And with the Good Comes the Bad

GH talked to his Oncology RN yesterday. Guess what? Taking a month of chemo gives cancer cells a chance to grow! His tumor marker numbers are up slightly. CEA went from 2.5 to 2.9 and CA19-9 went from 1200 to 2100.

Both of these numbers are a long way from where we started, and the increases are hardly exponential. But it's so easy to get lulled into a sense of complacency during this rest. Getting a taste of "normal" life just made it feel like that's what our life could and should be, that somehow we'd conquered cancer and finally established the rhythm of the life we were supposed to have.

Of course, the pregnancy news made that normalcy feel all the more normal. Hearing GH's news about his numbers brought back all my fears: what if GH never gets to meet his child? What if I have to raise this child alone, while racked with grief? Will I be able to get up in the morning and do that? Lots and lots of fear resurfaced, and anger. There were tears, and, as usual, GH did a lot of comforting of me when I feel like I'm the one who should be comforting him.

I don't like feeling sad, don't like feeling the tears well up in my eyes as I type this. It feels especially icky to feel sad knowing that the baby is inside me; I know intellectually that my sadness has no effect on how the baby grows, but I want this baby to be nurtured by happy thoughts, not tears and fear.

I don't want to go back to chemo next week. I want to keep living this fantasy that there is no cancer in our life. I don't want to go back to lethargy and upset stomachs and idle hours in the clinic.

I just feel resentful right now. It's probably a good thing that I have a lot on my plate at work today to keep me busy.