Where was I?????
Oh yes, I promised to update! Sorry about that!
It's been so long since my last post, I had to re-read the last few to make sure I didn't repeat myself!
Since the last post I have had quite a few more trips to the Cancer Clinic psychologist (with not too much progress with my anxieties), the addition of another psychologist thanks to my insurance company that provides me with enough money to eat and pay the bills (in hopes that they can get me back to work), a removal of a suspicious looking mole that was changing (it was benign!) and a visit to my dermatologist at the Cancer Clinic 80 kilometers away who discovered (well, I pointed it out after the fact) which he then diagnosed as basal cell carcinoma. The other day my MD sliced it off and I drove it over to the hospital lab.
I will find out next week when I get my stitches out, what the official biopsy says.
Meanwhile, I am left wondering - will it ever end?
I think I know that answer.
No - it will NEVER end. Ever.
Even if nothing else crops up - I will always be hyper vigilant, looking for the next bump or changing mole. There is no escape from the worry.
Yes, I know there are people way worse off than me. I have seen and talked to those people - watched them suffer horribly and even die. I have talked to bereaved families. Prepared the now vacant bodies for the morgue after the relatives said their last tearful goodbyes.
I suppose therein lies my dilemma. Nurses know way too much. Have seen way too much.
We aren't supposed to be that person that gets sick... We are the caretakers. Everyone else gets sick - not us!
Funny thing when I ask other people I know who have been diagnosed with melanoma.
I ask: "what Breslow's thickness was your melanoma? Clark's level? What were you staged at?"
Most people have no idea. They don't even want to know! They aren't even interested. They reply, if they reply at all - "oh the doc just cut it out and that's the end of it..."
You see, as a nurse, I just don't understand that. Not at all.
I need to know everything. In scientific language and in great detail. I need to know statistics and numbers and treatments in progress and the latest research and studies and the latest drugs, even though I am not at that stage.
I also can't understand why healthy people won't take precautions in the sun and wear good sunscreen and cover up because statistically - more people get cancer from UV exposure than from smoking.
I am like a crazy person walking into tanning bed facilities and showing them my slashed face and my surgery photos and telling them what their business is doing to people.
I wish my counselling was helping, but, going by my behaviour- I don't think it is.
The impact of this diagnosis has been more traumatic than my MVA that caused me to be unable to work in a hospital ever again. I thought the PTS I experienced after was tough, but I am finding this to be insurmountable.
Two more months and I will have been off work for a whole year.
Since I started work in 1977 - I have never been off work longer than a month, maybe.
Honestly? I don't know if I will ever be able to go back.
More on that later.
I promise.
