Brave, is something that people often tell me I am...Brave....Hmmmm Am I brave or am I just here doing what I need to do?! Would I not be brave if by chance I had terminal cancer and decided NOT to do treatment? Would I still be brave at that point, if I just said enough is enough? No, because at that point you often hear people say, "Well she fought a good fight", or "it is just too much at some point". No "F" that! If I have terminal cancer, returning from before, and I decide that I am done, because I have already been through too much, and knowing that giving in now, and not putting my family through more, is easier, for me and them... THAT IS BRAVE!
I was not brave during my first ever chemotherapy treatment, which was shortly after having my daughter. It was in pill form and back then, I walked into a room with no one around, they brought in a box, left it on the table and walked out. I wept like a baby as I opened the box to reveal my one little blue pill that made me feel like death was upon me. BUT, I continued on because I had babies, not because I was brave... I was not brave when I had my double mastectomy... I have had roughly 25 surgeries before this one in my life time, surgery was not an easy thing, but it didn't scare me. This however sacred me, I again wept like a baby all the way to the surgical sweet and all the way up until they knocked me out! That was certainly not brave, that was a necessary surgery to save my life in order to continue to see my children grow and my husband hug me tight at night! And I most certainly was not brave during my first IV chemotherapy this year. When you have reached a status of having to have chemotherapy a second time, in a lifetime, you start to put things into perspective a little bit more and numb yourself from things until after they have occurred. So maybe I appear brave, but I most certainly was not when I would get home crawl in bed and forget weeks at a time only to try and fight my way to consciousness just to know my children and husband were safe and healthy.
At this point going through treatments for two different types of Cancer at two different times in my life, that isn't brave, that is fighting for my live to let the doctors learn more about this horrible disease, that is doing what I need to do in order to ensure a normalcy for my family, it is doing what needs to be done! All those men and women out there that have to make the impossibly hard decision to stop treatment because it is simply just too much, THOSE ARE THE BRAVE ONES! Once cancer is in remission and returns, it is all too often with a vengeance, and it is not an easy pill to swallow hearing the words, "it has returned, and it has progressed"!
I have the fear weighing on my shoulders on a daily basis... The first sign of a headache, the thoughts are now, "has it spread".... The aches and pains in my joints, "do you think the cancer has moved into my bones?" My kids start to get bruises and aches and pains, and you mind now all the sudden turns to the worst thought that could ever enter your mind! Is it possible to ever get thoughts like this out of your mind? I think these thoughts continue to bounce around in your head over and over and over again, until the next phone call happens that confirms your worst fears!
There are so many people out there that have these thoughts bouncing around their heads and live normal lives, but that thought, of what if, it is always there! So brave, I would not call myself, I don't know how to be brave, and I don't know how anyone could be brave when they have the weight of the world on your shoulders... Brave I am not, hopeful I am that I never have to be brave to make a decision that I never want to make. Brave I will be if the that time ever comes, for my children, for my family, for my friends, and for the world to see that brave really comes towards the end so you don't let others see your fear!
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