To say that our anxiety level (like many people’s) has been high these past couple of weeks would be a dramatic understatement. There’s been our normal anxiety of living with Metastatic Breast Cancer. The unfortunately “now” normal stress of living in an ever-lengthening pandemic. The anxiousness and fear leading up to the election and the unbelievable anxiety on election night and the days that followed.
On top of all of that, we also knew that we had Cassie’s impending back surgery awaiting us on November 12. What truly put us over the top anxiety-wise though, was learning that Cassie has to go it alone in the hospital. Thanks to the recent Covid spike, Dan can’t be in the hospital at all — not before, during or after the surgery. No matter what. No exceptions. So that sucks.
We started to process this latest curveball (see our last blog post for more on those) on our drive home from the Mayo Clinic where we had been given this crappy news. We both felt our chests tightening, our throats drying and our heads throbbing. One or the other of us kept audibly sighing. Dan can’t bear the thought of Cassie waking up alone in a strange hospital after a really long and risk-filled surgery. Cassie hates the idea of Dan not being there and worries about him at home in Saint Paul while she spends what could be a lot of days in Rochester. Our anxiety rose. Our fear was palatable.
At the same time, we also recognized that we are actually becoming pretty adept at living with anxiety. That’s what life with Metastatic Breast Cancer means and requires. As we talked, and looked back over the past couple of years, we realized that we’ve adopted a couple of informal rules or practices for anxiety/stress management that help us deal with the stress together as a couple.
- Rule 1: Name the anxiety. That helps take some of its power away.
- Rule 2: Create room for the anxiety because it’s not going anywhere. That means slowing down, letting other things go, being gentle with ourselves, and asking for help (to be clear all of these are still a major work in progress for both of us).
Now, as the stress around Cassie’s imminent surgery piles on, we’ve identified a third practice that we have been exploring.
- Rule 3: Surround the anxiety. While we can’t make the anxiety go away we can decide what to put around it that might make it easier to live with and get through each day (and night). For us, we decided to surround our newfound stress with love and gratitude. That has looked like hugging each other more, spending more time with friends, checking in even more regularly with family and sharing our gratitude with each other and our support community.
These little acts of love and gratitude don’t mitigate the anxiety but they do provide a nice accompaniment. It’s kind of like when we used to do a beer chaser with a shot of booze in our younger days — it didn’t make the shot taste any better but it sure helped it go down easier. OK, maybe that’s an imperfect analogy but hopefully you get our meaning.
Cassie’s surgery is Thursday and even as we remain scared shitless we continue to surround our fear with love and gratitude and for us, right now, that’s helping.
