I'm awake. It's 6am. I've been up for well over an hour. I was hoping to find someone on FB to chat with, as I certainly can't phone anyone at this ungodly time of day. Even my dog won't get up and keep me company. I think this is the hardest part of this whole ordeal for me. Being alone with my thoughts in the dark of the night. It doesn't happen very often anymore. I've been feeling hopeful and eager to get on with my life. I've even embraced the stubbornly hanging on neuropathy as a quirky residual effect of what was, otherwise, not really that horrible of an experience with chemotherapy.
Yesterday I felt unreasonably optimistic. The autumn sun was out, the trees haven't yet shed their leaves. It's just stunning. It makes you feel immortal. I was googling things, reading statistics, looking up side effects, and thinking "all is not lost." The manic feeling started to wear off sometime during my nephew's birthday party as I watched my children patiently play with their toddler cousins and I wondered how many birthday parties stretch before me.
Right now, in the dark of the house, when I can't see out the windows and the only company is the buzz of the appliances, I feel less optimistic. I'm letting the darkness seep into my brain filling every recess with doubt and grief. It's keeping me awake. It's going to be a caffeine kind of a day for sure.
I had a reality check on Thursday morning. I went to the doctor to get the results of my post-chemo CT scan and to talk about my return to work and return to reality from this whirlwind blip on the radar of what I was fully prepared to write off as a bad chapter in an otherwise pleasant life. Turns out, I'm not over this. I'm not even remotely close to being out of the woods. I can't even see the trail for the trees. I have another tumour in my abdomen. And signs that cancer has spread throughout the lining of my abdomen. The chemotherapy didn't work. My cancer didn't respond the way the oncologist assumed that it would. I'm a carcinogenic enigma. And so, while I'm still dealing with after effects of the first rounds of chemotherapy, I'm facing the thought of further, more aggressive treatments. Of uncertainty. Of living the rest of my life with a chronic, incurable illness. And not knowing how long that might be.
Maybe I'll wake the dog up. We could go watch the sunrise and get that boost of Vitamin D that fueled me yesterday. If I can't sleep, neither should she!
