Fade Away?

Nah, Treatment Has More to Say

Important notice: there is mention of depression, loss, and grief. Read it when you feel ready.

Treatment — that was done and over, right? Well, no. There’s a new performance in the circus line-up. The medical term is perimenopause. This magician has a hat full of tricks — forgetfulness, stiff joints, muscle aches, hot flashes, night sweats, mood swings… and apparently, ‘not giving a frick’ can trickle out. That one, I’m actually okay with — finally, a useful skill to hoard in my adult toolbox.

Before I could ride along with zero fricks, I landed in a stint of depression. Hold up — a bonus level of despair in the hat?

Radiating positive numbers, my lab results confirmed that my body was bouncing back and normalizing. Overall, the outcomes from chemotherapy and surgery were positive, even “delightfully unexpected,” as the care team shared.

Full of hope, I wanted to move on with life. I threw a celebration to close the past and honor a healthy start.

But shortly after the celebration, my heart felt heavy.

I received news of someone’s passing — a fellow cancer patient. Their story was different from mine, leukemia, yet we grew up playing sports together, and this year we were reunited as teammates through chemotherapy. Their passing stunned me, and I felt deeply torn.

Guilt crept in — not everyone gets to celebrate positive outcomes. Was it insensitive of me?

Feeling defeated, I went searching for answers. In my search, I didn’t pull a rabbit from the hat — I tumbled straight into a hole. Didn’t the band TLC warn me? Don’t go Googling — you’ll end up in rabbit holes.

I landed on an audiobook recommendation: a memoir from a patient’s journey through leukemia. I clung to the promise of triumph, knowing the author had lived through it, but instead the memoir unraveled me with its unfiltered realness. When young adults experience cancer, something so often framed as an illness of older age, there is no logic to it — just like a rabbit tucked into a hat. Free the rabbit, damn it!

Recovery from chemotherapy and surgery left me horizontal. Now stacked like a seven-tier perimenopausal cake, I woke each morning stiff. Some days, getting my own dogs into the yard felt like the showstopper challenge. So I closed the pet-sitting business that I built, Shea-nannygans, because there wasn’t much “nannygans” my body could manage.

Depression reared its head, and I was left to wonder, where was Tough Twinkie’s perseverance?

After stewing on it, I realized she wasn’t gone but hiding offstage. So I promised myself to get onstage alongside zero fricks, then rip despair from the hat and burn it… quite the act, eh? And oh yeah, perimenopause — take a damn seat.

With the sharp, neon lights flickering inside the circus tent, Tough Twinkie got ready.