Sunday. 3.25. This is it. My last weekend before chemo. Tomorrow I finish this poison. Tomorrow I finish what they keep calling the worst part of treatment. Why am I so stressed out? This is a great thing! I’m done. This part will be over. YEAH! I can start getting my life back. Or can I? Will this really be it? Will this whole process get me to the other side with many (or at least a few more) years to come? Or have I just given up the last 5 months of my quality of life to be told that the cancer has really spread. I get the MRI results back tomorrow, and I’m apprehensive about that. Has the tumor shrunk? Did we miss that it really did go to the lymph nodes?
STOP!
Just STOP!
Take a deep breath. Now take a few more, just don’t pass out when you do. Slow the roll. Slow the brain. Slow the anxiety.
Gently, Grey reminded me that during our Cancer101 workshop, Nora, who does a survivorship care plan and treatment summary, said that the transitions can be the hardest and most stressful times in treatment. On one hand, there’s the idea you ‘should’ be happy – this part of treatment is over. You ‘should’ celebrate. You ‘should’ feel relieved. On the other hand, what’s next? Cancer treatment is so compartmentalized that you have to meet with a new provider (surgeon) who does this different area of treatment. Will I be comfortable with this new person? How soon can we do the surgery? Am I still a lumpectomy candidate or do I need a mastectomy? What are the pros and cons of each choice?
Again. JUST STOP! Get out of your head.
As I tell my students, ‘don’t should on yourself’ (author unknown). Shoulds foster unnecessary guilt and anxiety and don’t change behaviors or feelings. Shoulds only offering to us is stress, and unnecessary stress on top of everything else going on in life. Shoulds are pretty much a waste of time, so why do them? Maybe it’s time to take my own advice and stop the shoulding on myself.
As positive as transitions can be, even with great things you’ve looked forward to, like being done with allowing nurses to pump your entire body full of poison, they are rocky places you have not been to before and sometimes have jagged edges. It is okay to have the fear of the unknown and what’s next. I have no control over speeding up this process and it is a process that takes time, patience, and …oh yeah, that thing I don’t have: energy. It is not about how I should feel, it is how I AM feeling and allowing those feelings whatever they may be.
Fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of not being able to watch my daughter grow into adulthood. That fear is ok. It is not a bad thing, it just is. This is a fearful process so just sit with that fear for a moment. Don’t fight it because it’s not going anywhere. Just be. Process as much as you can in the moment. Take a few deep breaths. Then move the hell on. Live the life you have whatever that may be and whatever time you have left. I am alive today. Tired, but alive. Tired. Alive. With a chance to continue fighting the cancer in my body. One last chemo, then on to surgery.
Monday. March 26, 2018. This is it. This is my last day of chemo. This is my 12th round of Taxol and my 16th total round of chemo. At the end of this appointment, I will walk out of the clinic away from the chemo chairs. Away from the weekly blood draws. Away from sitting there for hours while the liquids infuse through my entire body. Away from the amazing nurses taking care of me and checking to make sure I’m doing as well as possible. Away from the weekly appointment that has been my life for months.
Grey and I went into Providence Oncology with the hopes of this being my last ever chemotherapy appointment. We go through the usual hoops for a doctor’s visit day. We go back and get set up in the chemo pod with our nurse for the day. I don’t even remember who my last nurse was, and that makes me sad. They are such an important part of the process, and I’m drawing a blank and don’t have that in my notes.. Anyway, she sets me up with my infusion line and draws blood. Then we go and wait for the next nurse to call us over to the doctor’s area. My vitals are great (BP 117/70), but my pulse is pretty high at 89 bpm. Whew – nervous about those MRI results.
HOLY COW, the chemo worked! The MRI showed that the tumor shrunk from the original size of 3.6 x 2.6 x 2.4 to an incredible 0.8 x 0.7 x 0.5. OMG, that is a huge difference! That is a major shrinkage. We are so relieved that the chemo did it’s job. It took the hair; it took the energy; and most important, it took most of the tumor. Why did we do chemo before surgery? This is why! This chance to not be probably forced into having a mastectomy. This better chance to have a lumpectomy. This chance to show that chemo kicks your ass and can sometimes kick cancer’s ass, too. Now time to go back for that final push to quell a bit more of the tumor with the last taxol infusion.
Image: Tumor size before (on right) and after (left) chemo according to contrast MRI.
Grey and I went back over the infusion area where we sat and visited with each other and just hung out through our very last chemo date. Fingers crossed the last one ever in our lives. The whole experience is such a blur of emotions and my notes are not the greatest from that day probably because of the emotional overload.
Image: My last chemo – YEAH!
What I do remember will be ingrained into my soul forever. I remember being led to the bell where one of the nurses gave me poem to read. I was barely able to make out all of the words. After reading my poem, I was invited to ring the bell. The chime that marks another patient’s successful transition from chemotherapy to whatever next steps lay ahead. A ringing for survival. A ringing that some never get to make, and I am so overwhelmingly thankful that I am one of the lucky ones. I have been waiting to ring this bell since November 14 – 19 weeks ago, 4.5 months.
After I rang the bell, the nurses sang me a beautiful song as they gave me a Purple Heart Award. A purple heart is an award giving to soldiers after being harmed in battle. Right or wrong, Providence has taken this purple heart concept to give to patients who have gone through chemotherapy. Is it war? It is in a way. Is it traumatic? You betcha! Did I fight for my country? No. I fought for my life. And, I am not done fighting the war with the cancer that is still in my body. But, I did finish a major battle, a major step in the process. I cannot emphasize how severely traumatic that process was as I sit here almost a year later writing and remembering that final day. That trama is also ingrained into my being, my soul.
That was the very last of the chemo.
NOTE: I’m still working on a way to post the video…
Sunshine in April 
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