Three months ago my husband, four kids, and new dog piled in the van to return home via 550 miles of highway. We had gone to visit my extended family, including a beloved aunt who was terminally ill. As we settled in for the night at our first stop my phone alerted me of tornadoes at home. A Midwest upbringing left me unafraid, but still appropriately concerned. I texted my neighbor to be assured of her family's safety. When she replied that their ears were popping as they huddled in the basement I knew we were being hit.
The next day the six remaining hours of the journey seemed double their length. Every bit of van not filled with kids, dog or luggage was stuffed with bottled water and a generator, purchased along the way home. I called the police to figure out which roads were open. I watched the news on my phone and got text updates from friends and prepared my kids for a home that was going to look very different.
Each morning of the first week I woke up, put on work clothes, and pulled my hair back. The remains of our shade trees were toppled, chopped and hauled. The debris was collected; there were five types of siding in our yard. Kids were tended, the roof was tarped, the refrigerator was emptied into the trash, calls were made from cell phones charging in the van.
I eventually noticed that when I pulled my hair back, I had bald patches at my temples. It was a similar pattern from my post-baby days. But I hadn't had a baby. I thought perhaps it was from pulling my hair back so much. I mentioned it to my hairdresser when I was at my appointment recently. She looked at my temples and said she would guess the hair had actually come out four months prior, based on the regrowth. It had not been broken, or ripped, but had fallen out. She frequently saw the hair loss pattern with stress. Had anything stressful happened four months prior? I counted my months backwards quickly and knew exactly when I had lost my hair.
At T's well visit last Fall the pediatrician was concerned about one tonsil suddenly being larger than the other. We got worked in to an ENT, not our own, who could see us immediately. He interrupted me, grew inpatient with T for having a developmental disability, and disregarded the pediatrician's note that this was a significant change. He blew us off. In December T's tonsil was still enlarged and other physicians agreed it wasn't improving. The pediatrician put in a consult again, I called to beg our regular ENT to get him in quickly. She did see him and when she did, she said the tonsils needed to come out. But first we needed to try antibiotics. If the antibiotics didn't decrease his tonsils, T would need surgery. She was concerned about lymphoma.
Lymphoma.
Cancer.
However bad you imagine it is, being told your kid might have cancer, it's worse.
Anytime my mind would start to drift toward life with lymphoma in my kid my chest would grow heavy and tight. I pushed it aside, told myself to mourn when I had a reason to. I told my husband, but he didn't hear me. He didn't know we had a death threat hanging over our heads. I dwelt under the cloud by myself. I didn't want to tell anyone else, didn't want to share unnecessary burdens, but it leaked out in a phone call with my sister one day. Saying the words out loud to her triggered my first tears. I cried for a minute, then pushed them aside. I would cry when I had reason to. Tucker's teacher asked me a direct question, that for a variety of broken reasons I felt compelled to answer. I felt bad for dragging her down into the worry. I pushed that aside, too, though. I refused to let fear, or guilt, or possible suffering and death ruin our upcoming holidays.
When we got to my sister's house for Christams, 600 miles away, I realized I had left the antibiotics in the previous hotel's refrigerator. I hated myself, but couldn't slow down to feel bad. I called the on-call ENT and asked for more antibiotics. I didn't want to get to our follow-up appointment and find out that missing days 9 and 10 of antibiotcs was grounds for restarting the process. Meanwhile, T's appetite started decreasing, his throat hurting too bad to inspire him to eat. We saw other people in December who were unwilling to honor my requests to meet T's needs. I wanted to scream at them that he may have cancer, but swallowed it down. I fantasized about my son having cancer and them realizing they made everything worse by their jackassery. They would feel guilty and I would feel sainted.
At the follow-up appointment the doctor said, "Those need to come out. I want the surgery scheduled within 2-3 weeks. The scheduler will call you tomorrow." When two tomorrows passed, I started calling the scheduler. She treated me like a hysterical pain in the ass for believing the physician's timeline, then took a day off work. T still wasn't eating much. One week later she finally got the surgery scheduled for five weeks in the future. I wanted to cuss, or throw something, but instead made a phone call to the nurse to see if the doctor was aware of the delay in his surgery. I felt everything within me tense, but kept my voice calm. The doctor knew, she was fine with it. Each person I talked to was forcefully cheerful, trying to deescalate my frustration with a chipper voice, rather than competence. I tensed with every call I made, but could not go on the attack. I had to stay calm, but persistent with the medical team. I couldn't get those tonsils out of my kid's head without them. It had been two months since I was told the doctor was worried about lymphoma, four months since my pediatrician first sounded the alarm.
Surgery finally came.
Recovery was a horror. T was in so much pain. Oxycodone is the only thing that kept us from being readmitted to the hospital. We alternated Tylenol and Ibuprofen around the clock, setting our alarms to wake him in the night. He would only eat ice chips when his oxycodone was working at full force. He refused all the jello, ice cream and popsicles I had stocked up on. He slept in our bed with us, assuring the worst quality of sleep for his parents.
I kept my cell phone on me, waiting for the biopsy results. A week later I called them. "They're negative!" When I checked the online chart later I found that they had had the results for five days, but didn't bother to tell me.
You would think benign results, after 2.5 months of being worried about cancer, would bring about the largest sigh of relief. Instead, all the stress that I had been pushing off came crashing in. Later that week my neck began to hurt. I thought I slept wrong. Then the headaches came; 800mg of Ibuprofen only took the edge off so I could function. I caught myself tensing my jaw, gritting my teeth, something I have never done before. Eventually the pain spread to the front of my neck. I felt like I was being strangled. Only with the culmination of symptoms did I realize I was combating stress, not a misaligned pillow. My man all but shoved me onto a masseuses's table. The masseuse had never felt a scalp as tight as mine. I didn't know scalps could be tense. She marveled at the knots in my neck, head and shoulders.
And apparently, my hair fell out. But I didn't notice until a tornado hit my house and I started utilizing pony tails on a daily basis.
I can't imagine what happened to my cardiovascular health during the Winter of Deferred Worry. Or my endocrine health. Or neurologic.
There is not such thing as "just stress." When you next grapple with stress, please learn from me. Go to a counselor, go for a walk, participate in a prayer group, join a kickboxing class. Don't push it off. It can not be held off forever. And when it builds enough strength, it will come crashing in, taking your health and hair with it.
copyright (c) Elizabeth, Bug's Beef. All rights reserved
