The other day I reached for something and it didn’t hurt. For months I’ve been dutifully doing my morning stretches and trying to increase the range of motion in my left shoulder. At rehab every week my occupational therapist measures how far I can lift my arm and every week the number on the gauge stubbornly stays the same. I had despaired of ever regaining full mobility, resigning myself to a lifetime of front-closure bras and lopsided pull-ups. And then, overnight, something happened.
I can’t account for it. The day before I had rowed stroke in my first-ever race – which essentially means I had whaled away on my pecs in a boat down the Lincoln Park lagoon for a hard 1000 meters, hardly an activity conducive to healing. And yet, here I was. Something deep in my breast had released, and the cording and fibrosis that has for nine months defined the life of my left chest was – not gone, but diminished. It was electrifying. For the first time since I had surgery in November I actually believed that I might actually, someday, recover.
They tell you that it takes at least a full year for your body to bounce back from the trauma of cancer treatment. But, which trauma? It’s been 13 months since I started chemo; 8 months since it ended, 9 months since surgery, 6 months since the end of radiation, and barely 2 months since the last infusions of herceptin and perjeta. It takes tiiiiiime, soothes my OT. You can’t push it. And yet, I keep pushing it by doing ridiculous things like entering a regatta. And while I feel exponentially better than I did nine months ago, and the pace of life has returned to its annoying pre-cancer level of over-commitment, I still don’t feel anything like I used to. Recovery is not a process of returning to the body you had before it was poisoned and cut open; it is finding a new way of being in the body you have learned to care for like a seedling, a kitten, a dream.
The anniversary I can mark however, is that of this newsletter, (re)launched July 13 of last year. Thank you for sticking with me through this whole cycle, as I have written my way through this strange, lovely, and painful year in sickness and in health. I am so grateful to every last one of you for reading, and for responding when something strikes a chord.
In honor of this anniversary, I am taking a break for a month. Taking a cue from Sara Petersen, whose rousing manifesto for a summer of minimum effort showed up this morning, I plan to rest and read this huge pile of books. I am going canoeing in Northern Wisconsin for a week, and to New York City for a whirlwind weekend. And as I move out of active cancer treatment and into this new body, I have some new ideas to think about, and write about, that require more than the fragmented concentration I’ve been able to give them and I like to think that I can do that as well, with a bit of downtime.
Because sometimes change happens when you’re sleeping.
See you in August!
*Title inspired by this four-hour (!!) episode of Bandsplain on Jane’s Addiction that I can’t stop listening to even though back in the day I found JA a bit too LA for my mossy Pacific Northwest sensibilities. People: we change!
This post is a comfort, Martha, thank you for this writing.
My surgery is coming up and while I don't know if rowing is in my future (mainly because it wasn't in my past), I'm optimistic about getting back to what I love soon enough and 'finding a new way of being in my body'
That Jane's ep of Bandsplain sent me down alllll the rabbit holes! 😂