Do people not realize that perhaps someone who has just finished their chemotherapy cycles and is trying to make a transfer back into "normal" life may be a little bit SENSITIVE!?!?!?!?!
It boggles my mind how many people come around and don't even consider this! Okay so perhaps this is me being a little bit selfish right now, but I am sorry I feel that at times I am allowed to be a little selfish, after all if this taught me anything it was to stop letting people walk all over me because I am number one!
I am so excited to go back to work I can hardly contain those emotions! I talk to Dave about it everyday and about all of the projects that I had on the go and accomplishments that I was working on when I left and how I cant wait to achieve those! Anyone who has been around me in the last year knows how much I love my job and strive to succeed at it, that I have developed great relationships and pride myself in the fact that I live to work not work to live! I wake up in the morning excited to go to work - FINALLY!
Therefore, the other day when I had a miscommunication with a friend/co-worker who told me not "stay home and not bother coming back and let the person filling in for me continue to do my job if I didn't want to do her any favors upon my return" - Perhaps I FREAKED OUT!!!!!
WHAT???????????????? Are you kidding me right now??????????????
For anyone not going through chemotherapy or has never gone through it, for those of you that have never fought cancer, please understand one thing - While I may seem healthy to you on the outside, I smile all the time and yes, I lost a breast and not my sense of humor....you see me at these times and these times only, but do you see me laying in my bed crying at night or confiding in my husband all of my fears, do you see me staring in the mirror for 20 minutes every morning feeling unbeautiful because of my lack of hair and breasts and the constant redness around my eyes, do you see me sleeping for 16 hours a night because I am exhausted, do you watch me every day struggle to remember what I was just talking about in mid sentence because I suffer occasionally from chemo fog.
You can sit there and comfort me and say "you are beautiful no matter what, don't worry about forgetting things, don't cry you should be happy because your a survivor.
I know these things! However, do I feel AS beautiful as I did a year ago or as I will in a year from now? No I do not and neither would you without your hair or your breasts, it is not about the beauty within at ALL TIMES, it is about feeling like a woman!
So please - just have some compassion for the things that YOU DO NOT KNOW. It doesn't matter how close you are to people unless you are with them 24/7 just assume there are things you do not know and emotions they are going through that you cant possibly understand.
Amen to that!
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