Tipping point

I’ve reached it. While I sit here holding back tears, I know I’ve reached my tipping point. I also know I am using that term incorrectly, but I don’t care. It feels right to me… I’ve been holding on, standing tall, being strong, all that other bullshit, but now, I am ready to tip over, land right into my bed, and just fucking stay there. Because my son is home from camp, sitting next to me working on a lego set, and my husband won’t be home for another 4 hours, I will have to wait for my literal tip; but inside my body, I can feel inside of my lungs, throat, and shoulders, my anxiety crawling and spreading in cold hard waves.

Let’s review how I got here:

• I found a lump in my breast 34 days ago. There has been a lump in my breast for more than a month.
• Thirty-one days ago, I learned that lump is invasive cancer. For 31 days, I have woken up each morning and gone to sleep each night knowing there is cancer in my body. For 31 days, I have known I have invasive cancer in my body even though I had three surgeries (resulting in years of painful side effects, including menopause at age 36) to ensure this would not happen.
• A week ago today, my husband’s father died from pancreatic cancer. That morning, while my husband was out, I told our son that his Papa had died and held him while he cried. I attended the funeral with my husband, holding his hand as our crying son laid in my lap.
• For the last four days, my husband and I have guided our son through an intensive treatment for encopresis. He was not allowed to leave the bathroom for the first three days, which means I have spent the past three days in a 150sq foot space with an 8yo watching episodes of The Flash while coaching him through bouts of massive diarrhea. This also means my husband and I have not spent any time alone together since returning from his father’s funeral. And it means we are both short-tempered.
• My son will transition back to camp part-time tomorrow and hopefully full-time by Wednesday. I will spend those days worried sick that he will have explosive diarrhea in front of his friends.
• On Thursday, after what will be 37 days, I will finally meet my doctor to discuss the breast cancer. While she has responded to my emails, she has not called, and I suppose she saw no need to see me until she had all of the information from all of the scans. I know she’s a great doctor, but so far, she’s no Dr. Wilson.

Strangely, I think what makes me feel the worst is all of the text messages I get each day from my friends “just checking in” and asking “what can I do to help?” I’m not ungrateful – in fact, I’m incredibly grateful. I feel so loved and am so appreciative that there are so many people who want to make sure that we are ok. I don’t want to tell them to stop – I definitely would rather them keep coming than stop. But at the same time, every time I get a message, it reminds me that there is something wrong. No one sent me texts “just checking in” before I had cancer. Several friends have offered to bring dinner over or start a mealtrain, but despite the fact that we’ve had a death in the family, I’m about to start cancer treatment, and all three of us are suffering emotionally in one way or another, I can’t bring myself to admit that this is something we might need.

Instead, I’m self-soothing. Vodka and cranberry juice with dinner each night; peanut M&Ms, Netflix, and an extra Klonipin as I fall asleep; obsessively kissing my son’s head anytime I’m close enough to him. How has this not kept me from the tipping point? How am I anything but the happiest person on earth?