I Am horrible at writing in journals or keeping track of things that I want to always remember. I always say oh I need to remember that, or I better write this down, but I always forget! That is pretty much why I only write on this blog every few months! I am trying to do better!
As I was looking back at what I have already written about I have decided I want to talk about one of the worst things about my experience, and that is the "Not Knowing".. Seems kind of like a weird thing to be considered "The worst" but trust me it truly is! It is something that comes and goes through the experience I believe of any kind of trial. The "What is wrong with me?" "Will i be okay?" "When will this be over?" and so on.
When I was first showing symptoms of something being wrong it had happened right after my family had taken a trip to Cancun. I started having the one and only symptom of my cancer, which was, ITCHING! yeah weird right? It started with my palms and bottom of my feet. I couldn't control it, i would scratch and scratch and scratch. I even started taking scissors to the bottom of my feet and scratching my feet by scrapping them on the hot ruff cement! The itching spread over a couple weeks to my legs and arms and up through the rest of my body. I wish I could express how utterly agonizing the itching was! I would wake up in the middle of the night sitting up in my bed scratching my legs till they were bleeding.
During this time I was only a 9th grader and missed most of my Freshman year because my itching would keep me up all night and there wasn't anything that would help. I began to see a dermatologist since we figured it was a skin problem since well it was my skin that itched! I saw a dermatologist for months, we did dozens of test, blood work, I even got treated for scabies two separate times thinking that was the thing causing the unbearable itching since we had recently gone to mexico. But as the months passed I continued to itch more and more. I was no longer sleeping and was crying all the time from exhaustion. They decided to put me on antidepressants to help me sleep. Well guess what it didn't really help me sleep but did cause me to break out into bruises all over my body. So here I am a 15 year old girl who is missing her freshman year of school covered in cuts and bruises all over my body with absolutely no idea why or what is happening to her!
The itching went on for almost a year! I was in the "Not Knowing" phase of finding an illness for just as long. Being in the "Not Knowing" is truly one of the worst experiences of my life. I truly thought i was going to be in this agonizing pain for the rest of my life. I didn't want to live if I was going to continue like this forever. I remember at one point I was crying in my room bawling hysterically praying that this pain would go away or that I would die already. Going through this and not having a single clue of a reason why was making me go insane.
The time came when my dermatologist decided I needed to go up to the University of Utah Hospital to go through this round of doctors that get together to see "odd cases" I saw over 30 doctors in 1 hour. I stood there in a hospital gown covered in cuts and bruises as doctors asked questions, and poked and prodded at me. I had come to one of the lowest points in my life. The doctors ordered us to get a bunch of different test done. One of the test just happened to be a CT scan. We went to another hospital to get the test done and decided to go out and get some food. We were at the mall in salt lake when we received a phone call that something had shown up on one of the test and that we needed to go to the Primary Children's Hospital to the 4th floor Oncology department. At this time my parents and I are completely oblivious to what the word Oncology is. We get to the hospital and go up to the 4th floor walk into the department and I being the child at heart that I am go straight to the coloring table and begin to color (Yes I was 15). My mother starts to look around and seeing the beanie hats and the pictures and starts thinking "uh oh... this is not somewhere we want to be."
We finally get called back to the room and that is when I finally was able to get out of the "Not Knowing". (I wrote a blog post back a few post about what happened when we found out I had cancer if you haven't read it and would like too). Even though the news was not anything close to what I would have wanted, finally finding out what was wrong was like someone had lifted 1,000 pounds off of me. Like I could finally see a little bit of my future. Sadly the "Not Knowing" does come back when you go through something like cancer.
When I first started treatment I didn't even know what chemotherapy was. I didn't know what it would do to my body, or how it would effect my body long term. Luckily as time went on I slowly began to know so many things I had questions about or just plain did not know. I found through my experience that the "Not Knowing" is the scariest part of it all. Not Knowing if I was going to live or die, if I was going to be able to have children if I did live, or if I would ever be the same. The questions haunted me throughout my whole experience. But as time went on during everything, I had so many people supporting me during all my "Not Knowings" that they kept me from going crazy over them. I had so many people praying for me and so many blessings given to me that they slowly began to take the fear and the "Not Knowing" away. I began to just trust in my doctors and trust in my faith that everything was going to be alright. I was finally able to kick the "Not Knowing" to the curb and just "Know" that everything would work itself out. It was a struggle and many many tears were shed, but I even now have been able to accept that no matter what happened or happens that getting stuck in the "Not Knowing" mentality will only make any situations more painful and difficult.
I hope that this all makes sense! Thanks for reading!
