Chemo Day

Chemotherapy starts today, around 1 1/2 hours to be exact. I have a little secret to share with you. I'm scared. Chemotherapy stories are the ones you hear about as non-cancer patients. This is the treatment people associate cancer with. This is the therapy that will make me not only feel like a cancer patient on the inside, but look like a cancer patient on the outside. This is the thing that will no longer allow me to hide in the crowd as if I'm just one of you, because you will be able to see that I have cancer. Chemotherapy F'in sucks, and I don't want to do it, but I have to.

The more rationale side of me knows that this is an incredibly important process to my survival statistics. Chemotherapy will decrease the chance of the cancer from my left breast metastasising (spreading) to other areas of my body not already removed - like my lungs, bones, blood, liver. Chemotherapy is good. Chemotherapy will help me live a full life with the man I love and who has tenderly cared for me throughout this process, the family who has raised me and taught me how to be a fighter, the friends I adore and have shown me how to still have fun and laugh, the dogs I cherish and continue to give me their unconditional love and I know will be the only ones not judging me when I walk around bald. I have to do this, I want to do this, I'm just really really scared of doing this.

Jon will be with me today, sitting with me while I patiently watch the drugs drip into my IV. I've got my new favorite cozy blanket to keep me warm (thanks L&A), all my digital gadgets, my latest knitting experiment looking like it wants to be finished, and a new book in case I just want to escape into somebody's life that's not mine (which actually sounds quite lovely right now).

I'm finishing up my cream of wheat cereal (bland but high in iron, as recommended), my delicious vice of a hot cup of coffee, and am ready to pop 2 steroids and a colace for one of the many unfortunate steroid side effects.

I will continue to be fierce, I promise. But today I'm giving myself a pass to be a little bit scared.