The Body Remembers

Racing heart, beating like the loudest drum, feels like it’s going to explode right through my chest. Shallow breaths, gasping for air. Clutching my hair, feeling an overwhelming need to escape my skin. Irritability, trembling, sweaty palms, panic, heightened anxiety, more frequent tears. A funk I can’t seem to shake. A desperate urge to bury myself under layers of blankets, to curl up and hide from the world. The intensity is suffocating, and I can’t find a safe place. While no stranger to panic attacks, these recent moments seemingly emerge out of nowhere, catching me off guard. Then, the realization hits. My body betrays me, vividly recalling moments I try to bury in my mind. It remembers the day our world changed; the tumor on the x-ray, the urgent MRI, the phone call not even 20 minutes after the MRI, the oncologist appointment scheduled for the next morning, and the words “most likely malignant.” My body relives those moments; it remembers the full body shakes while trying my damndest to hold back the tears because Ariella was sitting across from me at dinner when I was hearing this information. It remembers feeling hot and dizzy and weak and doing everything in my power not panic. Trying my best not to scare Ariella. It remembers somehow getting Ariella to her dance class and then calling David to tell him. It remembers trying to hold it together downstairs in the dance studio but failing mightily while being held by another dance mom. Despite not being always at the forefront of my thoughts, my body refuses to forget the day we learned Ariella likely had cancer.

It was a Thursday (Thursday-also the day Ariella died). On that Thursday seven years ago (February 2, 2017 to be exact (February not a great month for me between diagnosis day, the anniversary of my father’s death, and the anniversary of Ariella’s bone marrow transplant)), our perfect world crumbled. The subsequent days were a chaotic whirlwind of tests and scans and jargon and biopsies and doctors and binders and information overload. But mostly fear. Fear and a complete feeling of helplessness. Total loss of control. We learned to control what we could during treatment yet remained at the mercy of cancer. And chemo. And blood cells. And fevers. And countless uncontrollable factors. In just 2 years and 4 months from that pivotal day Ariella endured unimaginable challenges, and we faced the unfathomable. And we somehow persevered. But despite having emerged from the darkness I once experienced, my body continues to stubbornly pull me back to those moments, even when I try to resist.

Typically the anticipation of upcoming significant dates or milestones has been harder than the actual day. And the next 3 1/2 months is just that. The memory of one traumatic event after another. My sentences above are about nearing diagnosis day. But we are also entering the anniversary of the beginning of the end. Ariella went into the hospital February 18, 2019 for what we hoped would be her cure. Instead we left without her on May 9 after witnessing her endure trauma after trauma. Other times of year are hard for sure. But these next few months? Nothing compares to how this time of year affects me. So. I still know I’m in a different place than previous years. And I know I will get through it again. But it might be ugly.