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Beyond Chocolate And Roses
I vomit again. I wished it would stop but it didn’t and I knew it wouldn’t. As awful as it is to puke endlessly, it is accompanied by a temporary sense of relief, a few moments of the storm having passed. The minutes before, miserably uncomfortable and that nauseating feeling painfully clear, even through the post-chemotherapy drug fog.
And then, I retch and vomit again.
He stands there patiently. I am sitting in the bed, kids are fast asleep and its 10:30 at night.
I expect the vomiting to go on for another few hours, for that has been the routine for the last two cycles of my chemotherapy.
Usually, 2:00 am is when my stomach surrenders and my brain is knocked out by the Ativan and Benadryl, two wonderfully sedating drugs.
I throw up in a plastic green bowl that I had bought at Wal-Mart to wash produce in when we were newly married. It had been long replaced by the shiny Wolfgang PuckTM mixing bowl set. It mostly wandered now in the back of the kitchen cabinet. Today, however, it was the vomiting receptacle. I hand the bowl to him. He doesn’t make a face or pucker his nose. He now has seen my lunch twice. First time in the carryout containers, a soup and a sandwich from the Corner Bakery. I am not a big fan of cafeteria food and today just like old times, he brought me some decent non-hospital food. Yes, he is just that kind of a husband.
He hands me the glass of water which I slowly sip, swish it in my mouth and spit some more in the bowl he is holding. The rinse does nothing for the horrible sour taste in my mouth and I am too exhausted to go to the bathroom to brush my teeth. He rubs my back and proceeds to drain the rebellion from my stomach into the toilet bowl. I rest my head against the pillow and close my eyes.
I hear him flush the toilet and then water flowing from the tap. Those sounds seem awfully loud in the middle of the night as sleep and nausea battle it out between each other in my cancer ridden body. He brings the bowl back to me which has been rinsed clean.
He sits in the recliner by me and dozes off, not realizing that I am nauseated again.
It has been a long day for both of us.
Nursing me through 16 cycles of chemotherapy is not what I believe he had ever imagined doing when he married me. No one ever imagines their spouse being diagnosed with Stage 3 cancer and having to live that mutual nightmare. Being physicians, we both understood what the disease of cancer is, but we had little clue as to what actually happens when cancer knocks on your own door.
It was the summer of 2013. Our family was busy with summer routines. Kids were in camps. There were outdoor concerts and swimming pool visits followed by cook outs. Life was flowing uninterrupted as usual.
But then, one day in July that flow was diverted through to a long road of breast cancer and its treatments. The appointments, the scans, and the visits, all an anxious blur with only one clear memory “cancer”. He was there, to drive me to every appointment and second opinion, which was almost daily. He was there outside every waiting room.
I remember leaving the MRI suite in tears after my first breast MRI. I said to him as a clenched him in a hug “I am never going back in that thing again”
He said, “Okay, you won’t.”
He was there to lie to me which is what I needed to hear.
Love is reassurance at the right time in the right words.
He was there talking to doctors and asking questions. He was there when the phone started ringing off the hook as the news broke to friends and family. I cannot note and recall specifics, but remember this much that all moments when I needed him he was there.
Love is being there through stressful time with unconditional support.
Not just present but embedded with me in the trenches through every scary moment and worrying test result. Love is standing at the door of the bathroom, and then wiping my bottom, one day after childbirth. It’s being there to comfort and console and to hold.
The household was in disarray as time passed after surgery, the first phase of my treatment, and I got weaker and sicker. I had seen what happens when I am sick for two days with a cold and fever. Now it was months of treatment and disability. I worried. I worried about how much he could endure and compensate for my absence. But he slid very comfortably into the role of both mom and dad.
When does a woman ever marry a man thinking, “Will he be a good mom?”
I know that he is and had been a wonderful father but his substitute motherhood was even better. The hugs and the cuddles and nighttime baths and routines all remained uninterrupted. The children were being sheltered from the trauma.
He was there for me and them.
As strong as he was through all of it, he did fall apart once.
I did too. That one trying evening that haunts me to date.
I was going through different diagnostic scans to determine the extent of the cancer. It was confirmed to be in the breast and the lymph nodes but the workup was needed to know if was flourishing elsewhere in my body.
The day before I had had the CT scan of my abdomen.
And then, the phone rang that afternoon.
There was a “spot” on the liver. And thus, a few mm of opacity broke our spirits together. The children were in the other room and we were both sitting and holding each other and sobbing. He didn’t say anything and neither did I.
