There’s a leak in my resilience bucket. I keep refilling it but after 10 months of this horror, I have finally realized that there’s a hole somewhere and my resilience is slowly leaking out like air from a mattress.  It doesn’t matter how many times I refill it; the resilience level is lower every day.

Sickness makes people … irritable. No surprise, right? They don’t feel well; in fact, they don’t feel like themselves anymore. Ken has chemo brain clouding his thoughts. He says that, while he’s sleeping, he doesn’t have cancer. Just imagine that jolt when he awakens and remembers. It’s no wonder that he’s out of sorts.

My mom used to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me.” Even better, Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Nobody can make you feel inferior without your consent.” Mostly, I just feel sad; although, to be honest, sometimes the arrow hits the target and I have to hide away from witnesses (kids) to cry a bit. Then I smack myself (metaphorically!), adjust my big girl underpants and get back to work.

The stupid crap I have to continually guard against is part of what is wearing me down. On Saturday, I opened a piece of mail from Ken’s oncologist. It was a bill for $7,800 +/-.  I’ve been expecting one, though not that large! Before calling to negotiate a payment plan, I checked the insurance company website, just in case… and sure enough it was another incorrectly processed claim.  Monday, I called the insurance company and said, “Take a look at my call history. I have another claim for you to reprocess.” But every single time I fix one, I also worry about whether I’ll accidentally pay one that I shouldn’t or that I’ll open an envelope with a large bill that we do actually owe.

We’ve been on a surgery pendulum. Let’s recap:  before the PET scan, the surgeon said “no surgery” and the radiation oncologist agreed. After the PET scan, the direction changed a bit. We went to Ken’s radiation check-up with some issues. Ken has some pretty significant pain so we needed to talk through some strategies to manage it. In addition, we had a lot of questions about the slow healing of the radiation damage.

Funny story — well, funny in a macabre way, I guess:  Ken’s describing his pain to a radiation oncology resident, who comes up with a tentative diagnosis to discuss with the doctor. The resident leaves the room and I look down at my phone. “I wonder how many other people are hoping ‘anal fissure’ is their diagnosis,” I murmur. I look at Ken and we both laugh.

Unfortunately, anal fissure was not the diagnosis. The radiation oncologist came in and talked to us about the PET scan results. The tumor is not, as he’d hoped, gone. It’s just smaller but radiation is no longer an option. He said that he’d have to double the radiation dose, causing damage that would not heal. The pain Ken’s experiencing is likely a result of damage from the lower dose radiation Ken received this summer.  To relieve the pain and address potential new growth of that primary tumor, the radiation oncologist wants Ken to have surgery as soon as possible. The oncologist disagreed, though, saying that Ken can’t be off chemo for two months.

What happens when the doctors aren’t aligned? Well, fortunately, they took us out of the middle and met at tumor board last Friday to discuss Ken’s treatment. The result is that surgery is off the schedule again. Chemo, however, is on the schedule indefinitely. Ken will have another PET scan at the end of the year or early January.

For now, I’m going to focus on planning Thanksgiving. Perhaps a little homemade pumpkin pie?