I just heard someone say that time doesn't heal all wounds -- it just makes them worse. I guess it depends on the wound. I imagine losing a child is one wound that never really heals. But I've found that my cancer wounds -- both physical and emotional -- have healed with time. And a trip down memory lane proves it.Two years ago I wrote about my wounds, fresh and raw and painful, on my Breast Cancer blog.
Confession
Wednesday, February 23rd, 2005
I must confess my not-so-positive feelings about my treatment process. In addition to the queasiness I feel from the chemo drugs, I have started feeling ill at the mere thought of this entire ordeal. It's hard not to think about it so I get this feeling quite often. I am actually repulsed by what is happening to me - the drugs that are cycling through my system, the scars on my body, my bald head, the nausea, the dry taste in my mouth. Reading my breast cancer books makes me feel ill. Sometimes when I look back on my journal entries, I feel sick. Some of it I suppose I can control. I can stop reading. I can stop looking at what I've written in this journal. But the day-to-day thoughts and experiences I cannot erase.
I am still making it through each day without too much difficulty. I am still positive and hopeful. But while I once felt completely motivated and somewhat unphased by breast cancer and its implications, I now feel sickened and a bit angry. I am sure I will someday turn towards acceptance and will one day think of this journey as a life-changing gift. But for now, I just feel sick.
I read recently that some patients feel nauseated each time they see their oncologists - even years after cancer and treatment. So I know I am not alone.
These wounds are gone, missing, absent from the life I live today. Time may not heal all wounds -- and I agree that it can make some worse -- but in my case, I am thankful for the passage of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years. Because time has healed the worst of my wounds.
When Patsy Ramsey 
I confess. I was once a sun worshiper. I grew up in Ohio where a really sunny day was rare -- so on the occasion when the sun was bright and hot, I was in my back yard or at a swimming pool or at a lake soaking up the warmth and comfort of the rays that mostly burned my skin but gave me a glow that eventually turned the slightest shade of tan and made me feel healthy. It's ironic really -- that I felt healthy when the act of sunbathing is so completely damaging. And I knew this at the time and for the many years that followed -- and I still basked in the sun and vacationed in Florida and sometimes actually drove in the direction of the sun on a overcast day, in search of a tan that was never fully achieved because my skin is pale and fair and was never meant for any amount of sun exposure.