We didn’t need to.
Love can be quiet without words, when the hearts feel the story in unison.
The MRI later proved to the liver to be free of any cancer but that day remains crystallized in my memory with the heartbreak that it brought and how the two of us clung to each other trying to salvage what was dear to us.
My chemotherapy had been complicated by a severe allergy to the drug adriamycin. So it was administered extra slowly over eight hours while others get it as a fifteen-minute push in their veins. Each of the first four cycles lasted about eight hours. He would sit with me all day in the chemo suite, attending meetings over the phone and working on his laptop as I got the cancer treatment. Sometimes when I would fall asleep he would go out in the hall or in the car in the dead of the winter sit with the engine running so he wouldn’t wake me up with noise.
He was there sitting with me for all 16 cycles. He and his laptop and iPhone and work but he was there. How many days could he take off from a new job he started? A new position offered fortunately during the first month of my diagnosis. The perk was the ability to work from home and he readily quit his old position so he could be around more.
So he was there to find my socks when my feet felt cold. There to bring me my favorite lunch. There to watch kids. There to tell me jokes that he is good at memorizing and there with his loud, signature laugh.
The chemo drug Taxol, of which I received 12 cycles wasn’t kind to me either. Among many other side effects, it would make my hands itch for hours and nothing would help. I would grab a wet towel and rub my hands miserably. It was not possible to do anything or to distract myself. Then came dinner time and I was immensely hungry. I don’t remember what I ate; just that he fed me because I couldn’t myself.
He fed the two kids and his wife. All three of us. A wife with breast cancer, in chemotherapy and two kids, two and six.
He used to bring me flowers when we were first dating, write romantic cards, bring me chocolate, all of the good boyfriend things that are expected when a relationship is young.
12 years of marriage changes things. People, however, don’t change. Their expression of their affection does change. Their appreciation of affection also changes.
We changed too. He still brought me flowers, just not as often. But he never forgot my birthday or our anniversary. I always got roses on Valentine’s and a breakfast of my choice on Mother’s Day. But life was busy and romance remained overpowered by obligation and duties.
Lovers evolve with time.
We did too. Career, family, moves, launching our practice, caregiving for family, financial responsibilities were all part of that evolution.
Love grows deeper and stronger but less reactive. It is patient and quiet at times. Sometimes it’s not even noticeable but it’s there.
It can be felt in the sound of the flush as your vomitus drains through the pipes.
It’s felt in the food that is fed to you even though it was not the finest steak at the best restaurant.
It’s felt in the embrace as you scream in labor.
It’s felt in the foot massage during contractions.
It’s felt in letting you sleep in when you are tired.
Love isn’t just chocolate and roses. They just make it better. Love is keeping the promise of “in sickness and in health”.
Not everyone gets to test those vows. Life brought that question to our home. He answered it.
“I do “he said, to living with fear of his wife having stage 3 breast cancer and holding it together.
“I do “he said, to being there for five months of chemotherapy.
“I do” he said to a tired, fatigued wife.
“I do” to whatever life brings at our door.
“I do” to the possibility of being a single dad.
The vows and the promise that he honored relentlessly for the last two and half years.
That is what a perfect valentine is.
It is beyond the roses and chocolates and the fancy dinners.
I don’t know if I will get roses this year or a nicely wrapped red-colored box with ribbons or maybe a card. What I do know though is that when nausea takes over, ever again, he will be standing next to me holding a glass of water and a bowl. And I think that expression of love, gross as it sounds, is prettier than anything else that can be ever purchased.
[Featured photo by Ricardo Gomez Angel on Unsplash]
My video
Sharing my video journey with you!
“Your best days are ahead !”
It’s a very simple fabric tote bag. Nothing fancy or designer, a freebie that came with my cosmetic purchase. But I bought the cosmetics for the sake of this bag. On this bag, it says in pink alphabets, “Your best days are ahead”. I could not resist. I was about to lose my hair and was to start chemotherapy soon. I was nervous about my new look and did not know what to expect. So the cosmetics and the words convinced me, that I could still look beautiful. Perhaps it was an empty promise of a retailer but in dark times, even small hope is worth falling for.
That tote then became my “chemo bag”, a bag that would hold my lemon heads, my essential peppermint and lemon grass oils, my warm socks, a small copy of the Quran and a book that I was currently reading. Sometimes I would take some snacks or crackers along. I carried this bag, back and forth to the cancer center sixteen times, fifteen times with anticipatory nausea and anxiety but then I would read the words on it, “Your best days are ahead” and I would fall for the promise every time.
