lot of time into being a good captain, teammate, wife, etc. This has been an opportunity to reap the rewards of those efforts. Love comes from unexpected places... Like that girl from high school who you thought hated you, but gave you $100 to help with your medical treatments. Or the woman on the east coast you met over the internet who is going through a much tougher cancer battle. Or your godmother who is dying, whom you haven’t seen in almost 10 years, who sends you a card. Or your anesthesiologist ex who is giving you pre-surgery advice. Or your derby friends in Seattle whom you skated with once, 2 years ago, who sent a care package. The list goes on. Nothing draws love from the woodworks like having your life threatened. I won’t deny how good it feels to be loved, and to know people care. Life isn't a contest, so comparison is futile. This experience taught me how much I measure myself by using others as a ruler. Am I more or less healthy? Successful? Lovable? Deserving? Worthy? After my original diagnosis, I felt uncomfortable identifying as a "cancer patient", knowing there are women losing their hair, throwing up, feeling weak, and having the snot beat out of them by chemo & radiation. That has not, and will not be my journey. Nevertheless, that does not trivialize my path. Our life experiences are incomparable given our varied tolerances for the unexpected. What is earth-shattering to one is a walk in the park to another. I need to stop measuring my health and worth by looking externally. Same goes for my development as a skater. It’s not a sisterhood. It’s a family. The larger derbisphere can sometimes be dismissive of men, children, and fans of the sport when we go on about our “sisterhood”. I have been guilty of this more than anyone I know. My focus has been pretty narrowly sighted on my team and league. So when a member of the men’s league unexpectedly asked if they could organize a fundraiser on my behalf, I was stunned. I felt like I didn’t deserve it, but couldn’t turn down the help I sorely needed. My guilt was automatic; I felt indebted to them. However, when support began pouring in from past teammates/ leaguemates, derby businesses, skaters from other leagues, junior skaters and their parents, fans - I began to understand we function more like a family and less like a business. The transaction between the men’s league and me wasn’t a transaction at all. They just wanted to do something nice for me, the way family does. They didn’t ask for anything in return, nor did anyone who expressed their support through donations, time, food, or other commodities. I hope some day I have the opportunity to reciprocate the support so graciously gifted to me. *Photo by Paul Daniels Garcia.
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June 2020
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