Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Cancer is a Fugly B-word

Hello my cancer sisters.  So we all know that cancer is a B*tch, right and she likes to just screw everything up.  So as if all the "normal" junk we have to go through isn't bad enough cancer treatments can make us ugly.  In fact my oncologist told me straight out that she was going to make me ugly.  Gee thanks!  I remember sitting in her office after she said that and just thinking, my God is this woman ever going to tell me something good!
For me chemo made me lose my hair of course, my eye lashes, eyebrows and fingernails thinned extremely, I had bad dark circles under my eyes, and when my hair grew back it was grey and I was only 36!!  My oncologist was paranoid about infections and my compromised immune system so I was not allowed to go to the spa, go to the nail salon, had to throw out all my make-up and buy all new make-up. Thank God for Look Good Feel Good I was able to get some free make-up.  And I had scary and painful looking burn marks all up and down my forearms from my chemo IV, then when they radiated my right side I was almost 3rd degree burned from the radiation which scabbed and oozed.  It was Horrible!  Not to mention all the freaking surgical scars!  I felt like a circus freak and cousin of Frankenstein.  This lasted for over a year, and it wasn't until I had my breast reconstruction that I started to really feel like I was physically looking more normal. 

But I put my makeup on darn near every single damn day.  Not because I am vain, but because I didn't want to scare my kids who were little, I didn't want to look like a typical cancer patient and it's true what they say, that if you look nice you will feel better.  This might sound ridiculous but we all cope in our own way, and for me I needed to have my "face on".  Since I couldn't go to the salon I painted my nails at home when I felt up to it.  My mom and my friends gave me little gifts to help me feel pretty like, fun earrings, bold nail polish colors, leopard print scarves and luxurious lotions.  This isn't much but it helps a woman feel nice, and a little more normal.

Five years later since my first chemo and I still have to fill in my eyebrows, I have many scars, and I am still badly lopsided in my breasts.  But I am alive and I am whole, and mostly back to "normal", and like a lot of cancer survivors I have a new "normal".  I live with my cancer as a chronic disease as mine metastasized and is now stage 4.  I can never be the same woman I was before cancer, this is both a good and sad thing. 

No matter what that B*tch cancer tried to do to me, and how ugly she thought she could make me, I am beautiful.  I am beautiful because I survive, and no matter how ugly I may get from my disease on the outside, nothing can take away the beauty that is in my heart.  So take that you fugly b*itch cancer!!!!!

If you like my blog please visit our website at www.cancercutie.com and check out our Cancer Cutie Cookbook available on the website or www.amazon.com

No comments:

Post a Comment