They didn't break me

Good afternoon all:


I'm writing today from Hopkins. My role as patient hasn't ended, just changed. I'm here to meet with Dr. Connolly about my transition into the maintenance therapy phase that should last the next two years. In addition, I will have my first radiation treatment before I go. This is the first time that I will have spent a significant portion of a day at Hopkins since my last outpatient visit to the hematology clinic and I'm having a sensation/realization that needs to be shared.

This morning I was hearing more about the soldier in Afghanistan that opened fire in a military hospital. I believe it was a parent that was proclaiming that the military had 'broken his son'. This was said in the same way that you often see in the movies where the drill seargent 'breaks down' the soldiers so they can be built up again into a fighting machine but clearly the connotation was not at all positive the way it is in the movies. Instead it was more to say that the soldier that shot 5 fellow soldiers was less the son that the man raised and more the product of a military training system that was somehow flawed or incomplete.

For seven months I dealt with a loss of control that concerned me enough to be the subject of one of my earliest blog posts. Dealing with this loss required acquiescence, flexibility, humor, determination. I needed a separate Russ from "Work Russ" and "Home Russ" so a new role was created: "Patient Russ". I spent many days leading up to my return to work wondering if I would be able to regain the "Work Russ" and, to some degree, the "Home Russ". Now I have returned to Hopkins after working for several weeks and assuming old roles and responsibilities. I have regained much of the control that had been missing for many months in a very quick and quiet fashion. Returning today has felt different to me. I don't feel out-of-control here as I had for quite some time. It feels good to know that my temporary role as chemotherapy patient didn't wipe clean my memory of and capability for being in control of my life at work and at home. Neither cancer nor Hopkins broke me during my chemotherapy. It feels good to realize that today as I sit and smugly type away . . .