Yup, it's over!

So why do I feel so depressed?
Tomorrow is my last radiation treatment, and Tuesday is my last chemo. Then it's over. Period. No internal at all...

I talked to Dr. Whalen yesterday on the phone and he made it clear that he thought the potential for damaging me far outweighed any benefit (some microscopic percent of a percent less chance of recurrance) I might get. Well folks, I have to tell you, I feel pretty damaged as it is........so I'm willing to buy that. All of my esteemed doctors agree, Whalen, Pisani, Davis & Maj all say no-go, there is nothing in the literature to show that it could do something for me, and it's not usually done in patients with my staging, SO.........that makes it pretty clear from the medical side.

I think if you would have asked me 3 weeks ago, I would have had a panic attack, and told you that I'd be forever worried about "what if" if we didn't do it. Now, after having been through almost the full 5 weeks of external and all the chemo, I feel like I have really been zapped to death and there can't possibly BE anything else living in there. I feel like it's amazing that the stuff that's supposed to be there is still there.

So, I'm ok with it. Hell, I'd say I was THRILLED with it, but I'm too tired to be thrilled. I am actually kind of wrung out, feeling miserable, depressed-for-no-reason, wanting to cry (also for no reason) exhausted. I'm fairly certain that's normal at this point, but still not any fun.

I'd also give my right arm to be staying home today, curled up on the couch waiting for the rain to start, instead of doing the cross-valley marathon to see Andy, but we must go see Andy. For you Bay Area types, it's like having to go from Fremont to San Francisco, then down to Los Gatos and back to Fremont. It's a lot of driving.

If it doesn't start raining (I hope it DOES!) it should be a great bird watching day. The geese and ducks and swans LOVE this kind of weather, logically enough, but so do the hawks and eagles, for reasons we haven't figured out yet. I guess it's just cool enough to bring out lots of prey animals without being too cold? Dunno, but the gray overcast days are when we end up counting dozens and dozens of hawks in one drive. Maybe I'll see George or Martha or one of their friends and that will lift my mood a bit. I will be going on a road I haven't been on before to cut across the valley, so there's always the potential for something interesting. Gotta look for some bright spot, right....

I'll also have lots of nice knitting time, in the car, and during the inevitable hour+ sitting at Andy's office. Ok, I'm trying, but it's not working-- I'm still miserable and depressed, so oh well! I'm allowed.

I think it's probably actually a pretty normal response to have these strange mixed feelings about the end of treatment, especially since it came so suddenly, now that we've cancelled the internal radiation. I had anticipated still having more ahead of me, and now it's all of a sudden almost over--and I haven't processed that emotionally yet. I'm glad, of course, but I think there's some sort of emotional dam about to burst in there, some sort of combination of happiness, fear, relief and other things that I can't think of the words for right now. I guess, since I first found out I had cancer, I never saw an end in sight, and I can't quite process that there is one. I sure as hell can't process the words to explain what I'm talking about properly, and that's driving me up the damned wall!!!! Hmm. I'm going to go get some stuff for dinner in the crock pot and see if I can figure out the words I'm looking for.

Hmm....didn't work too well. All I got was that while I'm really glad it's going to be over and that I can start the countdown to remission, I'm also still going to be scared. This will be the first time in 6 months when C A N C E R is not going to be the absolute center of my daily life, doing something active to treat it, fight it, whatever.I have to figure out how to go back to having a normal life again, and put aside that daily obsession with cancer.

I guess that's as good a description as any--I have to figure out how to go back to having a normal life and not spend every waking moment dealing with actively fighting cancer.

That's going to take some getting used to! It'll be good, of course, but it's also scary. I still have to spend a couple of weeks treating myself as if I'm made of spun glass, to try and get all of my poor carbonized insides back to semi-normal states, but after that, I get my life back... assuming I can figure out what that's like! Weird.........