Set Us Free

Posted on April 3, 2021 by Apparently Catherine

I was supposed to go into the city to have a blood test today to check I’m ok for chemo on Monday but the blood test place is shut due to the Easter long weekend even though Google says it’s open I rang to make sure and they aren’t, which is lucky as it’s an hour and a half drive each way.

So I don’t know what that means for chemo, I’m actually hoping they’ll say I can’t have it, my last interactions with the staff there were less than favourable and frankly
I’m so over it right now that if and when they chastise me for not planning ahead for the long weekend I’m absolutely happy to walk away and not go back ever again.

Yep, I’m only hurting myself by doing that but I just don’t care, I’m in a ‘fuck it’ defiant mood reminiscent of the day I left high school. I did all their stupid surgeries, I went along with all the bullshit that the specialists suggested and I’ve reached the end of my rope.

I didn’t want to do any of this in the first place. When you have a cancer diagnosis you’re thrown into a sped up merry go round of doctors, specialists, scans, blood tests, operations, medication… there’s so much they expect you to do. The “I’m a doctor I know what’s best for you so do as I say” attitude is thrust upon you and you just have to lie there, take it all and pretend to be grateful.

Theres this belief that cancer is the enemy, this is a war, all of the atrocities and bullshit is acceptable as part of the win or die fighting attitude.

I’ve put up with all of it, until now. When I told the cancer care nurse that I couldn’t change my chemo cycle week as I’d planned my world around it and she replied “well that will have to be up to the doctor” – that was my ‘fuck you, you don’t own me’ moment. I didn’t say that to her but it fractured what was left of my give a damn and I did tell her my psychiatrist visits are on the off week and not changeable and that my mental health issues are going to kill me a Damn site faster than the cancer will so it’s more important to me.

I told M this, M said she’d be happy to work around me if we had to change weeks she’d figure something out which is absolutely lovely and kind, but I don’t want her and her ever patient secretary to have to figure anything out. We have a system and it works. Why should they always be the helpful accommodating ones?

If you’ve lurked here a while then you and I both know that death isn’t a stranger in my life, as much as faulty genetics can be scientifically attributed to my cells going rogue, if we want to talk epigenetics then those genes were triggered ‘on’ by years of trauma anyway.
We have literally begged to die a thousand times.

We finally found some peace in existence and I feel that came through the knowledge that our time has limits beyond our control anyway. It’s time to focus on healing ourself mentally, we’ve spent years procrastinating but our parts need closure, they need to be heard, they need their pain witnessed and then our body can do what it will.

If we die at least we die having found a sense of inner peace but if we keep dissociating our life away to cope with ever increasing new traumas those parts will never have a chance to be free.