Where’s it at?

Okay, so here we are, 2 months since my last chemo treatment and a month before my first post-chemo bloodwork.
Kind of in limbo right now.

On one hand, I think it’s important to explain to people that, while my test results were looking really, really, really good during my treatment, that is not a guarantee that I am home-free and out of the woods and that everything is groovy.
Basically what it means is I made it through chemo and I am in the group my doctor “considers most optimistically”.
But I will be having tests every 3 – 6 months for the next 7 years and we will wait for test results and see what happens from there.
I just want to mention that because a few people have said things to me that indicate that they think that since I lived through the chemo process, I am good for life, so to speak.
It’s more complicated than that.
I am gonna spend the next 7 years looking over my shoulder and waiting and wondering, and… still, I’ll take that over what’s behind door number two.

So, in a month I go for my first post-chemo bloodwork. I am trying to be really calm about all that, and really, there isn’t much that can be done about it, one way or the other.
Still, in my mind, having a clean test the first time is obviously something I am hoping for. I’d like to see that the cancer hasn’t come back since I stopped doing the chemo. But I won’t know that for another month.

In the meantime, I am trying to reconstruct my life.
My hair is doing a good job of coming back. Elaine claims that there are days that she can see it grow longer over the course of a day.
Hopefully in the next month I can get back to being bandana-free.

My stamina is getting better, I guess, but I am still surprised by how easily I can get worn out.
I recently spent a day trying to do some legitimate work and it almost killed me by the end of the day. I couldn’t believe how tired I was!
And that was after 7 hours. I used to work 12 hour shifts.
Damn…
So, that is going to take some work, getting my strength up enough that I can go back to work.

I *did* go snow shoeing yesterday and that was a blast (pictures will be up in the gallery soon.)
But that wore me out a lot too.
I don’t have as much stamina as regular people, but it’s way better than when I couldn’t walk to the store.

Little by little, things are sliding back into place.
And that’s good.