Being
done with treatment feels strange, I am emotional but also proud to have gone
through the process of surgery and radiation. I am both relieved and excited to
be done with treatment but I worry about recurrence and getting on with the
business of living.
I
am left standing and on to the next step, Anastrazole, a tiny anti estrogenic
pill. I go into it with a hopeful
feeling, my mind already deciding that I will not suffer from great
side-effects. When the five year ‘contract’ ends, will I feel like my security blankie
is gone, will I be alive?
I
am doing everything I can to fight the beast. So, what now? One day at a time sounds
easy to the ear but is it that simple? Can I get on with living my life to the
fullest?
I try
to find a happy medium, joy in the things that I loved before this happened...there's
no magic bullet… "it's over, move on" is the artless way in which
people respond to my queries ... it’s hard to understand when they haven’t been
‘there’ themselves. I am different from
everyone else and I will recover at my own pace....my doctors, both, have told
me it takes about as long as the treatment itself to recover physically...mentally
however, as long as my mind feels it needs. I need to stop looking back over my
shoulder, the BIG C isn’t there, it’s all out of my cells and my body, they say.
What I am doing now is preventing, through all the possible means I have
available to me, acupuncture, juicing, organic diet, massage, QiGong! A whole
routine not unlike the one I had before, but maybe taken now more seriously.
I
look at life in a different light, as this has been for me, a great awakening.
I don’t know from what or for what. I’m
just trying to sort things out in my head. I didn’t think this disease would
happen to me. As always, my spirit believes it’s immune from the commonality of
things. As a young bride I remember thinking I wouldn’t get pregnant too
quickly, didn’t that take time and practice?
It feels
pretty much as if I've been on a racing motorbike for the last four months to
abruptly be let off by the side of the road.
I don’t seem to feel like I've been through a lot because I feel fine --
just a bit unsettled… and fatigued. Everyone uses that word: fatigued. It truly
describes the lethargic exhaustion that assaults me unexpectedly as I’m driven
back home from treatments. Sometimes we stay in town to eat an early dinner,
sometimes we come straight back and I doze off half way between town and the
house.
When
exhaustion sets in, even if I sleep well at night, I can feel thoroughly wiped
out during the day. I could take a nap anywhere, anytime. I listen to my body, is what I do.
During
my last week of treatment my skin started to burn as if I’d spent a few days
under a blazing noon sun. Aloe Vera gel is cooling and St John’s wort oil
softens and nourishes my incisions. The
radiation site is now turning really dark.
The entire area under my arm down to my scar is very dark brown. It's
not painful only moderately uncomfortable.
Now,
I’m ready to travel!
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