something light

My favorite short story in the world is written by Amy Bender and it is called, "The Girl in the Flammable Skirt." There is this one scene in it that kills me every time, and it goes essentially like this: The narrator is a young girl whose father is wheelchair-bound. Part of his predicament is that he must wear a backpack made of stone, a thing so heavy that even the zipper tab "weighs a ton." The young girl offers one day to take it from him - to bear his burden through her day. At school she squeezes into her desk wearing the stone backpack which must be worn by someone at all times, and her teacher comes to her desk, crouches down next to the girl and gives her a tissue. "But I'm not crying," the girl says. "I know," says her teacher, "I just wanted to show you something light." That's how I feel right now - like everyone I know is that teacher. 

Asking for help is a funny thing. I have no reservations when someone else does it, none about encouraging them to do so if they haven't yet, but me? Well, that's a different story. I was raised by the sort of people who offer a lot of help to others, but who frown upon asking for themselves, like it is weak or burdensome. Maybe it's the Catholicism that does this to us; that faith's guilt is a cliched and powerful thing. Naturally, when I got the diagnosis, financial fears began to run rampant, but were allayed by the fact that we have insurance, so we're in the clear, right? Wrong. Insurance will help immensely, but it will not cover everything, probably not all of the chemo treatments, probably not all of the testing, and then there are the deductibles and the out of pocket thresholds, the travel and the missed work. Having cancer, it turns out, is crazy expensive, but for the most part it felt feasible. My biggest concern was how to sort out our limited finances; obviously most of it would be needed to pay for care, but then we have these other looming concerns, like how our house is an unfinished project and what if... what if it got so bad that we had to sell it to pay medical bills? We wouldn't be able to as is, so should we spend some of the money readying the house just in case? Is that a damning way to think?
The thing that hit me hardest about this ordeal was the threat to my fertility. I can manage the slight dietary shift. I can get better at exercising. I can go for regular mammograms and MRIs to monitor for recurrence. I can take hormone suppressants for the next five years, manage a few months of chemo, and come out the other end of a surgical twilight just fine because after all of that, life can, for all intents and purposes, go back to mostly normal. We can move past this ordeal and live the life we wanted where Jason becomes a lawyer and I am a teacher and we have a child that I grow with my own incredible (if a little untrustworthy) body. Or not. That felt like the world crashing down around me, my first indicator that cancer and its impact may change not only my present but also the entire future I had envisioned. Now, I am not opposed entirely to changes in the plan. Life happens. I get it. But this? Not this. Take my breasts and my physical comfort and a bit of my sense of security, but don't take this. I plead to the destructively productive cells in my body.
But at least the insurance will help. We can freeze embryos and try later, when the treatments are done. And then I got a call from an insurance agent who wanted me to hear over the phone, rather than via letter, that they do not cover the expensive fertility-preservation process. Not a penny of it. And I began to feel a little desperate and get a little closer to thinking maybe it was ok to ask for help because that expense is one we cannot manage alone, but I still had my reservations. Still do, I suppose.
And now to yesterday, which started as a really crumby day. I occasionally get moody and yesterday I slumped into a dark and fearful and frustrated mood which was capped by my getting rear-ended (thankfully no injuries and only minor scratches) on my way to class. F yesterday. I hated yesterday and I wanted to cry about it. A lot.
And then I looked at facebook, that weird presence/irritation/connective force and the outpouring of sweet words and well wishing and love and people actually thanking us for giving them a means to help us and the insane, overwhelming generosity and my heart swelled up a la The Grinch (not that it was so small to begin with, but damn! y'all made it grow for sure) and I couldn't stop looking at the fundraiser in sheer astonishment. I felt rescued.
I have a tendency to be self-deprecating, to underplay my value or worth, to convince myself that my trouble is my own, and I will talk about it (obviously) but I don't really want to burden you with it, and here people I have never even met have offered to help us shore up the weight of this backpack, to show us something beautiful and light.

Thank you for that.