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Messages of hope from my inbox

My inbox started to flood with messages as I disclosed the new challenge that unfolded in my life.

I would like to share with you what I have heard from all corners of the world.

“I believe we are powerful. I believe the mind is amazing. And healing can and does happen in ways that transform us. Not always in the ways and time in which we want but in ways that give meaning to things that reveal truths we could have never known. I’ve know great adversity in my life. It’s shaped me, changed me, and freed me.” said a wise colleague to me.”

“Will not pretend to fathom or scratch the surface of insight into your present state; emotional and physical. However practicality dictates waiting to see what the PET and Brain MRI hold. Nonetheless your steadfastness is what’s got you this far and will continue to take you farther.” said a thoughtful friend

“Word elude me. I am crying with you. With how unfair this is. I can’t begin to imagine what you are feeling so I will pray for your strength, courage, peace and faith. Sending you love and support.” an emotional friend wrote.

“Uzma, I hope you can gather strength from all of us and that you will reach out when you need to. And I do hope that when the shock, anguish, and anger have lessened their hold on you that you will write that memoir. In the meantime, do what you need to, cry and scream if you feel like it, and enjoy your children and family.”

“My first reaction as I read ur post…. Shit!!! In the past hour I have a barrage of ” shit” and f%$k” in my head. If you need to let ur Tourette’s loose, you have my number!””

“Uzma, I know we barely know each other, but I have been thinking of you constantly since yesterday, and praying. I’m so sorry. A big hug and lots of prayers”

“Uzma, you amaze me at so many levels. Your strength, your grace and your love. I’m speechless. I will continue to pray for you and your absolutely beautiful family.”

“Hi Uzma !! I am very sorry to read your news and I cannot imagine what you are going through right now ! You can call me to talk or if I can call you? You shall continue to inspire and educate ! We are here with you xxxx”

“Dear Uzma, I have been thinking about you all day and just finally have been able to sit down and write you a note . It been a few months since my “new” diagnosis, I’m still processing it and how I deal changes daily. Somedays are scary, some are sad and others are like living in denial and that is okay because honestly, how else do we get through the day? ”

“Hope you are staying strong and focused. though its okay to have moments of weakness, you are not going to let cancer beat you, even if it kills you. That is your enduring legacy and your identity…..”

“I thought of you because it reminded me of the miracles around us. I think of the impossible chances of that little seed that probably fell into a small crack, for it to grow into this tree and crack this Boulder that weighs thousands of tons. Statistically improbable and nothing short of a miracle. But miracles are all around us. Things people think are impossible can happen and do happen! And with so many people who love you and pray for you everyday a miracle could happen! Stay strong my dear.”

“Dear Uzma, was trying to find words for the last few days to comfort and reassure you. I still have nothing but to let you know that you are in my prayers constantly. You have been amazing through this hard journey. I can’t even imagine what it must be like for you. But remember that you are surrounded by duas and well wishes from everyone.”

“I see you writing a book. For kids. I trust my intuition so wanted to put that out to you as you have the gift to inspire on a big level. Pls know I am your champion.”

“You’re a courageous person and although I don’t have cancer I have been going through medical problems within the last year as well and seeing you post makes me relate to someone. I know it’s hard seeing people get on with their lives and doing things, but always have hope because at the end of the day that is what most of us have only truly have. Feel free to message if you feel down and need anyone to talk. I know there’s an age difference but I’m sure we’ll have plenty to talk about. Stay strong beautiful !”

“Uzma I read your posts you know you are my hero, you express your feelings so well you are very clear in your thought processes you are a very realized person. I am  heading towards the end of my life. Every day I experience new pains and witness the diminution in my bodily functions, in spite of healthy living exercise activity etc. This is the reality of life. It has an end. We are born and our souls have acquired this physical existence it moves and hence created illusion of time and so the beginning and end. Some conditions and illnesses accelerate this process and since we are sentient beings and pursuit of knowledge, medical science in this case has literally makes us capable of predicting or seeing in future, it’s but natural that it has emotional repercussions. But my coping mechanism is concentrating on spiritual aspect of life. Life can’t be just this. These events in a way prove that reality is much larger than this and hence perseverance with this mundane process with its uncertainty is the wisdom.”

They continue to pour in. Blessed to have this much wisdom and emotional support available to me.

 

 

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Moving on!

Another Appointment today!
Hair cut and color ????????????????
Looking forward to a relatively normal day as I digest the events that started February 20th.
It all started when I went to do my annual routine breast MRI.

On that test , the edge of the liver showed lesions which looked suspicious for cancer.

I returned to the CT scanner to see if it were real lesions or artifacts.

Ct showed them again.

At this point medical team recommended investigating the entire body for evidence of cancer else where.

Bone scan was clean.

PEt scan showed more than liver involvement

Brain MRI is also clean.
So Since feb 15, I have been pretty much doing scans and appointments . Best part about yesterday was not getting further bad news.
Today I feel a bit relaxed as I see the picture a little clearly .
Thank you for getting me through this highly tumultuous , scary and unpredictable 10 days.
It is one of the hardest things I have done.

Including talking to those who clearly were unwilling to see the reality.
Three statements that I am really tired of hearing are:

Be strong 

Be Positive

Don’t give up hope
All good thoughts to say. They just don’t help me emotionally in dealing with what lies ahead.
Good attitude is important. Hope is relative and strength fluctuates daily.
Iam just being for now. Being what I know best. Being who I am.
Hope DOESNOT mean denying the reality neither does it mean burying head in the sand.  
Hope is effort , on going effort to not die before actual death. Hope is living good whatever you have not exaggerating reality that is completely unrealistic.

My kind of hope requires me to live daily and that’s all I do.

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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]

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“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.

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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.

Click here to see the complete report.