Sobbing with Joy!

A tear started rolling down my cheeks as I walked out of the hospital this afternoon, and by the time I hit the hwy I was sobbing with joy. I had a check up with my hematologist to see how I had progressed halfway through my treatments, and the news was great. After four months of chemo, the mass in my chest is almost gone.

At first I found it odd to be sobbing over the news, since I barely cried when I found out I had cancer. I mean I cried a little (or allot at specific periods) but it was more about upsetting my family, never the cancer. I always accepted the cancer like a moment I knew was coming had finally arrived.

Why does it mean so much to me to know that it’s almost gone? I think I figured it out… I didn’t know I had so much to be afraid of when I began treatments. Ignorance is bliss, and that bliss got me through about the first three months of treatments. Knowledge, experience and fear has started to wear me down over the last month.

Thank god there is nothing to compare just how horrible chemotherapy can make you feel. If I had known… I can’t even finish this sentence; I have no answer for it. I don’t know what would have happened if I had even just a taste of how four months into the future might feel. It’s that knowledge of how awful it does feel that had shaken my resolve over the past month when anticipating future treatments.

Everyone was really enthusiastic about me reaching my halfway point in treatment, but I couldn’t get into it the same way this news has affected me. To them the worst was almost done; to me the worst was still coming. Chemo doesn’t get any easier; it’s cumulative and gets worse everytime! I hate to articulate that to anyone who’s just started. I feel like I’ve told you a bully’s about to kick your ass around the next corner, rather than let you take at least the first half the surprise beating in shock.

Anyways this news has given me back something that I didn’t realize was missing until it popped back in my head tonight, “you can do this, you’re strong”. I run an inner monolog constantly, I mean constantly! (I keep myself up at night because I wont shut up.) I tell myself that I am a strong person all the time! It is a constant phrase in my mind during tough times, because… well cancer isn’t the first pile a shit I’ve dug through. And I just realized it hasn’t been in my inner monolog for the past few weeks, I was really starting to succumb mentally to the physical beating of chemo.

Well I still have to do four more months of treatments, but I start my second half with the same resolve to stay strong that I had when I began my treatments. Now that’s something to sob with joy over!