Month: April 2017

Pins and Needles

/ Jennifer / 3 Comments

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In my quest to quell my anxiety and improve my overall well-being, I’ve been trying a lot of new things.

I’ve been going to therapy (that’s not really new to me), I’ve been meditating, and last week, I tried acupuncture.

I’ve always been curious about the ancient Chinese practice of inserting tiny needles into pressure points around the body to treat various ailments. I have a coworker who’s been swearing by her acupuncturist for years, so I decided to give him a try.

Right away, I liked that he works out of a traditional doctor’s office (he rents space there). I’m a little hippy-dippy, but I also believe in the power of Western medicine. Our session began with talking. I told him about all I’d been through in the past year, we talked about my diet and exercise habits, and discussed what I hoped to get out of this treatment.

I told him about my fear and the anxiety it causes. Like my therapist, he said I’m still in fight or flight mode (I am), and I’ll have to work to get out of that and back to feeling more normal mentally and emotionally. I really liked what he had to say and how he approached things–he definitely has a sense of humor about what he does, but he also takes it very seriously and truly wants to help people.

After our chat, we got down to the business of treatment. He showed me the tiny needles–not much thicker than a strand of hair–and explained that I might feel a slight bit of pain when they were inserted. He only used five needles–one on my forehead between my eyes, one on each of my hands just above the bend between my thumb and forefinger, and one on the top of each of my feet. I felt the teensiest sensation when he inserted them–honestly, I can’t even call it pain.

The needles were just the beginning, though. The other part of the treatment was cranial sacral therapy. This basically entailed him holding my head in his hands with his fingers placed around the base of my skull. He told me to just let gravity do its thing and let my head rest in his hands.

For 45 minutes I laid there like that, needles poking out and my head in his hands. As he held my skull, his fingers moved very slightly against pressure points in my head.

At first, I honestly didn’t feel much of anything. I was relaxed, but no more so than during a massage. But after a bit, something strange happened. This is going to sound totally bonkers, but I almost felt like I was floating–I could barely feel the table beneath me. That’s how relaxed I was.

Holy hell, I haven’t been that chill in a loooong time!

At the end of the session, I felt sort of like I’d just awoken from a really good nap–relaxed, refreshed and slightly dazed. It was a good feeling, and I tried to carry it with me throughout the rest of that day.

Did acupuncture totally change my life? No. But did it give me some peace and calm, even for a few minutes? Absolutely.

As I continue my all fronts war on cancer and the fear and anxiety left in its wake, I’m excited to add this new weapon to my arsenal. I know it’s not some magical cure for my woes, but if I can add even a minute of anxiety-free time to my day with it, it’s worth the time and money.

In Dreams

/ Jennifer / 10 Comments

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For the first couple years after my mom died, I had a recurring dream about her.

The dream would change slightly, but would always involve her still being alive, and having left us in some other way. She and my dad would divorce, or she would simply go away, only to return later. I would wake up from these dreams so angry. Why did she leave us? How could she abandon us when we needed her? And then once that half-asleep anger subsided, the wave of pain and grief would wash over me.

I suppose this was my subconscious’ way of sorting out her loss. Her death was so sudden, so completely jarring, that my psyche just didn’t know what to do with it.

I haven’t had one of those dreams in a long time–until today.

I took a sweet nap with my son this afternoon, a rarity these days since he’s hitting that age where naps aren’t guaranteed. In the midst of our slumber, she returned.

This time, I found out she’d faked her death to leave us. But she eventually came back and moved into an apartment in my hometown. She would occasionally text me, or send me a card in the mail, but we never saw each other.

In the dream, I called my dad, asking him about her. He said they’d gone to dinner and they’d had a good time. He said she seemed happy, and he seemed OK with whatever the status of their relationship was. I tearfully asked him if she said anything about seeing me or my sister, or ventured to explain why she left. He said no to both counts. Then he changed the subject and started talking about something unimportant that I didn’t care about–this, a bit of reality since he has a tendency to do that when the conversation hits a subject he’s uncomfortable with.

Upset, I went to see my sister. I asked her if she’d seen mom, and she said no, sort of in an exasperated way, like, “Not this again, just let it go.” But I couldn’t let it go. I remember saying, “Why would she go to such lengths to leave us? Why doesn’t she want to see us? Why doesn’t she want to meet Alex?” She didn’t have an answer.

The last thing I remembered before waking up was trying to figure out why she’d gone to so much trouble. I recalled standing in the funeral home, looking at her lifeless body in the casket–the bruises on her forehead from the dashboard, still visible through the heavy pancake mortician’s makeup. The plastic wrapping I could see around her wrist inside the sleeve of her dress–likely some sort of preservation method since we had to wait a week to hold her funeral because my dad was so banged up from the accident. Was none of that real?

I awoke with that same dazed, angry feeling I haven’t felt in years. And then the familiar rush of sadness. Alex was snuggled close to me, and I held him a bit tighter and kissed the top of his head, breathing in the sweet scent of baby shampoo and wild boy. There’s no way she’d miss this.

Grief is a sneaky beast. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on it, when it feels like enough time has passed to ease the burden, it sneaks back up on you, often in unexpected ways.

I’ve missed my mother so acutely the past few years. Through my pregnancy, motherhood and my cancer journey, I’ve longed to talk to her. To lean on her. To hear her voice tell me she loves me. That it’s going to be OK.

