again the body: logistics, disassociation, & diverted attention

My mother has cancer again. 

In 2010, during my last year of undergrad, she was diagnosed with stage 3 HR+ breast cancer. Because of dense breast tissue, a grapefruit sized tumor was missed until symptoms began to show on her skin: patches of pitted, tough rind-like legions. The doctors describe these areas as having an "orange like texture and appearance." Doctors use these type of fruit or food descriptors so that patients can better visual medical terminology for symptoms, but the comparisons are more apt than they realize: Cancer is fruit, fruiting, alive as any body. 

After chemo, radiation, lymph node removal and a mastectomy; after ten years of dutifully taking low-dose chemo medication as a prophylactic measure against relapse, the body has again begun to fruit. Mutated lemons, twisted at the apex of her left lung, right over the spot where her previous radiation treatment was focused. With this nuclear blast, like some kind of demented supervillain origin story, the cancer has reappeared as stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. The cruel irony being she doesn't even have a breast there anymore.

Whether healthy or not, my brain has the tendency to protect my psyche from trauma by blocking the formation of memory. I've struggled with a rare, painful chronic health condition since birth. I've had several surgeries since childhood and had a cancer scare myself in 2023, when a tumor was discovered in my liver. After nearly dying from complications related to sepsis, 60% of the organ was removed. Luckily, my tumor was determined to be pre-cancerous, merely symptomatic of the extreme level of inflammation my hepatic system has underwent throughout my life, via born dysfunction and constant surgical manipulation.

I remember very little of 2023. I remember very little of 2010, when my mother was first diagnosed. Huge gaps of action, huge skips in time; merely flashes of events with little connection to emotion or time. Comorbidities of major depressive disorder and ADHD make my memory shoddy anyway. I am constantly surprised to see photos of myself with friends, seeing joyful events and fun times, that I have no recollection of-- daily tasks must be scheduled with automatic reminders, alarms, calendar alerts that nudge me a week, three days, one day, hours, minutes, before tasks. As a child I was constantly forgetting to do homework, leaving items on buses, losing pocket money. Teachers pinned notes and homework to my coat so I wouldn't lose them.  I seem to live my life entirely in the present, or lost deep in my head, beyond where the passage of time can reach me.

More: I am a chronic whiner, oversensitive and acutely aware of the sensation of my body. I am unsure if it is due to my intense sensory processing issues (again, a symptom of my neurodivergence), or my memory of pain. Pain is one thing I always remember with brutal clarity. I am terrified of pain.

Yet when pain comes, I shift from neurotic mess of my daily self, someone who is barely able to handle daily tasks, to a competent leader, someone you want with you in a crisis. I am calm, logical, and able to handle not only myself but the complex needs of others and/or the situation. I can breathe through, withstand, extreme levels of pain and stress.  After my last hospitalization in 2023, the cancer scare, I organized and managed my own care, planning in advance and delegating tasks for when I would be in-hospital/in-recovery. I wasn't afraid. I wasn't anxious. I had tasks to complete.

I feel the same now. I was the same in 2010. I am in the exact same role. 21, 37: it makes no difference. I play therapist to my mom and immediate family, soothing the tumult of their grief, organize my mom's medical care, talk with insurance, drive her to appointments, clean her house. I am not alone, of course, as our family is close and my mother has a wide circle of devoted friends, but I am the most collected.

I have no feelings right now. It is an emptiness of both thought and sensation. I have not cried. I have not had any spirals into anxiety or despair. I am assistant, secretary, therapist, driver: dutiful daughter through and through.

One of my best friends lost her mother to the same cancer in 2020, right before the pandemic hit. She called me and said, "It helps to start imagining what your life will look like without her."  I try. It seems impossible right now, in this mode, in this probable bubble of cushioning shock. There is only today and things that must be done for today.

I feel myself turning inwards into the emptiness inside of me, filling each "non-mom" moment with senseless diversions. I suddenly needed to replace the caulking in the bathroom, to repaint the living room, to rip out the ugly vinyl flooring in my office.

I've silenced my text message alerts, uninterested in my beloved friends' chatter, in their well wishes and offers of support. I've been ignoring emails from dear friends, not returning calls or messages. I've skipped dinners, parties. I'm not annoyed by their daily joys. I need their joy. I simply don't have room for it right now. It is not time yet, in this blush of a new, cruel spring. Mean fruits are growing, swollen, ready to burst.

My mother is a complex figure who has had a tragic and difficult life. She was a single mother dealing with complicated trauma and mental health issues, and I was (in some ways), a parentified child. Sometimes my mother feels like another sibling for me to watch over, to guide and protect.

But I love her, and have always loved, the weird, funny, dramatic, cranky, whip-smart woman who, above all else in her life, worked hard to care for and provide for her beloved children. Who never berated my interests, my quirks, who never raised her voice. I tell her, "you are our angel parent, because you loved us; because you stayed."

(She also asked that when describe her, I should make sure to include adjectives like beautiful, gorgeous, stunning,  if that tells you anything about her personality and why she constantly makes me laugh.)

I'm sure I won't remember this later. Like everything else. My mind is programmed to stop recording during tragedy. All energy is devoted to surviving now, now, now.

Its snowing in Chicago now: big fluffy flakes. The sidewalk needs shoveling, and we are out of rock salt. 

I am not reading, I am not writing.  The sidewalk needs shoveling. 

Have a good day.

M.