Forty-five going on sixty-five

When I was 25 years old I found a lump in my neck. It itched. I had just left my husband of two and one half years, had two small children and for the first time in my entire life was living completely on my own. No roommates (other than the munchkins) like the first year out of high school when I was at community college, waiting to go to Udub (where I was accepted but didn't have the money). I was going to be a lawyer. Back in the day before we knew what financial aid was, since I was the oldest of five, we didn't have a clue what packages were and so if a scholarship wasn't offered we thought we had to pay for it all so we decided I would do the first two years at Clatsop and go from there. I made one half year at Clatsop before life sucked me away from the books. By the time the fourth child was graduating from high school my parents had a better grasp on the financial aid process. Now, out of their five children four of us have Bachelor's and one of us have a PhD. I start my Masters in this Winter. Pretty good considering my mother has yet to obtain her GED, my father has his high school diploma (last class to graduate from it when it was REALLY high above Columbia's waters).

So, I was 25 and already married and divorced with babies in tow. I was determined not to go on welfare (no one in my family ever had) but didn't want to have someone else raising my children and so I began baby sitting, condescending to enroll my children in the state health plan rather than leave them without any health insurance. Back then you had to go in and fill out reams of paperwork and take part in an interviewing process. I can see the woman to this day and have to strive not to loathe her. Three times my home was picked for "random" searches to see if I was hiding my husband there while accepting state help! The good part of it was that because of my income I was automatically enrolled with my children in the health plan as well.

I often wonder what would have happened "if". What if my first husband and I had not broke up earlier that year? I might never have got the lump on my neck even looked at, so many other things were worse than an itchy spot on my neck. Even if I had gone in to see the doctor his words to me were, "If this lump were on my wife I wouldn't even worry about it but given your history of cysts we should biopsy this and make sure this is benign." However, you can bet anything if I didn't have any insurance Dr. Patrick wouldn't have operated on me and wouldn't have found the cyst that was a tumor wrapped around my collar bone.

Fifty-four radiation treatments and 20 years later everything in the path of the radiation has since begun to falter and slip. My thyroid began giving me problems about four years ago but it wasn't until last year (and almost 100 lbs) that I was recommended to an endocrinologist who found the problem and gave me the correct medication. Finally, slowly but surely, I am loosing weight I found!

Exercise is still hard, with radiated muscles and organs not able to recover adequately, and the pain from esophagitis isn't encompassing me. Thank goodness for water and our hot tub.

So many of our friends have no idea that I survived cancer because I forgot about it. They know that I have had weight problems and have suggested every diet under the sun for a sluggish thyroid, however I just don't find my identity in a bodily function. I am not a cancer survivor, I am someone who happened to have survived cancer.

My oncologist warned us that my insides were 20 years older (where the radiation hit) than my outsides). It was scarier to me than hearing I had cancer. When I was 25 I knew it couldn't kill me, now there are days I wonder if it wouldn't have been better?

Selfish, my husband spits out at me, "That is a very selfish thing to say. " Yes, I acknowledge, it is. However, when it is late at night and once more I cannot sleep because my back aches soooo much and my legs feel like they are being pinched up and down, over and over I wonder if I can keep taking this year after year. My maternal grandparents lived well into their 90s and my paternal grandmother lived into her 80s. My grandfather died of massive heart attack when he was 48, brought on by DTs. I could shoot for that one, but that would realllllly piss my husband off and most of the time he and the grandson are my only friends! ;)