Time-limited agreements with myself

Anna sent me this mug eons ago. How have I never posted it?

 This is not an interesting post.

This is a post in which I freak out just a little because in 48 hours I meet the oncologist and learn my fate with regard to chemo. 

Mastectomy? Fine, whatever. All of this so far has been mostly an inconvenience because it's kept me from doing the things I love.

Chemo is a different story and it terrifies me.

There are lots of side effects of chemo. Hair loss is the one most people think of right away, and while that one bugs me (because I do not have the face to pull off the bald look), it'll grow back and I'm curious about scarves and that could be interesting and fun to experiment with. And it would grow back with no dye history so it would be a clean palette! So you know, whatever. Bruising? I'm an aerialist. I got your bruises right here. And here. And here. And here....

Fatigue though...I got shit to do. And so many others...but I could manage these.

Except the vomiting. I'm not sure I can impress upon you how fearful I am of this. No one LIKES barf, but this is the single thing giving me the most anxiety...

So here's what I'm falling back on. In undergrad, I had a roommate/inseparable friend who was a few years ahead of me doing her MS. We talked about grad school and field work a lot in those days (and while we've lost touch, she was instrumental in putting me on my path to being a tropical biologist, however short-lived that career may have been). And while we wanted to like our field work, we viewed the MS as a way to determine if we wanted to commit to this sort of life long term. Field biology in the tropics is hard. It's hard on the body (you WILL get sick at some point; I lost track of the list of parasites and things I picked up), it's hard on personal relationships, it's emotionally taxing, it's monetarily taxing, it's stressful to deal with logistics (e.g., paying bills while you're out of the country for 3-6 or more months at a time, and this was before the internet made all that sort of thing reasonably accessible, sublet or not sublet?, etc., etc.). 

A PhD doing this is a many-year commitment. A Masters degree is typically a couple of years of courses, but only one field season. Maybe one and a half. Field seasons are the "hard part." (Also, I'd argue, the best part.)

She and I agreed that a MS  was a good trial. And we had a mantra for when shit got hard: "You can do anything for a year." 

Shit got hard, and it got hard a lot in grad school, both in MS and in "PhD school" as another friend called it. But I told myself I could do anything for a year, and it got me through.

I am not positive how long chemo would last if I do need it. I have notes from my first meeting with an oncologist, but that was before we knew anything, and it was a different oncologist. And how I tolerate it can also inform it...but all indications are it would be a few months max.

I don't want this. But shit. I can do anything for a year.