It has taken me several days to put some order to this thought. My brain has been swimming with the next things and my numb feet and kids and Easter and the end of school and all the things that I haven’t spent time acknowledging what I accomplished. I did it! I beat cancer. I am overwhelmed with emotions: gratitude, pride, a mix of sadness, relief and confusion. I am so damn proud of myself which is hard to articulate because little Lizzy was taught not to boast. But fuck that skewed mentality of humility. I did it! Still, it took me a while to figure out that while my cancer is in remission, the journey feels incomplete. Now, the clean up from the aftermath of such an explosive experience is only beginning. Let me enlighten you as to why. So here is some TMI and a deep dive into my experience. 

During radiation, I inserted a vaginal dilator in an effort to protect my vagina as much as possible from radiation and its effects. I thought this dilator would be no problem as I had three vaginal births. And I was correct. Initially. Those last five or six treatments, though, were brutal. The end of the last week and the “boost” stage. I did not feel boosted. I felt pain, discomfort, more pain, weary and tired. It hurt to walk, it hurt to sit, it hurt to move. Many people are not able to continue inserting the dilator at the end of treatments. Challenge accepted. I’m not like others and dammit, I’m going to complete radiation as I started. It took time and a lot of lube but I made all my treatments with the dilator. Radiation targeted my rectal cancer but after, my body was leaking vaginal fluid. The inflammation from radiation caused the surface layer of my vaginal wall to increasing production in an effort to heal from the treatment. I wore a pad for several weeks after radiation to catch my insides which were dripping out of me. It was miserable. I was miserable. At my recent remission meeting, I asked my oncologist about physical therapy for my pelvic floor. My oncologist was unsure of who to refer me to. Instead, I was told to YouTube kegels and do some of those for two minutes every hour. No joke. I felt furious and also belittled to be told that a couple kegels would get rid of my scar tissue or help with vaginal stenosis or vaginal dryness or a myriad of other issues as a result of radiation. My frustration was mounting. It’s not easy to ask for help in sensitive and sometimes embarrassing issues. But real truth: sex has been unappealing, difficult to manage and flat out painful. No fault of Chris, or me, or our relationship as a whole or from a lack of lubrication but the result from the reality of a damaged vagina. Just like everything else in the body, it will take time to fully heal. But we’re going to add another doctor. Another appointment. Another issue to take care of.

And I haven’t even started explaining my post-menopause journey. (I feel now is a good time for some aggressive and dramatic snapping of my fingers from hip to hip.) One of the first questions my radiation oncologist asked was if Chris and I wanted any more children. I joked, no thank you. We are so blessed with our three children who morph into feeling like we have 17 kiddos. #blessed. My radiation oncologist asked because the chance of me going into post-menopause was likely. 28 days and bam, your insides are old. No peri-menopause stage. Just a cliff dive and we are into post-menopause. Initially, I was clueless as to what was happening. Hot flashes, emotions all over, big highs and lows. I chalked it up to having cancer and the daily struggle. But it was more than that. My whole system was completely out of whack. Like big red flashing lights with sirens for system exploding. Warning! Warning! System exploding. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Menopause. The hot flashes I would have at night were to the point I would prepare: I would get out a second pair of pajamas to change into. The daytime hot flashes were also weird and extremely uncomfortable as my face would flush beet red, some serious armpit sweat would appear and I would feel nauseous for about two minutes. And the emotions. All the emotions on my rollercoaster of zero hormones while receiving chemotherapy. Then getting on some hormone replacement therapy and people asking if I’m feeling regulated. At this point, my poor body didn’t know which end was up. Umm, no. I do not feel regulated. What does it mean to be regulated? The hormones have helped with some of my vaginal issues from radiation which is good. Count the wins where we can. But I am not overly focused about fine tuning my hormones because I want to continue to let my body heal from the last 14 months. Have my hot flashes stopped? Yes, thank you Jesus and hormone replacement therapy. Are my hormones where they need to be? I am not sure. Another issue to keep figuring out. 

So when I sat in the room with my oncologist, a different nurse navigator and a survivorship coordinator, I could barely keep up with the dates and various scans and colonoscopies and next steps and scanxiety and don’t you feel amazing you are done! No, I don’t. I’d like to feel my feet. I left, went to my car and cried because even though I finished my treatments, this journey is far from over. And nobody tells you that. Nobody tells you that you’re going to feel like shit for months after (well, maybe the doctors did but the full understanding was beyond my scope.) Nobody tells you the massive amount of recovery work it is going to take to restore my body. Nobody tells you the treatments phase might have actually been the “easiest” part of the whole journey. I guess the question, would I have wanted to know all this? Maybe just a mustard seed of knowledge and reassurance that even in remission, the journey is not over. I should have had four parts to my mountain climb of cancer journey: radiation, chemotherapy, surgeries AND recovery. Now I know.