I want to be me again

I don’t know what I thought my last chemo treatment would bring but after envisioning it for months, it became some sort of benchmark I had to reach in order for things to get better. I think that somewhere in my mind I’ve been thinking “If I can get to treatment six, then everything will be ok”.

Although I feel so excited to have reached this target, I don’t think I could feel much further from my normal pre-cancer self. I’m not totally delusional, and didn’t actually believe that I’d finish the chemo and instantly be fine, but it’s such a crappy journey to be on that it’s hard not to have irrational expectations and be overly optimistic. However, the reality is that I still feel really lousy. I’m still exhausted, run down and just generally out of sorts. I still have tingly fingers, no hair and black circles under my eyes. The face that stares back at me in the mirror still definitely looks like a chemo patient.

I know I need to be patient and give my body time to recover, but I don’t want to. Instead, I’ll have to focus on the positives. The radiation oncologist spent a lot of time showing me the masses in my pre-treatment CT scan, compared with the one I had at the end. Seeing how huge the cancer was to start with and that it is essentially non-existent now, is a somewhat comforting feeling. The tiny grey area that still remains on the scan, should disappear with the radiation I will soon start.

I have made it through half my treatment (the chemo) and have half to go (the radiation), but I think the first half was probably the majority of the fight and I made it through that successfully.