---

Hello! Welcome back to my breast cancer journey! I did not anticipate skipping all of February, so get over it. I will be combining February and March under the February magazine cover, and I will still be doing my wig story, so stay tuned!

I have learned through this journey to take care of ME first. As I’m sure you’ve seen on my social media, my mom’s dad passed away, and that triggered a halt in my writing.

But don’t writers heal themselves with the power of words? 🙃 Yes and no? I have been wanting to add to my blog for weeks, truly! The daunting task of saying goodbye to such a pillar in my life and getting back to work regularly prohibited me from doing so.

They say mind over matter. I say, tell that to someone with ADHD. The roadblocks were up, and it would take a group of friends and a lovely after-work beer on the patio to part the clouds.

I don’t typically discuss events in this blog as they happen. Still, an explanation was deserved for those of you who have been following along.

Now… let’s jump back into the deep end – cancer treatment.

There isn’t much of a story regarding chemo treatment; I mean, yeah. It’s fucked up; you’re being poisoned in an effort to kill the cancer, and from there, it will take your hair, your strength, and your confidence. I would say pre-cancer, I wasn’t overly confident, but I also wasn’t hiding in the broom closet. Once I could hardly recognize myself in the mirror, things got hard. Forgetting all the hair loss, and I mean everywhere, it was the dark circles under my eyes, the crushing look of defeat reflecting back at me in the mirror, and finally, the slow deterioration of my body that I began to feel the full weight of being a cancer patient.

At this point, Lee was basically living life as a caretaker and provider. Before he left for work each day, he made sure I was comfortable, had food and water nearby, and that Sprout had gone out to do his business.

[Please forgive me as I complain about the most bull shit thing ever, as I’m sure it will offend someone, this is merely a reflection of my experience and no one else’s.]

During chemotherapy, the typical image of a patient is bald, thin, and frail. I had the bald and frail bit down cold – it was the thin part that didn’t take. Knowing what we know now, it makes complete sense: you can’t regulate your body without hormones, and mine had turned on me, so we turned them off.

If you knew me in my younger years, I was a tiny thing! I could eat and eat and eat and never gain a pound, partly due to my genes. Still, I have a sneaking suspicion that the ADHD medication I was on curbed my appetite, as I would often run into my dad at midnight in the kitchen, digging for food! Like everyone, as I grew older, my metabolism slowed, and I turned to food during Chemo for comfort. Those who go through hormonal cancer know this is normal.

A little preface before I continue my story. I was a late bloomer, as they say, getting my period at 17, which could be genes and/or taking strong amphetamines during a significant growth period of my life. I have my own theories, but they are neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things. I have never been regular; my mood was wildly unpredictable, and overall, I just felt like other people weren’t affected like I was. In hindsight, I saw many of the same characteristics in my mom, though we never discussed it.

Throughout my 20s, I had been using the birth control that was placed in my arm for around 5 years, hoping to curb my outlandish mood swings and, you know, to not have babies. Not only did it not work, but I had my period for like 3 out of the 4 weeks in a month. Fuck that! After removing it and getting on the pill (a big thank you to Planned Parenthood of Moorhead, Minn., for providing a safe place to discuss my options and for free medication;), I would find some sense of normalcy.

It wasn’t until I went to the doctor that fateful day in May that I would get off everything hormonal, as I came to find out I was feeding my cancer with birth control; awesome?!

If we don’t acknowledge that I got pretty far off track again, maybe we can move on…

I have never been regular with my hormones for the majority of my life. I never chalked it up to family history or that something could be wrong, just that I guess I’m a moody MFer… Well, that is still true, but I can’t blame it on my hormones anymore. In reality, I am much more balanced than I have ever been.

On the days Katy would take me to treatment, she would bring her youngest son, Callen, at my request. Nothing brightens your day like seeing a brand-newish baby explore the world, especially when you’re not feeling your best. On those days, she would get me to walk around the block with her, Callen, and Sprout. It was the main things I could always count on with Katy: positivity, cute babies, and getting me to walk at least one block once a week. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep me in shape, duh! So, my muscle mass deteriorated, and my fat storage increased.

I have struggled with this for a while now. It was something I never had to work on; I was just thin, and I was always moving and doing stuff, so it didn’t matter how I treated my body; I would be thin.

Clearly, at the time, my weight wasn’t even in the ballpark of distressing things. Still, now that active treatment is over and my hair is growing back, social pressure lurks around every corner. People often forget that just because you don’t look sick anymore doesn’t negate the fact that fatigue, nausea, and chemo brain linger long after the drugs stop and life begins again. Let’s be real, though; I am a space case through and through. Get me going on something without interruptions. I’m a machine. Interrupt me once – all is lost, ha!

This is where I’m going to leave it today. Look for my special article on wigs coming very soon!

This article is dedicated to my late grandpa, Gene. He always said that if I became famous, I had to use the Hajek name!

Thirty(ish), flirty, and surviving,

KB Hajek