Small Steps

November 13, 2014
By: Noémie Robidoux

A little over a year ago, I was just finishing my chemotherapy treatments and was about to undertake the longest journey of my life. At the hospital, we are so supported. Each week is predictable: the medications we’ll take, the scans we’ll have, and we can often even predict how we’ll feel. Everything is calculated, and at the slightest imbalance, a solution is prescribed. And time is measured in this way: I have “x” number of chemo treatments left.

When the cycle is over, it is with joy and elation that we are sent home with wishes for the best. Ouch!

Everyone experiences the return home and to a “normal” life in a different way. In my case, it was rough. I had just spent four consecutive months in the hospital after the operation to remove half of my pelvis. I wasn’t exactly at rock bottom, but I certainly wasn’t at my best either. My mood was consistently shifting and my physical capacities were limited. And so began my rehabilitation.

I was lucky enough to be involved with some extraordinary people throughout that period of time. When I asked, I was very promptly referred for mental health support at the CLSC close to my home. The people around us are full of the best intentions, but having a neutral person you can confide in helps to put things into perspective. We can gradually begin to add some color to the black and white film that is playing around us.

I am also grateful for the physiotherapists, occupational therapists, and other “ists” that worked with me up to four times a week to help me regain my strength and autonomy.
I haven’t always been easy and they always had the right words to convince me to keep going.

It was only several months later that I started to realize how much progress I had made. For a while, my eyes glued to the mountain, I lost sight of the summit. After a while, I was asked to take a look back. And I saw the tracks that marked my passage. In the distance, strewn about the foot of this hill that I believed to be insurmountable: a wheelchair I had almost forgotten, a bunch of pill bottles, now empty. There were also the little day-to-day victories: the first meal I cooked myself, the first shower I took without any help, the first car ride after my surgery, the first real haircut in a long time, the first time I made my bed on my own. Things we often take for granted, but that, once taken away from us, take on an inestimable value when we have them back.

Today, I have an incredible amount of gratitude for these little nothings that constitute the richness in our lives. Whenever I rediscover a little piece of the autonomy that was taken away from me, I rebuild, bit by bit, my faith in the future and in my own abilities. Abilities that are different from before, but that will allow me to reach my goals one small step at a time. And each small step leaves a mark behind me that supports me and drives me forward.