Revealing Grace

I cannot believe that on Monday I go in for my final chemo. I can scarcely wrap my brain around the fact that slowly, slowly, I will become "me" again.  Those pieces that have been dormant will wake up. In time, my energy will return, my eyebrows will grow back, my hair will try to find its rhythm again. Slowly, the steroid puff will leave my face and the constant fear of having to endure another treatment will subside.  When I began treatment in August, I couldn't imagine making it here.  Yet, my anxieties have not subsided with the end of chemo in my sights. I worry more about a recurrence, about what it means to be past the active part of treatment. I stay up at night fretting about my next reconstruction surgery and the permanent changes in my body, my mind, my will.  In treatment everything seems temporary. Post-treatment you have to come to terms with the fact that some things are now with you forever.  What a freaking mind-game cancer treat

Do you know that feeling when a page is beginning to turn? It is that feeling of the darkness shifting, the winds beginning to whisper again, and the tides of peace returning to settle in your soul. It is a feeling that the energy of the world around you is moving and perhaps (perhaps) things are about to get better. In one week I will have finished my fifth chemo. In one month I will have finished my last chemo. I never thought I would make it through this challenge. After my first session I was convinced that I would never survive the mind mess of chemo. But here we stand in November. And I am beginning to feel hope. The journey is long from over (I will have 12 more infusions in the chemo room after chemo is done, but it will just be one targeted therapy drug, no cold cap, and none of this nasty fatigue) but the hardest parts will be done. Slowly, I will regain my strength, my resolve, my connection to my body and my mind. Life will not return to normal, but wha