To a New Year

It's been over a year.

It's been over a year since diagnosis, since the fear and the confusion of last fall.

It has been a year since I shaved my head.

I am still standing. My hair is growing. I have two perky boobs thanks to the final reconstruction surgery that had to be moved up after two not so comfortable infections.

I feel more like myself, but the definition of me has changed.

Things seem good right now. I feel good. People tell me I look good, although I am totally rocking some sort of 70's mom hair with a flip in the back and some serious feathering on the side.

I have more energy and continue to do all those things I did over the past year, grocery shop, work, pick up at gymnastics. I have tried to think less about framing my life in the context of cancer and just enjoy the life going on around me but everything is just a little bit tainted because my timeline has changed.

I am trying to plan ahead without worry, without the anxiety that comes with the what if?

There have been bumps on this road. There have been scans and more scans, there have been tweaks to medication and treatments. There are side effects, minimal in the scheme of things, but enough to impact my days. There have been days that are entirely too dark that have left me at times feeling unsure and afraid.

There are also good days. Days where I play with the kids, laugh out loud, and days that seem so mundane and ordinary that I can almost forget. Almost.

So there is nothing left to do but live.

I am planning vacations for the summer. I am signing QT up for nursery school in the fall. I am believing with all my heart that this year will bring with it some changes that are a long time coming and that will enable me to live the life I've imagined with the people that I love for a very long time.

The Double Life

It's been a while.

I still have cancer.

I am still navigating what I can only describe as parallel lives.

There is me, mother, wife, full-time working woman, who is trying to find missing library books and make dentist appointments. Someone who is making plans for summer camp and beach weekends, making mental grocery lists and trying to pair missing socks. Someone who had a hard enough time trying to balance work and home before fitting in devastation.

Then there is me, breast cancer patient on week 20 of sitting in a chair, waiting, wondering, hoping. Someone who has given up on headcoverings and who barely wears a wig outside of work. Someone who makes green smoothies and keeps her talismans close at hand.

It is amazing how normal this has all become. How the weeks have moved forward and how much I have changed and how much I am very much the same.

You would think I would be sleeping less. That the worry would be so constant, so chronic that I could do nothing but sit wide-eyed in my bed at night and fret over all the what ifs and the things that I may miss. And while there are times that I am blindsided, hit so fiercely and furiously by the enormity of my diagnosis, I am also so exhausted by chemo and kids and correcting commas that there is no time left to pay it any mind.

So I live in both spaces, balancing precariously on the tightrope of each, trying to move on.

On Giving Up

I gave up cancer for Lent.

I am pretty sure I can get some sort of special dispensation, but I decided to just let it go.

I am giving up the worry.

I am giving up the insomnia, the feeling of insurmountably, the burden of it all.

I am giving up the ache in my bones, the cracked nails and skin.

I am giving up the indignity of my body breaking down.

I am giving up the itchy wig, the scarves, the head coverings.

I am giving up feeling defined by it, feeling sorry for myself, feeling sorry and sad and stuck.

I am giving up just managing to get by.

I am giving it up, out to the universe to deal with and struggle with every day instead of me.

I won't give up the treatment. I will still sit in that chair every week while the meds pump through my veins, I will still do as much as I can to battle this disease but I won't be in some sort of holding pattern until treatment stops, until this all melts away. I will give up the weight of it, the heavy load, the unimaginable fear and I will live through it. I will live my life. I am pretty sure it will be easier than giving up chocolate.