A Swerve in the Road

Today was a hard day.

I’ve felt the slow, steady momentum of improvement over the last months, but today it felt like it all came to a crashing halt.

My Counselor’s Recommendation

My counselor made an official recommendation that I pursue an intensive outpatient program (IOP) since we aren’t seeing the kind of success we would expect with traditional therapy. I felt like the rug was pulled out from under me. Even my counselor had given up on me.

I’ve been particularly against the IOP from the beginning because I couldn’t see how it would fit into our lives. Having to leave the house and both kids 3 times a week for 3 hours a day, seemed insane. The whole point was to spend more time with my kids, not less. And between the program itself and travel, it would be even more time lost with them. I have also been hesitant to embrace the idea that group therapy will be beneficial for me. I’m still wasn’t exactly clear how hearing another person share their problems was going help improve my depression or confidence to be alone with my children. So, all of these thoughts went through my mind today when my counselor sprung this on me. I felt betrayed, abandoned, and alone. I felt backed into a corner with no other options, so I said yes. I told her I didn’t really like the idea and she said,

“Does anyone? When someone is diagnosed with cancer and has to go through chemo, do they want to have chemo?”

When you put it that way…

But aside from those feelings, I couldn’t help but feel like a failure. That I hadn’t done enough, worked hard enough, and was too broken, that now the treatment had to be kicked up a notch. Her response was just as good as the last,

“If a person needs a second round of chemo, is it their fault that the first didn’t kill all the cancer?”

It made sense. But then why did I feel still feel so bad? I cried the whole drive home from my appointment. I cried because I felt ashamed, embarrassed, broken, and hopeless. What if this didn’t work? I felt like I had wasted so much time getting to this point. I worried that now that my kids were older, would they remember my absence?

Sharing the News

I only told two people. I don’t know exactly what I expected them to say, but neither one seemed to get it right. I guess I wanted someone to mourn with me. To empathize with the pain I was feeling at having to take steps this far to get better.

Then I wondered what I would tell people. For the past months I had been saying how I was feeling better, more myself than I had in a long time. Now I felt like a fraud. Maybe I had no clue how I was doing. What did I know? Would people think I had lied? Would they judge me and ask why I wasn’t better yet the way I did?

The Aftermath

All I knew was I felt worse at the end of the day than I had at the start. I started in a place where I was feeling pretty good. I had kept up with the laundry and dishes this week. Managed to get some groceries. Took care of the boys on my own and started packing for a long weekend. I was clicking with my kids and feeling mostly happy. And in a matter of 1 hour it all came crashing down around me. And all I could think was, now what? Where do we go from here? This isn’t something I know how to do.