All the Feels About Final Chemo

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 treatment is. Thank goodness I meet with the psychologist otherwise who knows where I would be. 

I feel I am coming to the end of chemo crawling on the floor, barely making it as you all stand along the walls cheering me on and urging me to get back to my feet. I feel the sweet dichotomy of joy to be done and complete sadness that this has happened at all. Nothing is straightforward any longer. Nothing is black and white. 

I am strong and I am weak. 

I am excited and full of fear. 

I am a survivor and yet I still endure. 

I am one week away from the end of a chapter, and yet I feel so far away from the conclusion to the book.