Doing sixteen rounds of chemotherapy for Stage 3 Breast cancer requires a lot of inspiration and motivation. Week after week, presenting yourself willingly to get infused and injected by drugs that make you deathly ill and not complain about it requires one to immerse herself into motivational and inspirational mode. Challenging but it felt doable; I habitually looked on social media for quotes and memes about life and difficult times. I bought inspirational books and collection of quotes. I would read and re-read quotes that connected with me emotionally and post them on my face book wall. These small doses of inspiration along with support of my friends got me through. Words do matter, they matter a lot and when everything else seems to be falling apart, holding on to a few strong words can help you conquer much more than you think you ever can.
Here is a list of my most favorite inspirational quotes:
1. Life live as if it is rigged in your favor
2. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming.
3. Stop watering the weeds in your life and start watering the flowers.
4. Don’t believe all the things that you tell yourself late at night.
5. Scars have the power to remind us that our past is real.
6. Don’t think about what can happen in a month, don’t think about what can happen in a year, just focus on the 24 hours in front of you and do what you can do to be closer to where you want to be.
7. You are a perishable item, live accordingly.
8. Never be afraid to fall apart because it is an opportunity to rebuild you the way you have always wanted.
9. Nothing makes a woman more beautiful than the belief that she is beautiful.
10. Today may suck but it doesn’t mean tomorrow will too.
11. Feel the fear, do it anyways.
12. No pressure, no diamond, no grit, no pearl
13. Life is a balance of holding on and letting go
14. Stay away from people who make you feel that you are hard to love
15. To realize one’s destiny is a person’s only obligation.
16. The thing about life is that while it disturbs us, it too, forces our hearts to roar in a way that is secretly fluid.
17. When something goes wrong in life, just yell “plot twist” and move on.
18. Life is a roller coaster; it has its ups and downs. But it’s your choice to scream or enjoy the ride.
19. Disease is somatic, suffering from it is psychic.
20. You don’t die if you fall in water; you die only if you don’t swim.
2015 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 11 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
Happy New Year!
I have been thinking about the New Year. Although it is nothing more than a mere change of date on the calendar, it gives everyone a little nudge for introspection and self-reflection. Life isn’t so generous that you get to completely start over but with a new year, a small window does open to changing things perhaps so that it feels like a new start.
We all secretly hope to start over, sometimes so we can be free of our past mistakes and errors, to set the record straight or to reclaim what we have lost. That is why resolutions are made. To start with a clean slate, clean of the markings from our pasts that we desire no longer to acknowledge and admit. Somethings cannot be undone. A lost love, a lost opportunity, a lost moment in time, sometimes can change the trajectory of one’s life. But there is always hope. A hope to start over and get things right or at least in the right direction.
I want to start my new year with hope. Hope for better things, better times, better moments. I hope for less fear and more love. I hope for more affection and less heart ache. I hope for more kindness and less cruelty. I hope for more wisdom and less foolishness.
I want to start my new year with caring. Caring better for myself, so that I can care for others too. I am nothing if I don’t care, for myself and others. Caring gives meaning to life and makes life worth living.
I want to start my new year with passion. I want to feel the intensity of wanting to do something so badly that it hurts when I can’t. Knowing what you are passionate about is a gift. I want to unwrap this gift over and over again. I want to connect and reconnect with my passions.
I want this new year to start with mindfulness. Mindfulness of who I am and how I belong in the world around me. I want to understand my deeper desires and interests and things that keep me alive.
I want to stay alive. As a cancer survivor, my first and foremost resolution is to stay alive with utmost honesty to the gift of life that I have been given.
I need to enter this year with a continued commitment to help others who suffer and with a wish to help alleviate their suffering with the gifts and insights I have to offer.
I want this new year to allow me to maintain my spirit of giving throughout the year and not just around holidays.
I want to enter the new year with an open heart and an open mind. Open heart for forgiveness and healing and open mind for growing and expanding.
I hope for the opportunities to learn more about the world and people around me and what makes them click. I hope for more patience and willingness to understand who they are. I hope for more ability to accept others as who and where they are.
I hope for the better judgement to walk away when need be but also to hold my ground when it is necessary.
I hope to honor myself by remaining happy with the choices I have made and to work on being happy every day. I hope to be accepting of things that weren’t my choice but I still have to withstand them.
I want this new year to remain a year that I find myself full of gratitude and to nurture practicing gratitude every day.
