Recover

re·cov·er

riˈkəvər/

verb

1. 1.return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.

   "Neil is still recovering from shock"

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2.

find or regain possession of (something stolen or lost).

My recovery has gone pretty textbook.  I'm back to work and back to mothering.  Date night is tonight and this weekend is full of normal errands and events.  We excelled at getting dinner on the table this week and making sure all the school paper work got done (so many forms holy moly).  We did a lot of snuggling and I had several baths and now I have a cold and I can't get the formatting in this post to work.  Pretty textbook January happenings.  We have so many people to thank for getting us back up and running and taking care of us last week.  A really shocking amount of love came our way and we are truly grateful.

I saw the surgeon for follow up today and everything with my incision is also normal and healing according to plan.  The rest of my thyroid was sent away for pathology and sure enough it was also growing 2 new balls of cancery goodness.  Fucking bastard.  Luckily it's gone and next up we have getting my thyroid hormone levels sorted and then radioactive iodine to kill any stray cancer cells that might have escaped the "saran wrap" like bubble that encased my tumours.  

The pathology from my original lumps showed that the sacks the cancer tumours were inside was broken which means some of those little buggers could be anywhere.  The upside is wherever they might be trying to spread to the radioactive iodine will destroy them, even if they are in bone.  Wicked awesome.  Give me that stuff right now godammit.  Now isn't possible so it looks like March.

Cancer steals something (see above definition) and although my body is recovering and returning to a normal state of health, my mind will never regain possession of what has been taken from us by cancer.  We will make our decisions about finances differently (burn that money up, life is short!), we will make different choices for our kids (no xrays for teeth please), we will see our retirement with tentative eyes (will I even be here?), I will see my work with new eyes (turns out having the perfect tile matters less).  

Our future has been not entirely stolen because the chances I'm 100% cured are very high but it has been tainted.  It's a little less bright.  There are more dark shadows.  I look at my smiling face in the photos in our home and I see a clarity and a confidence I don't have back yet and maybe I never will.  I think about saving items of Sebby's for our grandkids that it is plausible I will never meet.  I feel terror.  I feel sad.  I feel robbed.  I thought I would feel more insane rage but it's really a quiet, sneaky anger.  One that burns low and deep and long.  Like a pilot light of mad.  

When I get the "how are you's?" I feel like the only answer is "good" or "recovering well" because how do I explain to someone not effected by cancer that nothing will ever be the same.  That everything looks different.  I was that person up until December 2 and I know the person that doesn't have cancer can't grasp that you can be good and still feel like you've lost everything.  Like each and every thing is altered.  I envy that.  I miss that.  

So while I'm recovering well from the surgery there is a lot of recovery ahead in my mind.  To be able to feel firm in my space here, to feel like I can make long term plans again.  To feel confident I will see my children grow into beautiful adults.  There's no way around the doom and gloom so we will go through it.  We are good, lucky, recovering.  Trudging through the murk that is life with cancer in it.  Trying to recover what's been stolen from us.