I'm A Survivor.

I finished my last treatment this past Monday! Ginnie came in town and Snickets came, too. Elizabeth, the nurse, made brownies. Jacqueline, the PA, brought cookies and balloons. They tied the balloons to my ET, wheely thing. And my friends threw me a surprise party the night before. It was wonderful.

I was meeting with my doctor during my fourth cycle and he warned me that the end would be the worst. He said that when you get to the last cycle you will see why we only go for 6... because your body can't handle any more. The chemo has a cumulative effect where it has all built up in your system by the end. These past three weeks have been rough physically: lots of nausea and I am so dang tired all the time! I struggle to get through a day and I have to take several breaks. But I am thankful... that I have enough energy to get out and do some things, that I'm still able to exercise (though a mile it about my limit now), and that the nausea is not constant but comes in waves.

And I am most thankful to be done! Now each week my body can begin recovering rather than getting more taken out of it. Ahhh, a real sense of relief. Just the other day I was filing away some bills I had gotten in the mail, and I pulled out this folder from the American Cancer Society that they had given me to organize all my stuff. And I realized I am a cancer survivor. That's still kind of surreal to me even after all the surgery and chemo. Though I've never run a marathon, in some ways I imagine it to be much the same way. You get to the end and practically crawl across the finish line. You are exhausted but you have endured. I feel like that.