The big question has become– so now what? I don’t have an answer. In fact, I feel like I don’t have a clue whats going on. My head is sometimes spinning. I feel more lost now than I have through this entire process. Its a very isolated feeling, lonely. The loss of control is so uneasy and the uncertainty ahead is just down right scary. It feels like now I’m on some kind of survivor TV show, or better yet a ‘tribute’ from the Hunger Games. This must be how Katnis Everdeen felt when she was dropped into the middle of the area– a game of survival. Gotta figure out how to stay alive, to strategize every move, execute it perfectly– cause if I don’t, it will cost lives, my life.
Many of you ask me “If I am excited its over”. Am I happy my treatment has ended? Yes, I’m happy. But over? Oh no, this will never be over. The victors return to their district, alone– the last survivors– but they have to live everyday with what happened in the arena. This is still the beginning– the beginning of ‘after’, fraught with all the aftereffects. I still have to go through surgical breast reconstruction, 5 -10 years of taking a pill everyday and a monthly injection that will decrease my chances of the cancer coming back– in essence shutting down my ovaries (putting them in pharmacological menopause). I’m now faced with having to deal with the effects of menopause. Even though he was a dude, I could see being a bit like Haymitch Abernathy, the victor turned mentor. Except instead of medicating with alcohol, my new pills will cause mood swings (like I am not already a bit nutz) hot flashes, sore bones and joint and worst of all– I could end up with a dry vagina!
Yes I said it- cause I am just being real here. Beyond the fear of cancer returning (being sent back to the arena), what could be worse than a dry whoha?! I know you’ve seen those commercials about woman who have this problem. Its real and its now on my radar. A dry vagina is a very unhappy vagina. Nobody likes a sad vagina. Not to mention I am still recovering from 6 surgeries and what pregnancy and chemo did to my body. It may seem over to some but everyday I am reminded of my breast cancer and the impact it left on my life. Its almost as if, now I am realizing what I have gone through the past year, its all catching up to me. It shocks me to think about what happened. I am no longer in fight mode (I’m out of the arena) and realizing, shit, I had cancer. I had cancer and I pray to God that President Snow doesn’t leave me roses in my victor mansion, in the form of a dry vagina. Somehow, ‘shell-shocked’ isn’t quite the right word, nor PTSD. Its something else, something I’d imagine only the other victors feel, and I’ll wrestle it (but hopefully not with a dry vagina- because honestly, who likes to wrestle with a dry vagina?)!
