Still Angry

I read in another blog (written by a guy who died of cancer while he was still alive and going through chemo) that most cancer patients experience anger.

I am still angry.

I love my baby so much I can feel the vibrations of it in my bones. I love his beauty, his intelligence, his awakening to the world. I love being with him, watching him, nurturing him. I love looking at photos of him when he was a "little baby." (He's 9 months old now.) I love the way he is learning to control his little body and the way he moves is just amazing. Yesterday we were on a train (at the B&O Train Museum in Baltimore, MD) and he was sleepy. I had been holding him and singing quietly to him for a while. When we sat down on the train, he relaxed his body onto mine (so we were belly-to-belly, chest-to-chest) and then rested his little head on my shoulder. He was awake, but just resting on me, in my arms, with such ease...it felt so good.

Because of a problem with reoccuring ovarian cysts (and stupid doctors when I was a teenager) I lost an ovary when I was 16. Ever since then I was afraid I would not be able to have a baby when I was ready. My husband was not ready when I was, so I waited a bit longer than I would have liked. It took us a full year to conceive. My pregnancy was a good one and I was so so happy--full of the joy that a longed-for pregnancy can bring. My husband and I planned a homebirth but I developed pre-eclampsia and had to be induced at a hospital. It was still a good birth (yes, I did it with the love and support of my darling husband and a good doula--no analgesics necessary), though I will always resent the time that the hospital robbed me of with my baby when they took him to the nursery for several hours to "clean" him. How I wish I had those hours back! Why oh why did they have to take him from me, anyway???

I want so much to see this darling boy grow up. I want to help him learn to read. I want to be there when my husband teaches him to ride a bicycle. I want to be a mother to him for decades. Now I fear that cancer will take that pleasure from me.

I also want to have another child...well, ok, I want to have 2 more children. And now the door is closing on that dream as well since it seems that chemo will likely leave me sterile.

Oh god it makes me so sad to think of stopping nursing. Not only does it make me sad because it is a big part of my relationship with my baby now, but it seems that I will never get to nurse another baby. So I mourn for now and for what might have been.

I just finished reading _The Black Prince_ by Iris Murdoch. Here's a quote I felt applies to how I feel about this waiting waiting waiting for more information and answers:

Waiting in fear is surely one of the most awful of human tribulations. The wife at the pit head. The prisoner awaiting interrogation. The shipwrecked man on the raft in the empty sea. The sheer extension of time is felt then as physical anguish. The minutes, each of which might bring relief, or at least certainty, pass fruitlessly and manufacture an increase of horror.