What’s in My Purse?

A couple of years ago, if you dumped my purse out on a table, you’d find the usual stuff. A wallet. Lip gloss. Receipts I swore I’d throw away. Probably a French fry at the bottom if we’re being honest.

Now?

Now my purse looks like I robbed a pharmacy on the way to Target.

It’s heavy enough to throw out my shoulder, and if I leave the house without it, I don’t feel naked. I feel genuinely unprepared.

Some women carry makeup.

I carry contingency plans.

There’s a puke bag folded up in one pocket.

Not because I expect to throw up every time I leave the house, but because I’ve learned the hard way that nausea doesn’t care if you’re in the grocery store, at dinner, or sitting in traffic. I’d rather carry it and never need it than need it once without it.

There’s a change of shirt because… well… sometimes life happens. Sometimes chemo happens. Either way, I’ve learned not to ask too many questions.

I have enough alcohol wipes to sanitize a small village. Bandages for port days. Numbing cream because getting your port accessed hurts a whole lot less when you remember to put it on before you leave the house. Half the time I still forget.

My migraine medicine has a permanent home in there. So does my nausea medicine. Pain medicine. Ginger lollipops for the days my stomach decides to stage a protest. Peppermints because chemo has a way of leaving a taste in your mouth that no amount of brushing seems to fix.

There’s hand sanitizer.

A mask.

A little fan that has saved me from more hot flashes than I can count. If you’ve never watched a twenty-eight-year-old suddenly fan herself like somebody’s grandmother at church, congratulations. I envy you.

Then there’s the notebook.

It’s full of questions I think of at two in the morning and symptoms I’ll absolutely forget by my appointment. Somewhere between “Ask about jaw pain” and “Refill prescription,” there’s usually a grocery list and a reminder to buy dog food.

Cancer doesn’t organize your life.

It just crams itself into whatever page you’re already on.

I have appointment reminder cards shoved into every pocket. I don’t even know why they keep giving them to me. My calendar looks like it belongs to a full-time employee of the cancer center.

My port card lives in my wallet now.

That’s just… normal.

Which is weird to say out loud.

There are dog treats because Mojo has standards, and apparently those standards include getting paid every time he goes somewhere with me.

There are approximately nineteen pens.

None of them work.

I don’t know where they come from. I don’t know why I keep buying more. I just know that every oncology office asks me to sign something, and suddenly every pen in my purse decides today’s the day it retires.

The funny thing is, none of this happened overnight.

I didn’t wake up one morning carrying a mobile survival kit.

One thing got added because I needed it.

Then another.

Until one day I realized my purse wasn’t really holding my stuff anymore.

It was holding my cancer.

Not literally.

But every zipper tells a story I never planned on living.

Every bottle, every bandage, every card, every backup plan is there because something happened once that made me think, I’m not getting caught without that again.

I miss the days when the biggest emergency in my purse was finding my keys.

Now it’s making sure I have everything I need just to get through an afternoon.

It’s a strange thing to grieve.

Not the purse itself.

Just the girl who packed it.

If you’re new here, welcome to Mojo & The Mess. This little corner of the internet is where I write about the messy reality of living with stage IV cancer. Some days it’s funny. Some days it’s heartbreaking. Most days it’s both. If you’re walking a similar road, I’m really glad you found your way here.

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