APPENDICURE

Alone with my thoughts, on the edge of what I know…

THE QUESTIONS THAT WON’T LET ME GO.

When logic fails and the mind searches for someone to blame

The questions start quietly.

Then they repeat.

Again.

And again.

Was it my fault?

Could I have done something differently?

Why didn’t I have any symptoms?

They circle endlessly in my mind.

Was it my fault?

What did I do to deserve this?

Could this have been prevented somehow?

Is this karma?

Wasn’t thirty years with fibromyalgia and fifty years of migraines enough suffering?

Cancer took my mother and my father. It orphaned me.

Those years also taught me to distrust the people in white coats. Doctors offered hope where there was none and took pride in surgeries that ultimately failed.

Was this some kind of ancestral karma passed down to me?

What about my children and innocent grandchildren? Are they destined for the same fate?

Will my youngest grandchildren even remember me if the worst happens?

Cancer took friends beginning when I was only eighteen.

Was I next?

And still another question appears.

Why didn’t I notice anything?

How could an appendix silently rupture, spreading dangerous mucin throughout my abdomen? Invading my organs and coating them in slime like something out of Ghostbusters. Where were Peter, Ray, Egon and Winston now?

I used to laugh every time I watched that movie.

Other times my mind imagined something stranger. An alien growing inside me, like in the movie Alien. Sigourney Weaver bracing for the unimaginable.

That movie always made me uncomfortable.

Now the fiction felt uncomfortably close to reality.

Why me? Why now?

Even when logic tells me there was nothing I could have done, my mind refuses reason. It clings to the what-ifs, the twisted possibilities, the phantom responsibilities that do not exist.

Fear, guilt and dread press relentlessly.

I have been a perfectionist for as long as I can remember.

Perfect student.

Perfect daughter.

Perfect wife.

Perfect mother.

Perfect speech-language pathologist.

Perfect Nana.

How did I lose control?

Could my husband, children, and grandchildren still love me after everything my body allowed to happen? I look in the mirror and barely recognize myself. I must have aged twenty years since hearing the words: “You have cancer.” 

It felt as if the universe had pointed a long finger directly at me, singling me out and convicting me of a crime I never knowingly committed.

In my dreams, I am invisible.

No one sees me.

No one hears me.

The dreams are not literal replays but symbols. I am trapped in familiar places, like a school where I once taught. My life was dedicated to helping others communicate, yet in the dream I cannot speak and no one hears me.

There is no exit.

Outside, the world looks unfamiliar and frightening.

Sometimes I wonder if I am already dead.

Even in my dreams the questions creep in.

Did I do enough?

Did I push hard enough?

Did I miss something?

Logic cannot quiet them.

My abdomen grew heavier, harder, unfamiliar. I ate well. I exercised. I scrutinized my body, trying to explain the changes. I weighed myself daily, often with disgust.

Doctors dismissed it as slow metabolism, aging, post-menopausal changes.

It wasn’t fat.

It was the tumor.

The mucin.

Something growing inside me that I could not see or control.

And still my mind searched for blame.

Did I miss something?

Could I have done anything differently?

Before cancer, my husband and I had a ritual: dinner together. A table for two. A drink or a glass of wine. A shared meal and laughter.

Those dinners were our connection. Small moments that were extraordinary.

Now even that feels risky. Almost indulgent against a body I no longer trust.

Restaurants, shopping, simple outings that once felt normal now feel almost impossible. The world feels dangerous, every activity a potential threat.

Trauma has confined me. It has isolated me.

Self-care.

Self-love.

What do those even mean now?

Life is lived from scan to scan.

Before cancer my body was whole, resilient and familiar.

After cancer it is a landscape of absence. Organs removed. Structures rearranged. Sensations altered forever.

My reflection is a stranger I am slowly learning to recognize.

How can I love a body that no longer belongs fully to itself?

How can care feel authentic when so much is gone and yet I must carry on?

And always, hovering in the background, another question.

What if there is a recurrence?

Everything removed from my body was frozen and cataloged somewhere. I do not know where.

In my mind I imagine a sterile warehouse of discarded body parts stacked like inventory.

Or perhaps a junkyard.

Pieces of me.

Some part of me still feels tethered to them, as if an invisible thread connects me to the cells and tissues that were once mine.

Sometimes I imagine those discarded parts calling to me, silently, wanting to be whole again.

It is a connection I know I must learn to release.

But letting go is not simple.

The questions still circle quietly at the edges of my mind.

And the nights bring something different.

That is when the questions become images.

Dreams where I cannot speak.

Dreams where no one hears me.

Dreams where I am trapped in places that should feel familiar.

The mind does strange things when it is trying to survive trauma.

Next time: “Don’t tell me I’m lucky.” ☘

Colleen Bailey