Post-script
Written some time in 2006, committed to the blog in 2007: One day, during radiation, I hit a wall. The world, which had always seemed full of adventure and at least the possibility of joy, was deflated. The chemo and radiation were killing the cancer cells, but I thought that they were also taking away my spirit. I was going to pop out the other end of this thing alive, for sure, and able to go back to doing whatever it was that I did, but the joy would be gone. I knew healthy, and I knew sick (bearable only because it would end), but I feared that the best I could hope for after Hodgkins was no-longer-sick.
Probably I should have called Sheila, who’d let me know at my first appointment that depression wasn’t out of the question and could certainly be treated. Instead I emailed a friend. No idea what I wrote, but the phone rang soon after - he said email didn’t seem sufficient that day. No idea what I said, but I remember crying a lot.
Almost three years later, I’m ready to write about it. Life went on. Ben’s in grade 4 and says he doesn’t remember when I was sick. Emmy will start kindergarten in the fall, and I guess I’ll tell her about it some day. She’s sure to notice the Mom-in-hats stretch in the photo albums. I’ve left TiVo, and although I’m not deliberately keeping Hodgkins a secret from my new co-workers, it’s hard to know whether to bring it up. Events for cancer survivors aren’t for me. But when I hear of someone going through it, I let them know that although nobody wants to be in this particular club, at least it’s a club. I can’t go through the treatments for them, but I can let them know I understand the laughing and the crying, the boredom and the fear. And maybe it gives them hope to see that I’m here, I have hair, a sense of humor, a normal family, a normal life.