Reflections

I have been trying for the past week to come up with a way of bringing closure to this blog . I am seven days removed from my last treatment and looking very forward to a new year free of cancer. These changes are all happening as we enter the holidays, which is always the toughest time of year for me. My younger sister passed away on New Year's Eve fifteen years ago and Christmas without Christopher has a hollowness that I can't express. This year I am hopeful that another sentiment will replace the dread that has recently dominated my life in the Christmas season; that sentiment is gratitude. I am so very grateful for all of my wonderful friends that have surrounded me during this battle.
They say that one sure way to judge a man is by the company that he keeps and when I look at that collection of a couple of dozen good friends who joined me for a few drinks last Sunday to celebrate the end of chemotherapy, I am humbled to be be considered their friend. Some of my friends went the extra step to share the moment with me: Rita gave up a day of work to be my designated driver, Steve left Gloria alone to deal with the youth group and the progressive dinner at his house and Mark and Matt left Matt's 21st birthday party to join me. That is just a few stories and I am sure that there are many more. I don't know how I can possibly express the gratitude for the kindness shown to me by this group of incredible people. If my association with these people is how I am to be judged in this life, I am humbled and honored by the company that I keep. Thank you my friends, I couldn't have fought the fight without you.

It is finally over

After six months of allowing the medical community to inject poison into my body in an attempt to kill cancer cells that they didn't know existed, I am done! It is hard to be too celebratory at the moment, I feel like I have been run over by a Mack truck. Thank you all for your support and friendship through this exercise, it meant a lot to me. A special thank you goes to Rita; she was always there when I needed her and went well above and beyond the call of duty. This has been a ride, I am glad that it is done.
I am wiped out and going back to bed, more later.

The last treatment is tomorrow

Things have finally settled down after mid-afternoon on Tuesday and the last two days haven't been bad. I have been mostly sleeping and haven't had any appetite, but I haven't felt too bad, considering that I am going through chemo. I only had the one bout of vomiting and haven't had any headaches yet, so both of those are positive. I will be glad to be done with this!

Today was tough

The first day of the last round was dramatically harder than any previous day. It was just one thing after another.
I was so anxious driving in to Brown Cancer Center that I was nearly out of control, it was very uncomfortable.
Then my blood pressure was sky high (180/110) when I got there and my blood pressure never runs high. This is one of those 'chicken or the egg' things: did the high blood pressure drive my anxiety or vice versa.
They always warn you during chemo to tell them if the dacarbazine in the IV injection burns you and they call slow it down, the pH is quite acidic. That has never been an issue until this time when the IV burned (badly) for the whole hour of the infusion. All I wanted to do was get out of there, I didn't want any part of waiting longer so I endured the pain.
As luck would have it, I got dizzy again after chemo and had to wait an extra half hour before I felt well enough to drive home.
Moments after getting home I realized that they hadn't given me the new nausea medicine, which I was supposed to take an hour before chemo. After a flurry of phone calls, I head back downtown to me my Emend. The trip back home was real shaky, I want to carefully scout out the side of the road for a safe place to stop and puke.
Once I got home and with the nausea medicine in my system for less than an hour, I got to go slow dancing with the toilet again. There went to new nausea medicine down the drain without enough time to get into my system.
After I got sick, everything settled down and I felt human again, perhaps that will last.

The end nears

The last round of chemo commences in 36 hours and I am strangely conflicted about it. On one hand is the reality that shortly after noon on Friday December 11th I will be done with chemotherapy and can look forward to a life without the medical intrusion. On the other hand, I am just scared. There is a security blanket factor that undergoing chemotherapy provides, which will be stripped away at the end of this week and all that you have left to sustain you is your faith and your courage. I have lived that life before when Chris was sick, wondering whether the next scan was going to turn your world upside down again. In Chris' case, it happened twice after the first devastating blow. You have to live your life as if cancer is never returning, but that fear is never far beneath the surface.
At the end of the day, life will be better without chemo than it has been living with it. The next chapter of my life will give me a chance to recover physically, emotionally and financially from melanoma. For now, I have to overcome the fear of walking in to the Brown Cancer Center on Tuesday to get hammered for one last time and then get myself ready to drink a couple of beers on Sunday as I close the book on this chapter in my life. Bring it on.