To Celebrate or Not To Celebrate? ALWAYS CELEBRATE!!!
Today is my last chemo.
I'm running behind as usual, but I had to stop and process this a little bit. All these swirling emotions, alternating between dancing around my apartment giddily and bursting into tears because it's almost over... it's too much. It's so MUCH. And I don't know how to feel.
I talked to my nurse navigator early this morning (bless her for starting her work day at 6 a.m.), and she said this was completely normal. Post-treatment depression is not uncommon, and something I'm glad she prepared me for because I was starting to feel like there was something wrong with me. Why should I be feeling anything other than ecstatic?
Because anxiety, lol. Scanxiety, to be exact. At my appointment last week, my oncologist told me we'd be doing the progress PET scan "sometime later this summer". Dude, for real? You're gonna do me like that? You're going to make Anxiety Girl (*unfurls cape*) finish active treatment but not let her know if she's NED or not?
I thought you loved me, man.
Rational Kimberly knows he does. But it doesn't help when it comes to needing to know if the past 17.5 solid months of active treatment did its thing. Hopeful Kimberly feels like it did, but We Removed The Tumor But There Was Still Cancer In 3 of the & Lymph Nodes We Removed So You Need More Chemo Kimberly is skeptical. Last year's chemo, while successful (I mean, shrinking my tumor from 4.7 cm to 0.8 cm?! That's amazeballs!), was not a complete response kind of thing. And that was really difficult news to take, because I was so hoping to have clear margins after surgery.
And then there were the liver and brain scares from this spring. We know my brain is fairly okay because of the CT scan, but my liver remains a mystery shrouded in liquid-filled cysts (a good sign, from what I've been told). It feels like I shouldn't be celebrating anything until I know I can, you know?
I could go on and on about how cancer is a dickhead and likes to sneak up on you when you think everything is okay, but we know this. And I don't want to put more of my fears and anxieties out to the universe. I need it to listen to what I'm about to say:
I AM A CANCER SURVIVOR.
I repeat: I SURVIVED BREAST CANCER.
No matter what my results tell me later this summer, I FUCKING DID THIS. I BEAT BREAST CANCER AND I AM A SURVIVOR, SO I AM GOING TO CELEBRATE!!!
I have to keep saying and typing it out and putting it on post its and everything else because I need to quiet the voices of anxiety and doubt, those sneaky whispers about glowing PET scans and hidden bone mets. I need to believe that all my hard work was not in vain, that the treatments I've received and fought through have done their work, and that I fucking did this! Stage 3 breast cancer tried to take me, but it couldn't. I didn't let it. And I'm not about to let my Generalized Anxiety Disorder tell me otherwise.
But because I love to compartmentalize everything (Virgos, amirite?), the way I'm going to reconcile today's flip flopping emotions and thoughts is like this: I am celebrating the end of active treatment. I am celebrating the end of this part of my journey, because even if I'm no longer getting infusions after today, my journey is far from over. There's still the oral chemo/hormone blocker, reconstruction, therapy... there is so much left to do, to process. But THIS part? This part is over around noon today.
And so I WILL celebrate and be giddy and smiley and everything else that makes people call me Sunshine (when they should know better, lol). But I will also be a weepy mess because I've been holding so much in this entire time. I've just been keeping my eye on the prize, focused on nothing but getting through treatment, so I haven't really felt my way through the enormity of this journey until recently.
When the time comes to get my scan and see those results, I will celebrate then as well. Because even if I still hear those mean What If whispers, I truly believe I'm okay. My ridiculous nail growth alone is convincing me that everything is okay and my scan will be clear (another day, I'll tell you all about the signs my body was showing me before my diagnosis so you know why I think this). I am anticipating a call from my oncologist in the next couple months, sometime after 6pm because that's when he likes to make phone calls so he's not rushed, with the news that everything is clear and he'll see me in 6 weeks. I can almost hear his voice and feel my cheeks hurting because I'll be smiling so big.
But all of that is in the future... nothing I can control at this time, no matter how much I want to. Same with the other possible news. I can't control that. And I won't even entertain that possibility at this time.
Right now, I choose to focus on what IS, on what is NOW. I have unapologetically celebrated each and every milestone of this journey, and I'm not about to stop now.