I want to be true to myself and to others to the best of my ability.
I resolve to be me just a little better, just a little stronger, just a little more hopeful, just a little more open. The weight loss, exercise, money and vacations will all happen if I am truly happy with who I am and what I do!
Wishing all of you a very happy and blessed new year! Happy 2016. May you have a year where you get to be who you are and whom you love.
Wishing you lots of days of health, joy and self renewal in 2016.
‘Dear Estrogen, We need to talk!’ My Journey through Womanhood
Congratulations, it’s a girl!”
“I like the name, Uzma,” I imagine my mother saying with joy, holding her baby girl.
Thus started a long association between us.
You and I.
A relationship decided and sealed at birth, my X chromosome, a tiny strand of DNA, picked my destiny. A daughter, a sister, a woman, a wife, a mother, all these roles woven sequentially in the microscopic double helical protein within my cells.
Dormant inside of me were two tiny organs holding within my fertility in form of finite number of eggs.
The chief conductor of the orchestra of womanhood, the maestro, “You,” the Estrogen and “I,” the human female.
After a quiet phase, you started to conduct music, slowly and gently. Your ebbs and flows, coordinated meticulously with your accomplices, the progesterone, luteinizing hormone and follicular stimulating hormones.
As I started to mature physically, my chest would feel tender and sore and I couldn’t understand why. Running through my blood, you slowly started stimulating the growth of my breasts and catalyzing numerous changes all over. Then, around my 13th birthday, you roared, you, the mighty hormone Estrogen surging through my thin and petite body. The first crescendo and decrescendo of estrogen and the event called “menarche.”
“Mummy, I have blood on my underwear!!” I yelled, scared that something awful has happened to me as I was getting ready to take a bath.
“Finish your bath, we will talk later,” my mother, failing to hide her horrified expression peeking inside the bathroom, reassured me in her usual contained manner.
I wasn’t quite prepared for “it,” neither the “periods” nor the “talk” and she didn’t seem ready either.
Raised in an Islamic conservative culture in Pakistan, where the whole society is an overt denial of sexuality, puberty is neither a welcome transition nor an exciting discussion. It usually triggers discussion about marriage, saving money for marriage and dowry and other expenditures. In summary, myriad of worries and stress for parents. Mothers don’t engage in discussion with daughters about sex and sexuality. It’s usually the older sisters or friends that enlighten the dazed young woman. Most sex education comes from foreign movies and literature.
“We didn’t even have pads, my mom washed an old cloth and cut it into pieces and we used those, you are lucky to have sanitary pads.” My mother reminisced.
I didn’t feel particularly lucky but I listened.
End of the “talk.”
My life was no longer simple as I dealt with the necessity of bleeding every month for no “real “reason. I had been delivered nature’s gift for womankind. At 13 years, it was hard to wrap my brain around the fascinating intricacies of a female body and looking back, I was a very naïve 13 year old. I didn’t have much exposure like a thirteen year would in this day and age. My ninth grade biology book however was quite helpful in understanding because it was a “foreign” edition and actually had the chapter on “Sex and Reproduction” unlike the state-censored text books.
“My periods hurt a lot, these cramps are awful!”
“I get diarrhea with my cycle!” they said.
“I can’t wait to go into menopause!” I joined in.
We all giggled, silly teenagers, finding comfort in conversing and longing for menopause. Together we celebrated our arrival into womanhood, our newly acquired bras and secretly talked about boys.
My body was changing in so many ways. My boy-like flat chest was getting curvy. I was no longer allowed to play outside with boys albeit it gets hit with a cricket ball somewhere “sensitive” (Read as “chest”).
Stepping into womanhood also meant facing stereotypes and sexism. The “PMS” jokes and misogyny of my native culture gradually was evident to me. Slowly, I understood I belong to a “minority” group being a woman. I became aware of gender based quotas in educational institutions and the limits on the sport activities available to women, the estrogen-laden female gender.
Perhaps it is you and your impact that makes a woman unpredictable, your play with the serotonin and endorphins in my brain, the highs and the lows. Scheduled yet unpredictable. No wonder you remain the topic of research for scientists all over.
It’s not just about uterus and ovaries for you, unlike most believe. Your charming presence stimulates everything from the brain to the bones, from the pelvis to the heart; you remain vital to so many body processes. You are part of the miracle of conception and procreation. You took charge and moved things forward. Just like all relationships, it was so exciting in the beginning. You transitioned me into the magical world of womanhood with femininity, intimacy, sex and love. You made possible the funny tingling feelings that one feels in love in places you don’t expect.
