Small cancer update: I had my radiation, it’s done, and now I am waiting for the effects of radiation to go away so I can have a PET CT to see how much cancer is left. That’ll take a couple months, so in the meantime, I am taking an aromatase inhibitor called anastrozole, and I had a shot called leuprolide that shuts down my ovaries so they stop making the estrogen that my cancer loves so much. Which means, I had a shot that suddenly put me into menopause. Like, I had chemo-induced menopause already, but now, it’s like, all of a sudden, for real.

This is the point where the people who live with someone who is menopausal say “Instant menopause?!?! HOLY FUCK RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!!”

Two days after the shot, after a particularly ugly-crying session just before bed, I sent my oncologist this email:

“Holy mood swings Batman! How long can I expect to be riding the crazy train from that injection? (The Hubs is really hoping the answer is ‘not much longer.’ Poor guy has a cold AND an insane wife.)”

My oncologist asked for details and asked if I had already begun taking the anastrozole, so I wrote this back.

“Lemme see, like, unreasonably angry about things that I know I am being unreasonably angry about but I am still angry, then crying because I am an asshole for being unreasonably angry, then laughing at myself for crying. Like, in the span of 5 minutes. Hubs, does that about cover it?

Yep, taking the anastrozole. (Which my iPad wanted to autocorrect to astrodome. Which is absurdly funny to me right now. Don’t worry, I’ll be unreasonably angry again here in a minute or two.)

-Beth”

Like, I am not even making that up. That’s literally what went through my brain. It was like the worst PMS I ever had, multiplied by infinity. One of the things that made me angry? That The Hubs had a cold. As if he got one on purpose? The amazing part is how, as I said, I knew I was being unreasonably angry. Like, the rational part of my brain was still there going “Damn, girl, you CRAZY” while the rest of my brain was like “SHUT UP I AM NOT CRAZY…OH FUCK MAYBE I AM CRAZY, I AM A HORRIBLE PERSON…HAHAHA I AM CRAZY HAHAHA!”

What. The. Fuck.

Maybe it’s not quite this dramatic for people who do this naturally. Otherwise, I am confused why our prisons aren’t more full of menopausal women who murdered their husbands because they got a cold. Like, for reals, you guys, this shit is not for sissies.

Anyway, after reading that crazy, my doctor was clearly terrified that I had turned into some kind of rage-bear and decided he’d better make sure nobody got mauled. I mean, who wouldn’t be terrified by my email? I obviously wasn’t kidding about going round the bend. So he wrote back a very kind “please don’t hate me for constantly making you feel like shit” email with some proposed solutions. (You know, it’s gotta be hard being an oncologist, because, yeah, all the treatments they have at least come with the possibility of making you feel like shit, and frankly, most of the ones I’ve had actually HAVE made me feel like shit.)

We exchanged a coupe more emails about my hopefully temporary insanity before the whole email conversation devolved into The Hubs and my doctor and I exchanging Youtube clips to express ideas. Because we’re all GenXers and we communicate via postmodernism. (If you can express complex ideas using nothing but YouTube clips and animated gifs, you were probably born between 1960 and 1980.) My favorite is this gem that my doctor shared. You’re welcome.

The good news is, after another day, the mood swings subsided, and nobody was murdered. The bad news is, there is a very real possibility this shit could happen again at some point in my treatment. Everyone should now send their condolences, along with protective gear, to The Hubs.