A wall of tears.

Is it scary to read that title? Please don’t be scared. It is my wall. They are my tears. I am fine, even when my weeping leaves me feeling less human and more elemental, like a wave or a waterfall. The phrase and image–a wall of tears–came to me in a single moment almost a week after my fourth chemotherapy treatment earlier this month. Before the treatment, blood was drawn to check that I was in good condition. All the results indicated that the effects of the earlier chemotherapy and the HIPEC treatment on my blood, metabolism, and electrolytes had all resolved. But. The CA125 test, which is used to look for the presence of ovarian cancer, had shot up to 347, higher than before I started treatment last fall. A normal value for this test is 0-30.

I was shocked. Horrified. I had begun to feel safe again in my body, strong again, able to move with ease. When I woke up from surgery over a month ago, I had allowed myself to say, “I don’t have any cancer in my body now.” As I recovered from surgery, I would come back to those words, delighted and hopeful about completing treatment and possibly, never needing treatment again. “Maybe, maybe, maybe” my heartbeat said.

My doctor came into the consulting room, positive and energetic as usual. He enthused about how well I was doing, how well I had recovered from surgery. I said I had just seen the result of the CA125 test and was very concerned. He said, “We just saw it too. I am not concerned. This is an effect of the surgery and HIPEC treatment. The CA125 measures a lot of things besides markers for ovarian cancer. Any injury, infection, inflammation, even stretching of the peritoneum as happens during pregnancy, increases the CA 125. Don’t freak out. I know it’s easier said than done. Don’t freak out. It’s one test, and all the other tests do not indicate the presence of cancer and show you are doing well.” 

I believe my doctor’s interpretation of my bloodwork. Now I must reckon with the emotional fallout of what I had slowly begun to hope for, before the CA125 test result reminded me that for most women, the cancer does reoccur, and for many women, the cancer becomes resistant to treatment. I am immersed in the prehistoric myth of human suffering, wanting to live and knowing I will die. There is no distraction from this anguish. The physical symptoms related to the cancer and its treatment have been distressing at times, but tolerable and responsive to medicine and time. By far, the biggest suffering is emotional and spiritual. The lack of solid ground from which to anticipate a future I want to run toward, the way I did before this diagnosis, the way I had just started to anticipate before seeing the CA125 test, leaves me roaring with grief on some mornings.

To be clear, I may have a future that is better than my most ambitious dreams. I will certainly die, as will all living things. My suffering is in not knowing the specifics and having enough information to imagine a very possible and terrifying and immanent how. My longing for certainty is a torment. I can set it aside. Do all the mindfulness things. Breathe. Be in the present. Recognize how my suffering connects me to all beings. Focusing on my breath does help in the moment. I can breathe and find that I’m distracted from my fear and grief enough to maintain and function. I carry on a conversation. I ask appropriate questions. I can listen to reassurances and recommendations without snarling and walking away or throwing a chair or punching a wall in order to release the energy that is desperate to escape the unwanted reality of a scary test result or scan.

My energy must have its time too, to express its vitality in defiance of death, cancer, this illness. So I cry it out and grieve what I want and cannot have, the illusion of an old age dominated by robust health and strength. It may still come to pass, but I will not anticipate it with ease or innocence as I once did. In the morning darkness, I sob that I want to live. I scream into my pillow that I am going to live. The words give expression to the life force that pushes back, insistent that I experience all the life I have right here and now in this precious body. In this moment, I am going to live.

Underneath the wall of tears, I am coming to know death, my death, which does not stalk me like the hooded figure of scary movies. My death belongs to me and I belong to my death, just as I belong to my birth. My death awaits me, like a jewel nestled in the night sky. It is something precious, just like my life, just like my birth. For now, I am alive right here, and my death shines bright out there.