“How often do you get migraine?”
“At least once right before my periods.”
“You have premenstrual migraines. May be you can chart your migraines on a calendar” my doctor suggested.
You, thus, brought your own share of medical problems. Sometimes, I wished for menopause just so I could rid myself of those throbbing, lingering headaches. The migraines remained the bane of my existence through medical school and then residency. The night calls particularly made me vulnerable to severe episodes but as a young resident, new in the US, the land of opportunity, I didn’t care.
A different and a liberated culture where dating and male companionship is the norm. I hesitatingly adjusted and very quickly he took a liking to me.
“I love you.” He said.
“I love you too.” I replied.
A wave of funny sensations spread all over my body, in parts, known and unknown to me. We hugged. We blended into each other. Yet another aspect of womanhood, entered my life.
“So you didn’t have a period this month?”
“May be I should do a pregnancy test or see the doctor?
“Congrats, you are going to be a mom! “The doctor smiled.
Oh, the joy I experienced that day. As your levels rose within me, nurturing the tiny little being inside my body. High on hormones, I waddled along in life. The headaches disappeared for a full five months.
“He is so beautiful!”
“Look at his hands, they are so tiny, my precious little baby!”
A new mother, although with a picture perfect life, I was quite lost in the first few days . I remember how much I missed your might after I had my son. Sad and anxious, so unsure of myself. For nine months, your mighty presence propelled me. Now the high was gone, leaving me with the post partum blues. At times, I thought I am just not a good enough mother and taking care of a newborn isn’t something I can ever do. I felt inadequate. Gradually, as I found my bearing, I started to recover and life continued.
I was blessed with another child. Not so hard the second time around, I coped with the hormonal decline better.
Two years after her birth, I was told “You have breast cancer!”
Things between us changed that day. It was shocking to hear but I was told that you were in cahoots with the cancer and because of you the cancer in my breast was thriving and growing.
“The pathology report shows that your cancer is Estrogen Receptor Positive , which essentially means that estrogen in your body helps the cancer grow “
I felt betrayed.
I needed you and you took care of me. You nurtured me through two pregnancies. It was your glow on my face; it was your gloss in the thickness of my hair, it was your presence. You sustained me.
And now? You left me ambivalent and my trust shaken. I want you to stay, believe me I do. But my options are narrow.
Our relationship has run its course. It is time for me to move on.
It’s time for me to let go what is no longer meant for me.
Cancer has made me wiser. I have learned to gracefully let go what isn’t sustaining me.
You still are important to me.
I will miss you tremendously, down to my bones. As my blood robs me of my calcium, I will no longer have a trusted friend, making sure my bones stay strong.
As I sweat through every hot flash, I will think of you.
My heart will ache for you as my coronaries with thicken and stiffen without your protection.
My brain will miss the shield you hold against memory loss.
I will miss being a complete woman without you.
“So have you decided what are we going to do about your ovaries? You are too young to have a natural menopause. Your Estrogen levels are too high!” my oncologist nudged me gently.
I need to let you go. I do. If I don’t, there is a chance that I may not make it. I may not live to see my kids grow up. I may not grow old with my husband. I may not be there for my friends. I have come to believe that I have greater purpose in life. I want to write and reach out to others. I want to travel. I want to share my experiences and live life fully.
With you, it may not be possible.
It could have been that we parted ways naturally, slowly and gradually you pulling back and I accepting this with grace and grey in my hair, the natural menopause, but the time to separate came so much earlier.
When I let go, maybe I will get depressed like my mother did, during her menopause, maybe I will get osteoporosis at a young age. The risk of heart disease will be higher for me and I hear that the hot flashes will melt me every time I get one but I have to accept all of this. For the sake of surviving cancer, I must part with you.
I am so sorry.
You have helped me so much.
Reluctantly and with a heavy heart, I made the appointment.
“Uzma, here is your Zoladex shot. It’s going to hurt a little. This medication will put you in a medical menopause. By suppressing your ovaries and stopping estrogen production, there is a good chance of reducing recurrence of your breast cancer. This is a wise choice!”
Yes, un-woman me now. It’s over, Estrogen, it’s over between us!
Chasing Life After Cancer
Just like any other kid, I ran after it but as the distance between the balloon and me got more and more, the realization descended that it has slipped away. It was still soothing, though, to see it blow farther and farther away till I could see no more.
How does one measure a life well-lived?
Does anyone really know how long it will be?
How many birthdays am I supposed to have?