Just a health dump.
In January I learned my cancer was back after almost 12 years.
In February, I fell while walking the dog and dislocated and broke my ankle in three places. I had surgery to repair it and now have 13 screws and a huge plate just hanging out attached to my bones. I was non-weightbearing for 12 weeks and basically completely home-bound while my mother came to stay with me and help. She lived with me for four months.
In April, the day after I was allowed to start weightbearing, I had surgery to remove my remaining ovary and the tumor on it. This put me into surgical menopause at 35 literally overnight.
Through all of this, I kept working my full time job and heavily working with my neighborhood's mutual aid group. I didn't really get any time to process or be alone to just feel sad on my own. I just soldiered through and dealt with it, as is the Midwestern way.
Now that I'm home alone again and life is slowly returning to normal, things have been...pretty awful. Relearning how to walk has, shockingly, been the easiest part of all of this—despite it being pretty painful. The mood swings and hot flashes that come with menopause are debilitating and break through the HRT that I'm now on. The brain fog feels impossible to get through at times. I'm miserable. I feel like I'm going crazy.
And on top of it all, I feel so alone going through this. No one I know who is around my age understands what it's like. No support groups really seem to exist. Older women don't relate because they were graced with the time to ease into this phase of life. I'm just out here, white-knuckling through each day, but just wanting to cry. It feel so unfair that so much of my life has been marred by more and more bullshit that this body has decided to do. I feel stunted, left behind, and (if I'm being honest) so unattractive which I know is so, so shallow but I don't care. I am so out of step with my body and I'm resentful that my youth was ripped away and now my prime years have been ripped away in similarly dramatic fashion. When is it enough? When does it stop, when am I allowed to stop dealing with crisis after crisis? I'm tired. I'm angry. I don't want to do this anymore.
