Out From Under

Beloved and I just celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. We were married in 2004, whilst I was in the middle of my first treatment for breast cancer. I was bald, just out of surgery, sick from chemotherapy, but we were determined that cancer wasn't going to stop us from starting our lives together as husband and wife. And with lots of loving help from my mother-in-law, we pulled off what I think was a pretty perfect wedding, given the circumstances.

Fast forward to this past weekend, our anniversary and here I am bald and sick again.  The little crop of hair that had somehow miraculously sprouted over the first part of the year, giving me hope that at least I was going to be spared the hairless indignity for a bit decided to fall out in tufts. So once again I sat in the little green chair in our garage, whilst Beloved shaved my head with the clippers that we keep for what now seems like a regular occasion.

Happy Anniversary to us.

This week I finally finished my emergency course of radiation. It's been a very long haul and has taken a lot out of me. Think transformation into a very old woman very quickly.  I've seen some small improvements in my hand, but wont know really whether it will continue to improve or not. Only time will tell. Or whether the radiation has indeed stopped the progression in the nerves to stave off any more damage. Nor whether the next new chemotherapy will work, or for how long, or for what gain. We just don't know. Nobody knows.

The thing is every time I think about my cancer, I feel like I need to make some profound statement to keep raising hell about the state of metastatic cancer, it's research, it's treatment, it's lack of support resources, and for all the crap those of us living with it constantly deal with. But I'm really just getting to the point, where there's no bigger statement that I can make other than this is just my damn life and I'm deeply unhappy about it.

This cancer just directs every part of my life. It keeps me a slave to medications and their schedule. It keeps me a slave to the side effects of the medications. It keeps me a slave to the energy I have on any given day. It keeps me a slave to how I look and feel. It keeps me a slave in a body that I no longer recognize, a hand that no longer works. It keeps Beloved and I slaves to the next bit of news from the next batch of tests and scans. It keeps us slaves to the constant threat of the unknown, which as we keep learning, can change our lives profoundly in an instant.

And it keeps me a slave to the thought that we are just never going to dig ourselves out from under this.

And that's about all I have to say right now.