Learning to lean

If you know me well, or maybe even just a little, you know that I am staunchly independent, even, sadly, proudly independent.  I don't like to ask for help, it makes me feel like I am imposing on someone else, and while I know they have the option to decline, I also feel like human nature is such that most people won't decline a flat out request for help from someone they know.  So I try not to ask.  

But you can't fight cancer with a one person army.

From the beginning, my daughter and I were in this together.  I knew every decision made would affect her as profoundly as it would affect me.  So, she was there to hear the options from the doctor, to receive all the information I received and to have a voice in the decisions made.  She turned 18 before my first surgery and with that took over my medical power of attorney; should I be unable to make my own medical decision it became hers to make.  And she has been amazing, through complication after complication she's stayed strong and wise beyond her years.  

But she needed to be at school, and I needed someone with me as I struggled to adjust to the treatment and medications.  So she asked for help, and it came flooding in.  "Guardian Angels"  - friends and family who rotated help when my daughter wasn't able to be there.   

As chemo continued, I took over the task of asking for help.  I put together a schedule and I sent out a request to friends and family.  But with each request, I lost a piece of myself and my confidence in my ability to be independent.  And with each complication that arose, the need for help increased, the fear rose higher, and anxiety kicked in.  I was at home, but needing someone there most days when my daughter wasn't there.  Someone to be there just in case; in case there was another drug reaction, in case there were new side effects from the chemo, in case i had a migraine episode - scary little "seizure-like" events that were coming almost daily.

Then came the hospitalization, 9 days, followed closely by 3 more spent in the hospital.  When it was time to go home we were faced with a decision on whether or not I was ready to be back home by myself.    I wanted so badly to be home, to be independent, to make everything go back to how it was before the complications and hospitalizations, even if I couldn't make it go back to how it was before cancer.  But down deep I knew it wasn't time.

I needed to focus on getting my strength back, on getting strong enough to start my next phase of chemo.  To focus on healing.  

And I was finally was able to accept that I needed help; and that help needed to come from somewhere other than my daughter's shoulders, so she could be my daughter and not my caregiver.   

Funny thing, in acknowledging that I needed help, in accepting that help and in moving forward knowing that it takes more than an army of one to fight cancer, I found that I had the strength of mind and body and spirit to become more independent.   I'm learning to lean on others without letting it diminish my sense of self or independence.  I'm learning that there is a strength in community that increases strength of self.  I'm learning that fear and anxiety might come from within, but can be battled from without, with the help of friends.  

I have a long way to go, but I'm learning, and for once in my life I'm willing to envision a life where I'm not so independent, and it doesn't scare me as much as it used to.

The time will come when it's my turn to be someone someone else can lean on, but for now, I'm learning to lean.