The Unhealed Part

Well, it's been a while since I've been here.  I have no reason, except that the summer got away from me.  But then, for this month of breast cancer awareness, I've been asked to guest blog at Pine Country Feed - and I knew they were going to link to this blog.  As my niece so eloquently put it, "Maybe this will help you get off your butt and write again."  So here I am.

Today, I will bare my soul in a way I never intended to do when I started this blog.  But several things have conspired to convince me that I should share my whole story, even the most painful parts.  The issue today is rarely talked about because it's intensely personal, and it requires emotional courage.  I'm digging deep today - I've cried all morning just thinking about writing this.  The thought that my father, or my pastor will read this gives me heart palpitations.  Today, I become vulnerable in a way that is extremely uncomfortable.  So, if you have no desire to read today's post, I'll understand.  But, if you have the courage to step into my life, then do, and participate in an experiment in empathy.




I understand that most people have a total disconnect between breast cancer and its effects on intimacy.  I understand this because I myself didn't get it - not until my own personal war with cancer was fought, and I was left to experience first hand the wounds it left.  When I was diagnosed, a very kind friend linked me to an article titled "Intimacy After Breast Cancer."  After thanking her, in my naivete, I rolled my eyes and tossed the article aside.  My husband and I had been married nearly 14 years when I had my cancer surgery.  We had a very natural and easy relationship, and I figured it was no one's business how we dealt with personal issues.  We would work it out.  I didn't want anybody's advice, because I didn't think I needed it.

I am not an emotionally driven person.  Because of this, emotions tend to sneak up on me.  I can go for days, thinking I'm perfectly fine, and then the emotion will overtake me like a storm, and it has to run its course.  When I had my cancer surgery, a bilateral mastectomy, I had immediate reconstruction, so I woke up with a silhouette very similar to the one I'd always had, and heavily bandaged so I couldn't see the wounds.  I was warned to prepare myself before I looked at my scars.  Did I want to be alone, or with someone?  Where did I want to be?  But when I looked, it was no big deal.  I felt ... nothing.

Unfortunately, due to a staph infection, the surgical implants had to be removed, and for the next 14 months, my chest was caved in on each side where my breasts used to be.  I am amazed now to think about how many showers I took, how many times I applied lotion and got dressed, without ever looking at or touching those scars.  I would instinctively turn my back to my husband when I changed my shirt, never once thinking about what I was doing or why.  I was not facing what had happened to me - I was happily existing inside a little bubble of denial.

Then one day, after I had started chemo, after my hair had fallen out, I was in the shower letting the water run over my bald head.  And this thought just came into my head - if an evil person wanted to shame a woman, he would cut off her breasts, shave her head, and toss her out for all to see her ruin.  And with that thought came an overwhelming grief.  It caught me totally off guard, this intense, discomforting emotion as it swept over me.  I ended up in a ball on the floor of the shower, and as the water poured over me, I wept out all this stored-up pain that I wasn't even aware existed.  Then, very slowly, I placed my hands on my chest and felt the contours of my scars.  And then I looked.  One word filled my mind --- ugly.  They were so ugly.  But I was spent by my grief, and I thought it would be alright.  I had poured out all this emotional ugliness, now I could begin to heal.

But those ugly feelings would continue to sneak up on me.  I wore a camisole all the time, except in the shower.  I would take it off, step into the shower, dry off and put a fresh one on.  Without it, I felt too exposed, too vulnerable - insecure and unsafe.  I would wear it to bed.  One night, after the lights were out, my husband reached over and laid his hand on the skin of my stomach, under the camisole.  He very gently slid his hand up, and touched my scar.  It was a sweet and affectionate touch.  Yet my response was visceral.  My eyes filled with tears, my body tensed and I fought the nervous response of my body that wanted to push him away.  I was desperate not to hurt my husband - he loves me and I am absolutely safe with him.  So I willed my body to relax, and I calmed my breathing.  But even that was a betrayal of sorts, because I was presenting something to him that wasn't authentic.  I felt the tiniest wedge slide between us.  I felt I had caused it, and only I knew it was there.  The conflicting emotions inside me were such a tangled mess, I couldn't even put a voice to them.  So I bit my lip, and let the tears fall silently on my pillow, and prayed that God would fix this unnamed thing inside me that had broken.

Post-mastectomy patients form a sorority of sorts.  In this sorority, women share dark and painful secrets that they would never share with others.  Because of this, I know that some women never get over the feelings I've described.  They don't know how to approach it, and this unnamed and un-talked about thing grows between them and their spouse.  It steals their joy.  It throws their relationship out of balance.

Thankfully, I've come to a place of healing and acceptance where I don't feel those things nearly as often.  The first thing I think when someone says "describe yourself" is no longer ... ugly.  But in spite of this, issues relating to intimacy still impact me.  In the last couple of years, I've developed increasingly troublesome symptoms of aching, occasional sharp pain, and general discomfort which most women can probably adequately imagine.  I finally went to the gynecologist about it.  Although she was really wonderful and absolutely professional, and a woman (thank you, Jesus), it was still so humiliating to describe to a total stranger, in minute detail, the most personal details of my life.  And when I was through, she said, "It's your cancer medicine."  I take a cancer drug every day.  I'm 2 1/2 years through a five-year regimen.  I had suspected that the medicine was the cause, but in researching it I had found nothing that was similar to what I was experiencing.  She said the issues I was having were not technically side-effects, and that's why I couldn't find information.  But she was certain that the cancer drug was the cause.

So I asked my oncologist about it, and she confirmed that the problem was my cancer drug.  And there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.  Discontinuing treatment is not an option.  I got the 'talk' - all about my risk level for recurrence, and the fact that I have young children to raise, etc., etc.   So I continue to take the drug, and I continue to struggle.  Sometimes, when my husband takes my hand, instead of love and joy and security, I feel a low-level anxiety.  That thing in our marriage which is supposed to bond us, which is supposed to be an expression of love, has instead become a source of pain.  We love each other, but the natural rhythm of our love has been destroyed.  I am broken - this part of my life is broken, and it has been broken by breast cancer.  How do I fix it?  I can only pray that God will open my eyes to a solution, or simply touch me with His hand.  But for now, this part of me remains unhealed.