Recovery with a Cancer Diagnosis
Hi Ladies! I know it’s been a while since we have been here on the blog. Now that we are all finished recording and publishing Season #4 of the Pod - I can devote my “free time” (bahaha - what is that actually?!) to writing again. We are starting with an excerpt from Tracy Binder - she wrote this last month, it’s just taken me a bit to get my feet under me so that I can publish it.
I realize we talk a LOT about getting community and support around here - the reason for this is two-fold. For starters: it’s because the group I was in literally saved my bacon. I don’t think I would be standing here today writing to you guys if I hadn’t had women circling their wagons around me. It’s one of my greatest passions helping women find this type of support.
In addition - we know that for women healing from betrayal - isolation can be one of the worst things. To heal from the trauma and pain - we MUST have safe people in our lives loving us at our worst, AND at our best.
All that to say - you will hear Tracy talk about community in her piece below. And we do have five (yes five!!!) new support groups rolling out this Fall. If you are interested in this type of support - please don’t hesitate to reach out and let me know and I can share next steps with you. xoxo - Shelley
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On December, 28, 2021 we moved into a home we planned and built for two-plus years on 15 acres of briars and garbage. (Shelley here - this is not a typo, apparently there was a TON of garbage, Tracy said!) We bought geese and chickens and two goats, too. This was something we had dreamt about for more than three decades. Even through our sexual betrayal journey this was a dream we held close to our hearts.
Starting in late January 2022, I had headaches for a week or two that ibuprofen wouldn’t touch. Jason had just finished getting over COVID and I figured this is what I was dealing with, too. On a Sunday morning, I ended up in the ER due to some other symptoms I was experiencing. The doctor came in and said, ”Tracy, you have a brain tumor.”
I was overwhelmed. I was in shock.
The doctor left and I called Jason and told him, “I have a brain tumor and you need to come here now!” We needed to get an MRI at another hospital so they transferred us. We waited over night.
The next morning, the surgeon at the hospital described the surgery I would need to have.
We were overwhelmed. I missed my kids. I wanted this to all go away.
Jason has worked in oncology drug development for a large part of his career. He reached out to everyone with influence from CEO down at his company. Within 10 days we consulted with Duke Cancer, Wake Forest, and local Cone Health on surgical options.
We chose Wake to do the surgery - we felt cared for by them and also like God was orchestrating our path with them. (Our church has a member who trained under the best brain surgeon on the East Coast. Within hours we were in his office.)
What was I thinking through this chaos? I couldn’t. I was in a fog for months. I’m just STARTING to grieve all this now.
What does embracing this look like? What does grieving cancer in our own process of recovery look like? This process will take me years to truly grieve. Here’s my take, five months in, for all my women out there…
Allow yourself to fall.
I was in DENIAL. Really bad denial. After my first surgery, I was up and running (granted not fast at all). (Shelley again - just to be clear, Tracy was LITERALLY running with her jogging shoes on, not just running around the house or running to the bathroom or whatever you might think. Tracy is a Bad-Ass. The end.) I was running up to 3 1/2 miles. This was a ton following a brain surgery. Within three weeks my headaches were back. Over a weekend in March, Jason was returning from Florida with my son from a sporting event. He got home at midnight and by 4 am I was vomiting with intense pain and he took me to the ER. After 24 hours at the hospital, our surgeon came in and told me I was headed back to surgery. The tumor recurred in three weeks!
This surgery made us fall and fall fast. I saw my husband fall and I fell with him. We were broken. All the optimism and energy we had was swept out from under us. It still has not returned.
Accept the bargaining.
After the second surgery Jason and I were in a much lower place. Our hearts hurt, our souls hurt and we felt broken. Know this ladies: asking questions is normal. It’s going to come and it’s disorienting, confusing and our husbands will not always be able to hold them well. Questions that I STILL have: How do we tell the kids all of this? How much do we tell them at 14 and at 4? How do we hold each other?
Bargaining can also look like agreements or vows with God hoping for an outcome. If I do this, then you will do that for me or for us? Or it can look like: If I didn’t do this or that maybe I wouldn’t be here? This is how you know you are in bargaining: trying to make sense via negotiating an unanswerable questions. Your body/brain/soul is trying to make sense of your present condition. This stage can come out of the blue with the other stages of grief.
(It’s me again, Shelley - this is such a good point about bargaining. Sometimes women will feel like they are losing their minds with the bargaining because oftentimes it doesn’t make sense. Keep in mind it’s your way through. Sure, we don’t want to get stuck in the bargaining but it is NORMAL and okay to ask these questions that really don’t have a good answer attached to them.)
Have a community around you.
I can’t say it enough, have PEOPLE!! It does not need to be a large amount, but a few friends you can cry with and weep with and just sit there with when there are no words. I had three incredible friends that supported me. They are my BFFs, they will walk with me, run with me (Shelley here - I think she literally means going for a run, just fyi.) and just come over and sit with me. They know how to pump me up and keep me going even when I feel like I could not.
Shelley has been a rock. Seriously, she came all the way after the retreat and visited me. My hair started to fall out that day. She did not know this at the time, yet another facet of the cancer journey I was on. She brought me the retreat packet and everything that came with it. Mostly she brought me herself. She brought her laugh and her smile and her tears. She is a blessing.
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Girls, This is just the beginning. I am learning as I go. I just got over coming off chemo treatment. I just got over shingles. I feel spent but each day I’m getting up and saying today is another day. Some days are our hard days, some days we have to work, hard!!!!
What resonates with you from my story? What really hurts? What gives you incredible hope?
Get behind us satan and
Shine On!
Tracy