Month: February 2021

Mental Health, Metastatic Breast Cancer & a Mother-Freaking Pandemic

A question I get asked a lot, and understandably so, has been: “How are you doing?” I typically respond, “Hanging in there.” It’s an answer that tells you absolutely nothing, but conveys the sentiment that hey, I am still here. I am always touched when a friend or family member checks in on me, and it warms my icy cold heart that anyone has been thinking about me. I’ll let you in on a secret though: I often give the non answer of “hanging in there” because I honestly don’t know how to answer this question. I really don’t. Does anyone really want to know the real answer?

Most of the time, my stress level is probably at a 7 or an 8, and it’s been that way since the beginning of October 2020. I am going to do my best to try and explain what this feels like. To me, sometimes it feels like there’s a killer clown with a 10-inch serrated knife in the room with me. This clown looks like it crawled out from the depths of hell, and it has got murder on its mind. The killer clown has soulless, jet-black eyes, and yellowish fangs. It has a devilish smile, which enjoys mouthing the words, “I am going to kill you.”

The kicker – nobody else can see this killer clown.

“Can’t you see it, too?” I scream at others. They nod their head and shrug at me. Nope, it’s only me. So, I have to pretend to be normal and do my best to not pay attention to the killer clown, but sometimes I slip, look back and see it once again mouthing the words “I am going to kill you,” and then freak out accordingly. I still have to go about my regular day and pretend like I don’t see this clown but I am always aware that it is there..

Living alone during a pandemic was challenging and tough enough, as it was. I often felt lonely and isolated. Like so many, I felt cutoff from my friends and my running community. The big difference, though, was that I could still run and work out. Now, I am lucky if I get 30 minutes of aerobic exercise on the treadmill. I keep gaining weight, and my body is changing so much on me. Soon, it’s going to be even more foreign to me, and I mourn my pre-diagnosis body with all my heart and what I used to be able to do.

I am lucky that I enjoy my job, and really like the people I work with and for. My job allows me to be creative, and I always try to learn something new every day. My job allows me to ignore the killer clown for 40 hours a week, and pretend to be normal, when I feel like anything but. I want to keep working as long as I physically can because it really helps my mental health, too. There are stretches of time where I actually forget I have metastatic breast cancer. Oh my, I am actually tearing up thinking about this. I desperately need these stretches of time where I can forget and feel like Lara again.

I truly believe my mental health will significantly improve when the weather gets warmer, and I can leave my house for physical exercise. I miss being on the trails so much. Don’t get me wrong – I will not be running on the trails ever again (well, unless something is chasing me). During my last brain MRI, I tried to go to my happy place, and I found myself transported back to the trails in North Park. I was climbing up the massive elevation on the purple trail, and then I was trotting along the green trail where I typically spot deer.

Even though I’m exhausted pretty much most of the time and my counts are currently in the toilet, I will hike those trails again. I’ll just have my boyfriend along with me (making sure I don’t trip and fall).

“Do you want to be defined by this?”

This question was asked of me lately, and I have been really giving this question a lot of thought. Do I want to be defined by my illness, by cancer? More importantly, do I… have a say in this matter?

Cancer has been a part of my life since I was 2 or 3 years old, whenever it was my mom first got sick. Cancer for sure set off a crater in my life when she died when I was only 7 years old. Thanks to cancer, I learned at a very young age that life was not fair, and the people you love will leave you, even though they don’t want to.

I always felt weird and out of place going through school, like this major life event marked me as different, a weirdo. I was the girl with the dead mom. Navigating adolescence without your mother is difficult, and I went through many “you’re becoming a woman” milestones with my dad.

Then, cancer once again becomes a part of my life when I was 25 when I started getting yearly mammograms. Five years later, I am told I have stage 1 breast cancer. Now, at the age of 40, I am living with stage 4 breast cancer. This freaking disease has been a part of my life for pretty much the entire life, and it’s going to kill me just like my mom. So yes, I have been very much defined by breast cancer.

Yeah, I have been defined by my cancer, and I plan on fundraising for metastatic breast cancer research as much as I can before I die. However, I will always be more than my disease. I was a runner, and I take bomb ass pictures. I am accident prone, and I love memes. I like my job, and I really like and care for my coworkers.

When the time comes I find out once and for all if heaven is real, I know my loved ones will be talking about funny stories about me, and not giving cancer a second thought.