Climbing That Next Hill

Obstacles end up in your path.  It is the way of life, right?

The big question is how well you can live while you struggle to get by whatever ends up in your path.  Do you find a way to smile through whatever it is?  Do you live, happily and fully, or curl into a ball and stop living altogether for a while?  Or do you do all of the above at varying points?

Because that has been me this week, let me tell you.

It is funny how something big like breast cancer can make you pause and ask yourself those questions.  Not just once at the time of diagnosis, but at each and every mountain you end up climbing along the way.  And there are a LOT of mountains right now, some definite, some looming in the mist in the distance as possibilities only, but still looming nonetheless.

Despite trying to take the higher road, the happier path, it's been a bit of a rough week. 

It might have something to do with my surgery finally getting scheduled for the 19th of April, which is this coming Friday. 

I am so glad that we've gotten to this step -- action is so much better than waiting for action when it comes to a cancer diagnosis, let me tell you.  But now that this is about to get rolling, all of my tamped down emotional fear, the stuff I've been walling off and holding in for fear that I won't be able to stop once it starts coming out?

Oh, it's out.  And...yikes.


This week, I discussed words like oophorectomy (which has to be the goofiest sounding word for a surgical procedure ever, even though I understand its latin underpinnings) and oncotype.  My emotional status is a bit on the exhausted side of things as a result.  Intellectually, I understand exactly why I am having these conversations with my doctors and reading up on them obsessively as I move forward, but emotionally?  I think I need some down time in the worst way, but I don't have the time to take it right now.

What I'm discovering is that this sort of thing is a roller coaster.  I need to get better at dealing with the ups and downs -- they are going to happen, and holding things in doesn't make them go away any more than constantly letting everything out.

But how?  That's a really good question, and one for which I have no real answers at the moment.  This is clearly going to be a long-term struggle, but I'm determined to learn and grow from this in a good way -- this is one hill that I am going to climb and conquer, this and the next one and the next one.

Because there is no other good choice, is there?

(Photo via auws.)