What hurts, what feels weird, what medication did I take last night, what do I need to take this morning, and is that new thing actually new or have I just forgotten about it because there are too many things happening in my body at once?
Very peaceful way to wake up.
Then I grabbed my phone, which was a mistake because apparently everyone I have ever met had something for me before I had even found pants.
Village messages. Sponsor stuff. Survival kit questions. Somebody needing a flyer changed. Somebody asking about a vendor spot. Insurance. Car accident nonsense. A message I forgot to answer yesterday. Another message I definitely answered in my head but never actually sent.
At some point I realized I had been awake for an hour and had accomplished quite a bit without technically leaving the bed.
This is what counts as productivity now.
I eventually made it to the kitchen, where there are approximately seventeen medications living beside normal household items like that is a completely reasonable setup. I moved a prescription bottle so I could make coffee and had one of those moments where I remembered that most people probably do not have to clear oncology supplies away from the coffee maker.
Then I forgot what I was doing halfway through making the coffee.
Also normal.
The strange thing about being sick for this long is that almost none of it feels strange anymore.
I can be talking to someone about brain mets while checking whether we have enough shirts for an event. I can be reading a scan result with one hand and texting somebody about raffle baskets with the other. I can have a completely legitimate medical concern and still get distracted because Mojo is doing something stupid in the background.
Cancer has somehow become one tab open in a browser with forty other tabs, except the cancer tab plays music you cannot find and will not let you close it.
That is probably the most accurate explanation I have.
There is always something running in the background.
Did that pain get worse?
When is my next treatment?
Did I refill that prescription?
Do I need labs?
Why does my jaw hurt today?
Is this a normal headache or one of my special edition headaches?
And lately, add another one:
Is this pain from cancer, chemo, radiation, the car accident, or did I just sleep like a pretzel?
That one has been especially fun.
The accident happened less than a week after chemo, which turns out is not ideal timing if your goal is to bounce back quickly.
I was already dealing with the usual post-chemo exhaustion, aches, nausea, weakness, and the general feeling that my body had been unplugged and plugged back in incorrectly. Then I got hit with the soreness and stiffness from the crash on top of it.
My body basically looked at the situation and said, “Oh, we’re doing more?”
Apparently.
Recovery from a car accident is annoying enough when your body is otherwise healthy. Recovery from a car accident when your body was already trying to recover from chemo is a completely different situation.
Everything feels louder.
The soreness sticks around longer. Being tired is not just being tired. Rest does not necessarily make you feel rested. It is hard to tell where one thing ends and another begins because chemo already messes with your muscles, joints, energy, stomach, head, and whatever other body part feels like participating that day.
Then somebody hits your car and now your back, neck, shoulders, and everything else want attention too.
Excellent.
I went to the ER to get checked out because, at this point, guessing what pain is from what is not exactly a game I am interested in playing.
There is something kind of ridiculous about sitting there explaining your current medical situation and realizing how long it takes.
“Yes, I have cancer.”
“Yes, it has spread.”
“Yes, I had chemo last week.”
“Yes, I have brain mets.”
“Yes, I have bone mets.”
“Yes, now I was also in a car accident.”
You can practically see the computer begging for another screen.
And none of that means life stops.
That part is what continues to surprise me, even though it really should not anymore.
The car still has to be dealt with.
Insurance still wants paperwork.
There are phone calls that need to happen.
There are accident reports to track down.
There are questions about repairs and whether the car is totaled and what happens next.
The Village is getting closer whether I am ready or not.
People still need answers from me.
Sponsors still need posts.
Survival kits still need supplies.
Vendors still have questions.
Pete still asks me where something is as if I have not lost my own phone three times in the last hour.
Mojo still believes every sound in the kitchen is directly related to him.
Cancer does not clear your schedule for the rest of life. It just gets added to it.
That is the part I do not think people always see.
There is this idea that when you are really sick, your whole day must revolve around being sick. Sometimes it does. There are days when treatment wipes me out and that is pretty much the entire plan.
