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Monday, July 28, 2008

Me:0, Chemo:2

So....have I mentioned how much I hate volunteering for torture chemo?

I mean HATE!....with a capital H.

My husband keeps having to listen to me enumerate the many reasons why I am not ever letting them do this to me again. I won't. I'll run off to Hawaii, or buy some kooky "natural" cure online, or surround myself with crystals and incense and chocolate....anything other than purposely letting someone poison my body and making me suffer for a week.

This past week was difficult, not just because I felt so awful, but because the seriousness of my body's reaction reminds me that I am dealing with a monster. There's a reason the treatment is so drastic.

I actually forget, sometimes, that I had cancer in me. It's not so much forgetting, as possessing a combination of denial, faith, and optimism.....although the line between faith and denial can be hard to discern.

In my mind, I don't really believe that I am going to have to deal with cancer again. I've tried to "get through" everything that has been thrown at me, looking forward to sometime in September when I will be "done" with treatment/cancer. Of course, I won't be done. I'll be monitored and tested and watched closely for at least a couple of years. I'll have to always be vigilant.

It brings up memories of a woman I knew many years ago who had to go through treatment three different times, for three different cancers--a mother of three children. I brought her meals and visited her, but I know that I probably had no concept of what she was dealing with, emotionally. She recovered and is hopefully doing well, having moved away some time ago. Still, I wonder how useful I was to a woman who has battled such a monster.

Anyway, the realization that I may never be "done" with cancer, in the way that I want to be, washed over me during the worst of my days this week.

It is frustrating to feel powerless; to know there is only so much control that I have over my body, what it does, how it responds to treatment and the permanent effects of the treatments I have had, surgical or otherwise.

It sucks.

I could use many four-letter words to elaborate, but I don't want to offend all of you gentle readers, who are probably as sick of hearing about chemo as I am of experiencing it

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