Paige’s Emotional Stages of Cancer

I was told early in my diagnosis that I would go through the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I am finding these stages don’t even begin to encompass how I am feeling and coping. Weirdly, I never went through denial at all, or maybe not weirdly I believe in science so I believed the doctors.

I have run my own 6 month trial on feelings and coping. I only had an N of 1, I know, the sample size is a bit small but the data seems legit. Here are my results, Paige’s Emotional Stages. Some of these may not be emotions but characteristics, I realized I don’t really have a long list of emotions:

• Wait, what? - In this stage I am trying to wrap my head around news related to my diagnosis or treatment - this is a sort of feeling of bafflement. How did I get that much cancer in my body and not know it? The side effects are what? You couldn’t do the surgery why? I just feel so confused and baffled during these conversations.

• Everything I Look at - This one sucks. Everything I look at makes me cry. I can’t even tell you what emotion this is, something related to mortality and fear? Hugging Anna and Cherie - tears. Watching the birds on the bird feeder - tears. Riding my bike on the trainer - more tears. Playing games with my sister, yep, tears.Those big blue Colorado skies I love so much - tears. I am amazed at what can bring me to tears. Not sobbing, just a slow trickle.

• The Pit of Despair - Okay, most of these “stages” suck, so I’ll stop saying that,this one hits me at the strangest times. This goes beyond sadness, this is as if I have stepped into the vacuum of space - there is no air. My body aches. If you have seen The Princess Bride, when Wesley is hooked to the torture machine by the six fingered man, it is a bit like that, when he turns it WAY up and Wesley is “mostly dead”. That is what this despair feels like too dense and painful to even cry. It is crushing.

• 9 on the Count - This is a combination of frustration and tenacity. I am not even sure if tenacity is an emotion. When my body is tired and done, I feel so frustrated. Often I use that frustration to power through even though I know I shouldn’t. Why yes I can lift that heavy bag of topsoil up onto my shoulder just like I used to. I rode 4 miles yesterday, 10 today and a higher speed no problem. Sometimes I even manage to do what my bone headed brain still thinks I can do, other times I can’t. This guts me.

• Fiery Rage - This one, oh boy, I am sometimes filled with this sort of angry fire within. I don’t think it is really directed anywhere. It probably, if I am being honest, isn’t even just about cancer, it is about not retiring on my terms, and watching the world turn to shit more everyday. If I was a violent person I would be punching someone or something during these bouts of rage. I didn't even know I was capable of the level of anger and fury I can get in my body, I feel as though I will burn up from the inside out.

• What’s my Purpose? - I am feeling pretty lost right now, and don’t know what to do with myself, this I think most often becomes a little pity party I throw for myself. I have for so long defined myself as a teacher that I don’t know who I am now. I seem to just be a cancer patient, I need to be more than that. I know as I get to the remission stage and can focus on what is next beyond cancer and teaching this will get better. But now it just makes me feel so sad and worthless.

• I am Small - this is a feeling of shrinking and becoming smaller and diminished everyday. Covid and cancer (my 2 least favorite C words) have created a small world for me. I can’t go out and do what I normally would do. I have to stay safe, can’t catch anything, I am more vulnerable. I hate it. My world seems like it is my house and the UCHealth hospital. As my world shrinks, so do I. As each new round of “cure” takes more weight off me, as each new side effect hits me I get smaller physically. Each new trip to the ER, each appointment makes me less me. I sometimes fear I will shrink away completely.

• Awe - I think that I look at things a little differently now and find awe in the small things. The big fat bumble bee squeezing into a snapdragon. Our three robin babies are in the nest on the patio, barely fitting in and chirping for food. Anna getting herself up and off to work. Cherie juggling our lives as a caretaker like a boss. The blue Colorado sky. A perfect night on a patio with friends at book club. Things I used to take for granted fill me with awe now.

• Better Days are Coming - and then among all these banana feelings I get this buoyant feeling that it will all be okay, and boy is that hope powerful. It can lift me from all the other feelings. 6 rounds of chemo, and surgery, have got the cancer on the run. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, radiation is just one more hurdle to remission. I got this. I will see Anna graduate from high school and college, I will find my second act.