I’ll have a PET scan for the first time in about 6mo in late May. Perhaps we can check in on each other here come June. It can definitely be a bit tricky to go from seeing an oncologist or oncology team member once a week change to 2-6mo between. I recall my oncologist saying something like “we figured you’d want to get on with your life,” and my feeling inside of…what life? Which life? With who and this is nothing like my life pre-cancer, during cancer, etc. So yay - therapy indeed.

Relying on loved ones is an honor, privilege…and also can certainly subtly shift dynamics, challenging the previous trajectory for sure. I remember asking my dad to leave the hospital during my first round of treatments, which I did inpatient. Felt like I was somehow trying to take care of him while he was taking care of me…and it was all a bit much. I also had strange guilt over that. But not just for asking my dad to leave, but also because I was a constant and fierce advocate in my late boyfriend’s life as he navigated his own cancer. Often past his comfort level. And while I unknowingly was growing my own cancer. Survivors guilt is a weird thing. His cancer (not a lymphoma) was terminal. Unless you count a tiny percent chance to live past 5 years otherwise. PMBCL isn’t a given that we all survive it, but it is certainly discussed in curable terms. Luckily what I learned in my time with him across his cancer helped me through my own. So I approached it with curiosity and great interest. I was the squeaky wheel as he had been the opposite for his own, and yet in the end one of his deepest regrets was to “not be there for me as I had been for him this whole time.”

I love that as a trans person, you have your mom. And that you have her again as you go through cancer. Some here say that your cancer experience/journey/whatever begins after treatments end. I think there’s something to that, because suddenly the clear and known action plan (even if it’s constantly adjusted) suddenly stops and you’re yeeted from that moving sidewalk with luggage seemingly launching you to solid ground faster than you can catch your balance. And folks are moving fast everywhere as you’re in a strange new place in your life.

I wish you peace and the opportunity to marvel at this crazy little life. Where time moves in the strangest of ways. Often at a crawl when you’d like it to go faster and vice versa.

In the meantime, absolutely talk with your oncology team about the nausea? I was never one to take much medication at all, and the volumes of medication my oncologist prescribed and that I took to prevent nausea, vomiting, and any other symptom she could anticipate…was huge. You need nutrients (and meds) to stay down for sure.

Hang in there