There are some losses you never get over. Some that shake your faith and leave you wondering what the hell just happened. Time passes and you learn to manage it, to move on and keep living. But that grief is always there, waiting to haunt you even on the prettiest of days.

Adventures in Hair Growing

/ Jennifer / 5 Comments

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I’ve always had a lot of hair.

As a kid, I would suffer through sob-inducing post-bath de-tangling sessions with my mom, her hands nearly cramping from raking a comb through my long, matted hair.

In my 20s, I went to a stylist who called over some of her coworkers to show them exactly how much hair was on my head–circus freak-style. And my poor current stylist would sometimes have to take breaks while coloring, cutting and styling my hair during the waning months of her first pregnancy.

Of course, all that changed with chemo.

But here’s the good news (besides that clean path report): My hair is growing back!

And boy, is it growing back weird.

In Cancerland (that sounds like the world’s worst theme park, doesn’t it?), they call the situation I’ve got going on “chemo curls.” My hair is about an inch long, and in the back especially, it is curly. Really curly. Shirley Temple with a Richard Simmons perm curly.

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This really doesn’t even begin to capture the ringlet action I have going on back there.

Apparently, this is another fun side effect of the chemo. A friend who’s much smarter than me when it comes to matters of science explained that the chemo curls happen because even though it’s been months since I’ve had a treatment, the lingering effects of the drugs remain in my system. That’s kind of crazy to think about. That’s also why after six months to a year, the hair starts growing back as it normally would (in my case, not curly).

In the meantime, I have no clue what to do with this mess on my head. I’ve tried all manner of taming methods–texturizers, headbands, etc. I’ve also played around with the color a bit. For a while, I thought I might like to be a redhead. Then I realized, nope, what I really want is to be blonde again. It’s weird, but even though my blonde comes out of a bottle, it makes me feel more like me.

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Like a sexy Medusa robot

So, I went to the salon a couple weeks ago to get some highlights. I was amazed that the stylist was able to put my short, kinky strands in foils. That is some next-level styling, right there.

The result isn’t exactly where I was before, but a step in the right direction to looking more like the me I see in my mind’s eye.

That’s the thing about this whole losing my hair process–in my mind, it never really happened. When I imagine in my mind’s eye how I look, I look as I always have with long, blonde hair. It is truly jarring sometimes to catch a glimpse of my reflection and see how I really look.

I get lots of compliments on my short hair. A lot of the time, I think people are just being nice because they feel sorry for me having gone through this shit. Sometimes the compliments come from strangers, though, so I think they might be genuine. Regardless, while I appreciate being told I look “cool” or “sassy” or whatever, I can’t really love this hair. While I’m very grateful to have it at all, the current state of my tresses is just a constant reminder that something really bad happened. And something really bad could happen again.

So, I’ll let it keep growing. And hopefully I’ll figure out a way to grow with it.

Seventeen Years

/ Jennifer / 4 Comments
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My sister, mom and me at the Outer Banks sometime in the ’80s.

I hate April Fool’s Day.

I’ve never really been into pranks or trickery, and there’s something about this day that gives mischief more of a mean-spirited edge. And social media has made it even worse. Every year there are the fake engagement and pregnancy announcements, fake moving announcements, fake whatever announcements. It’s annoying and not really funny at all.

Of course, my hatred of this day is about more than just an intolerance of childish tomfoolery. My mom died in a car accident on April 1, 2000.

There’s something especially cruel about getting the dreaded call from the hospital that there’s been an accident on April Fool’s Day. For a split second I thought, “is this some kind of horrible joke?”

This year, the anniversary fell on a Saturday, just like the day it actually happened. My sister Wendy texted me in the wee hours of Saturday morning, likely awake with her thoughts, to tell me that having the anniversary fall on a Saturday again makes it harder for her. I nodded as I read her words, feeling the exact same way.

Just as it was on that horrible day in 2000, April 1 this year was absolutely gorgeous. One of those warm, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky days that make you revel in spring. As I sat in my backyard looking up at that sea of light blue, I couldn’t help thinking back to that day so many years ago.

It’s kind of amazing that I can remember most of the details of that day as clearly as if they’d happened just last week. I remember the slight nip in the air, what I was wearing (a pastel striped t-shirt from Old Navy and jeans), what I was doing when the phone rang (lying on my dorm bed, waiting for my parents to arrive for a visit). I remember bargaining with God as I careened down I-40 to the hospital in Chapel Hill. I remember realizing my mom was gone when the hospital staff ushered me into a small, private waiting room outfitted with an overabundance of tissue boxes and Bibles. I remember being taken back to see my father, unconscious on a gurney, disrobed and covered with a sheet up to his chest–preparation for surgery. I remember the stunned voices as I called family and friends to tell them the awful news.

In the years since her death, I’ve tried to mark her anniversary in a positive way. Some years I’ve volunteered or participated in a charity walk, others I just try to do fun things to keep the mood light and my mind off the sadness.

This year, I spent the day with Rodney and Alex. We ate pancakes for breakfast, snuggled in bed watching cartoons, went to swim class, went to our neighborhood Easter egg hunt and played in the yard. Nothing particularly remarkable, but without a doubt a good day.

I think this is what my mom would want–her loved ones moving on, living their lives. She’d want to be remembered–and she was–but I don’t think she’d want me or my sister to dwell. I told Wendy this when I returned her text. I asked what she had planned–a trip to Virginia with her boyfriend to see an art exhibition–and told her my plans for the day. And then I told her I loved her.

I know somewhere out there in the ether, my mom was glad.