For most of my life, I’ve always poured my heart out into my journal. When I started blogging, I kept that same what-I-feel-is-what-I’m-writing habit. I even drifted completely away from my paper journal, and wrote down every event here.
Lately, I can’t seem to get the words down.
I’ve known for almost a week now what Noni’s tests came back with, and I just couldn’t write about it. Part of it was that I wanted to wait until my sister knew (because she’s been at school, so Mom wanted to tell her face-to-face), but I couldn’t even write a password-protected or private post. It’s hard to even talk about it. It’s as if my mind just won’t let the message across to my mouth or fingers.
But because I’ve always felt better after writing something out, I still feel the need to write about this. But the words don’t come easily.
On Tuesday, the 12th, Noni found out that her cancer is aggressive. It is not in her organs, but it is in her bones: her hip and shoulder blade. Her doctors ordered another biopsy of the tumor in her arm pit, and are testing it to see if it responds to estrogen-based treatments and a couple of other kinds of new treatment. If it does respond, they’re going to hold off on the surgery to remove the tumor so that they can use it as a way to measure progress.
She told me flat out that she just wants everyone to be positive, because she wants to see her grandchildren get old. I’m kind of glad she couldn’t see my face (because of the way the light was coming in through the window), because I have no idea how my face looked. I’ve never been good at controlling my facial expressions; everyone I know says my face is an open book.
On Friday, when my mom told Lauren about the test results, I also found out that they’re considering this stage four. To be completely honest, I had been afraid to ask Noni when I talked to her. I asked her other things, but completely avoided asking THE QUESTION.
This feels like Popi, all over again. My family just went through this. We found out there was cancer. We waited for test results. We hoped that things weren’t too bad. We got test results, and found out that it was as bad as bad can be. And still, we hoped. Or at least, everyone else did; I just walked around in silent denial. I did not think that cancer would take away my grandfather.
Now, I’m reminded all too much of that stoic denial, and I don’t know how to feel. My mind wants to do three things, all at once: be in denial, hope for a good outcome, and scream. Mostly, it just goes blank, something I never thought it could do. Everything is black and white: Food, sleep, don’t think about the bad stuff.
