Oh yeah....Wait....One more thing...

I finished my radiation therapy yesterday, July 12th.

You wanna talk about happy? That be me.

It's so funny.

My radiation oncologist is an East Indian (Dr. Patel). He is "old school" from the home land and he could not grasp why I was crying when he said, "You're all done!" He seriously thought there was something WRONG with me, like I was in pain or having an emotional breakdown. It's not JUST him but other men as well...I don't know HOW in the HELL y'all have managed to rule the world for so many thousands of years when you can't even comprehend that a woman can cry when she's HAPPY! Grr! I think the funniest instance is my own Father. LOL--tears well up in my eyes and he's GONE. hee hee. Good way to get rid of him when I needed to growing up.

Anyhow...My life has been PAUSED for 16 months now. That's a long time. I can't wait until I get declared OFFICIALLY in remission. Living with cancer is not something that I ever thought I would have to endure. And in some ways, I feel like I have been limited and am going to be limited for the rest of my life, however long it may be. Anyone who knows me KNOWS I don't want to live to be OLD. Just give me the average life span, you know? That will make me happy and content.

I've had a lot of support and prayers over the last year and 4 months...Yet I can't shake the feeling that maybe only one or 2 people know truly how I feel. Y'all know who you are. I just don't think you can grasp it...When I think back, it's almost surreal,Dr. Duncan sitting by the side of my hospital bed as I struggled to breathe telling me that if I had waited another month, I would have been dead because of the plural effusion in my left lung. When someone tells you that if you had been any more hesitant or ignorant you could be a CORPSE, it's kind of shocking. But shocking in a way that you feel like there's nothing you can do because you are so weak as it is and you feel so miserable and the poison coursing through your veins is making you feel so wretched that you wonder if you'd have been better off dead anyhow? That time seems so long ago. So far away. I look at the bald pictures. I look at the paler of my skin. The darkness beneath my eyes. I didn't even look like me. I didn't even feel like me. Some days I still don't. I feel like cancer's puppet. I am angry and I scared. I am angry that this happened to me and I KNOW I didn't deserve it and I am scared because I think if this happens to me again, I am going to bypass the poisons and radiation and just let nature take it's course. Everyone says, "NO! You can't do that! You need to be HERE!" *SIGH* If you only knew. If you only knew what it was like for me, you might reconsider it also. This is not my beautiful life,..

and I hate to sound negative. I really do. What I want is to be the person I used to be before I got the life sucked out of me by this unprejudiced disease. To have the energy. To have to vim and vigor so to speak. To have faith that bad things are only temporary. Not to have to worry if my genes are gonna turn on me again at any given time. Someone once told me I worry too much. Sometimes I think people worry TOO LITTLE. I have tried my whole entire life to live in today and live in the moment, but somehow my mind is always churning to the future. I guess it's my need for security in many ways that drives me to this. Security, stability and freedom. The 3 things I worry incessantly about. What I wouldn't give to wake up one morning and say to myself, "Self...Today's the day you quit worrying about everything and learn to LOVE the moment." Oh geez what I wouldn't give for that. Must be the reason I am medicated.....

Well, that's my feelings right now on this whole cancer thing. I will probably have more concerns after I go back to the Dr on 8/2. But until then, I will try to find myself a happy place.

FIND A HAPPY PLACE,
FIND A HAPPY PLACE,
FIND A HAPPY PLACE, DAMMIT!

(Oh well..it worked for the starfish in "Finding Nemo"!)