But most days are not that clean.
Most days are me doing regular life while being sick at the same time.
I am answering an insurance call while waiting for nausea medication to kick in.
I am working on Village stuff while sitting with a heating pad on my back.
I am trying to remember whether I took my meds while also trying to remember whether I emailed somebody back.
I am planning an event for people with cancer while actively being inconvenienced by my own cancer.
There is probably a joke in there somewhere.
By the afternoon on Tuesday, I had done a bunch of things, forgotten several others, moved the same pile of stuff from one side of the house to the other, and convinced myself that moving it counted as cleaning.
I had also answered enough Village messages to temporarily believe I had my life together.
That feeling lasted maybe twelve minutes.
The funny part is that none of this even feels like a particularly unusual day anymore.
That is just Tuesday.
There was no giant moment. No single thing that defined the whole day. It was simply the usual combination of cancer, accident recovery, event planning, marriage, dog management, bills, medical stuff, insurance stuff, car stuff, and me trying to remember why I walked into a room.
A few years ago, one piece of that list would have been enough to ruin my whole week.
Now I just keep adding things to the same day like there is unlimited storage.
Maybe that is why I have such a hard time answering when people ask how I am doing.
Because what does “fine” even mean anymore?
Fine can mean I hurt but it is manageable.
Fine can mean I am exhausted but upright.
Fine can mean my back hurts from the accident but at least nothing new showed up medically today.
Fine can mean chemo kicked my ass last week and the car accident decided to tag in this week, but I still got some things done.
Fine can mean I spent half the day on calls I did not want to make, but I laughed at something stupid and ate a decent meal, so I am counting it.
The scale has changed.
Things I once would have considered a disaster are now things I work around.
That is not me trying to be inspirational. It is just logistics.
If I waited for my body to feel completely good before I did anything, I would miss most of my life.
So I do what I can when I can.
Sometimes that means I get a lot done.
Sometimes it means I answer three emails and decide I deserve an award.
Sometimes it means I start something, get distracted, lie down for twenty minutes, wake up two hours later, and call that a scheduling issue.
I have become very flexible with the definition of productive.
The Village has probably made that even more obvious because there are so many moving pieces right now.
There are sponsors, vendors, shirts, survival kits, raffles, kids stuff, logistics, posts, messages, receipts, and a hundred tiny things that somehow become my problem.
And I love it.
I am stressed about it. I complain about it. I absolutely have moments where I wonder who gave me permission to take on an event this big while my own life looks like someone shook the junk drawer.
But I love what it is becoming.
Maybe that is why I keep working on it even when I am tired.
It gives all this chaos somewhere useful to go.
Some of the things I have learned through cancer are things I wish I never needed to know. What people actually need during treatment. What helps. What does not. What makes a bad day slightly easier. What caregivers carry that nobody notices. How isolating this can get even when you have people around you.
The Village came from that.
Not from having everything together.
Definitely not from having extra time.
It came from knowing how much the small stuff matters when life gets messy.
And right now, messy is kind of our specialty.
By the end of Tuesday, my body was done long before my brain was willing to admit it.
My back hurt. I was tired. There were still messages sitting there. There were still things I could have finished and phone calls I could have made.
I left them.
That might actually be personal growth.
Or exhaustion.
We will call it growth because it sounds better.
Tomorrow I will wake up, take inventory again, pick up my phone against my better judgment, figure out which body part is complaining the loudest, and start sorting through whatever version of normal shows up.
Hopefully it includes fewer insurance calls.
Preferably no more car accidents.
Chemo can also feel free to calm down.
But for now, Tuesday is done.
That feels like enough.
Life’s a mess.
Sometimes the mess is cancer. Sometimes it is chemo. Sometimes somebody crashes into your car six days later. And sometimes all of it happens while you are trying to order T-shirts for a cancer event.
Apparently that is normal now.
If you’re new here, welcome to Mojo & The Mess, where we talk about cancer, treatment, caregiving, the ugly parts, the funny parts, and all the regular life that keeps happening in between.
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