I really did this.
I am a cancer survivor.
I'm running behind as usual, but I had to stop and process this a little bit. All these swirling emotions, alternating between dancing around my apartment giddily and bursting into tears because it's almost over... it's too much. It's so MUCH. And I don't know how to feel.
I talked to my nurse navigator early this morning (bless her for starting her work day at 6 a.m.), and she said this was completely normal. Post-treatment depression is not uncommon, and something I'm glad she prepared me for because I was starting to feel like there was something wrong with me. Why should I be feeling anything other than ecstatic?
Because anxiety, lol. Scanxiety, to be exact. At my appointment last week, my oncologist told me we'd be doing the progress PET scan "sometime later this summer". Dude, for real? You're gonna do me like that? You're going to make Anxiety Girl (*unfurls cape*) finish active treatment but not let her know if she's NED or not?
I thought you loved me, man.
Rational Kimberly knows he does. But it doesn't help when it comes to needing to know if the past 17.5 solid months of active treatment did its thing. Hopeful Kimberly feels like it did, but We Removed The Tumor But There Was Still Cancer In 3 of the & Lymph Nodes We Removed So You Need More Chemo Kimberly is skeptical. Last year's chemo, while successful (I mean, shrinking my tumor from 4.7 cm to 0.8 cm?! That's amazeballs!), was not a complete response kind of thing. And that was really difficult news to take, because I was so hoping to have clear margins after surgery.
And then there were the liver and brain scares from this spring. We know my brain is fairly okay because of the CT scan, but my liver remains a mystery shrouded in liquid-filled cysts (a good sign, from what I've been told). It feels like I shouldn't be celebrating anything until I know I can, you know?
I could go on and on about how cancer is a dickhead and likes to sneak up on you when you think everything is okay, but we know this. And I don't want to put more of my fears and anxieties out to the universe. I need it to listen to what I'm about to say:
I AM A CANCER SURVIVOR.
I repeat: I SURVIVED BREAST CANCER.
No matter what my results tell me later this summer, I FUCKING DID THIS. I BEAT BREAST CANCER AND I AM A SURVIVOR, SO I AM GOING TO CELEBRATE!!!
I have to keep saying and typing it out and putting it on post its and everything else because I need to quiet the voices of anxiety and doubt, those sneaky whispers about glowing PET scans and hidden bone mets. I need to believe that all my hard work was not in vain, that the treatments I've received and fought through have done their work, and that I fucking did this! Stage 3 breast cancer tried to take me, but it couldn't. I didn't let it. And I'm not about to let my Generalized Anxiety Disorder tell me otherwise.
But because I love to compartmentalize everything (Virgos, amirite?), the way I'm going to reconcile today's flip flopping emotions and thoughts is like this: I am celebrating the end of active treatment. I am celebrating the end of this part of my journey, because even if I'm no longer getting infusions after today, my journey is far from over. There's still the oral chemo/hormone blocker, reconstruction, therapy... there is so much left to do, to process. But THIS part? This part is over around noon today.
And so I WILL celebrate and be giddy and smiley and everything else that makes people call me Sunshine (when they should know better, lol). But I will also be a weepy mess because I've been holding so much in this entire time. I've just been keeping my eye on the prize, focused on nothing but getting through treatment, so I haven't really felt my way through the enormity of this journey until recently.
When the time comes to get my scan and see those results, I will celebrate then as well. Because even if I still hear those mean What If whispers, I truly believe I'm okay. My ridiculous nail growth alone is convincing me that everything is okay and my scan will be clear (another day, I'll tell you all about the signs my body was showing me before my diagnosis so you know why I think this). I am anticipating a call from my oncologist in the next couple months, sometime after 6pm because that's when he likes to make phone calls so he's not rushed, with the news that everything is clear and he'll see me in 6 weeks. I can almost hear his voice and feel my cheeks hurting because I'll be smiling so big.
But all of that is in the future... nothing I can control at this time, no matter how much I want to. Same with the other possible news. I can't control that. And I won't even entertain that possibility at this time.
Right now, I choose to focus on what IS, on what is NOW. I have unapologetically celebrated each and every milestone of this journey, and I'm not about to stop now.
I really did this.
I am a cancer survivor.
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