Radiation — the mental journey

I am not generally a depressive person. I have my “blue” days, everyone does, but that bears no comparison with true depression. I’m pretty sure what I felt in the final weeks of radiation therapy qualifies though. It was as if I was passing through a long dark place. My life was constricting as my energy levels ebbed. I ate less, I talked less, I played with my kids less. My mom would take the kids out on daily walks around our neighborhood. I never had the energy to go along. Toward the end I didn’t even go to church. In fact once I came home from church early because they were having a presentation on unwed mothers and adoption that I simply couldn’t bear to watch. With my whole life feeling so bleak I did not want to watch a presentation guaranteed to wring me out emotionally. They still do that presentation every other year or so, I still walk out every time. I didn’t much like being out in public because my entire lower jaw and neck were red. If I did have to go, I avoided eye contact or anything else that might invite conversation. I didn’t want to talk to people. I particularly didn’t want to talk to people about how I was doing or feeling. I was tired of lying about how I was doing fine when I really wasn’t at all. The alternative was to spill my depression and bleakness on my acquaintences who were just trying to be friendly.

The major difference between my experience and true clinical depression was that I had a date after which I was guaranteed that things would get better. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. The problem was that I knew that things were going to get worse between where I was and where the light was. I didn’t know how much worse, but I knew it was already bad. That last week of therapy I cried every time I had to get on the table because I knew that doing so would add to the damage of my life and my body. I remember that the nurses and techs started helping me walk. I guess I was unsteady on my feet. I know I was slow, much more shuffle than walk. In the midst of that dark tunnel when I didn’t know how bad “worse” was going to get, one thing that helped me was a scripture.

Matthew 6:34 “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
It isn’t a happy scripture, but it fit because my life wasn’t especially happy at that time. I wrote this scripture and hung it on my wall and it reminded me not to borrow trouble. I couldn’t spend energy fretting over what hard thing tomorrow might bring. I had to focus on what was right in front of me. Reading that scripture often helped me stay focused on the day I was living rather than fretting about that long dark “worse” before I’d reach the end.

So I lived from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. I couldn’t make any plans for after therapy because I couldn’t see that far ahead. I was part of a home preschool for Kiki. I couldn’t manage that. I’ve seen pictures of myself during that time. There aren’t many. I am both fascinated and repelled by the emotions those pictures bring back. I seem so bleak, but that might be me projecting. Perhaps I don’t look so miserable in the pictures as I think I do.

Then one day I was done.

I don’t remember rejoicing at the doctor’s office. I remember leaving quickly. Within a week I was feeling better and my mood had lifted a lot. I was so determined to regain normality that I sent my mom home before I should have. She needed to get home to my dad and my younger brother, but once she was gone I consistently misjudged my energy levels. It took me two months before I could accurately predict what I’d be able to accomplish in a day. But as frustrating as the lingering effects were, they were worlds better than the dark tunnel.