Hey there, it’s been a minute. My last post was from the end of August, while I was still in chemotherapy. Since then, I’ve finished that with very little difficulty, undergone my whole course of radiation, and am now receiving infusions until June while also taking medication for the next five or ten years. Tomorrow, I’m even getting my first “haircut,” which is really just some cleanup over my ears and on the back of my neck, but considering I was still almost bald at Halloween, I’d say it’s going well.

I gained almost ten pounds on chemotherapy, a combination of drinking pop to settle my stomach and eating whatever foods I could tolerate. I lost a huge portion of my fitness, even though I did more barre, yoga, and rowing than I expected to be able to. I can barely maintain a plank for even thirty seconds, I can’t do a single push-up, and even light rowing gets me winded, but I can rebuild from here. I’m glad to be here; I know I’m lucky. I’m glad my work clothes still fit, having spent the better part of the last nine months in my comfies. I’ve taken more naps than I thought a mom of two possibly could, made possible in large part by Minecraft and Roblox and YouTube. (And since I can no longer sleep more than a couple hours at a stretch, that will continue.)

Just this week I’ve noticed that the last discolorations from radiation have almost completely washed away–with the exception of my three tiny tattooed dots to help align the machine in exactly the same way each of my twenty visits. I can finally hug my girls tight without (much) flinching, as most of the tenderness is gone. And although I still have an obvious-to-me lump in my armpit where fluid has not dissipated yet, for all intents and purposes, I’m physically back to “normal”–or what passes for normal for me.

In some ways, this next part will be the hardest. When I was obviously in treatment, sick, wiped out, it was easier to give myself a little grace, to let go of some of what I “should” do or be, and to just focus on the next small step–the next day, the next round, the next week’s childcare arrangements, the next remote-school assignments to argue about with the girls. Now, it’s like my excuses are gone. 2021 is here, and cancer is so 2020. Time to set it aside and put myself back together.

And yet.

I still have these appointments, the infusions, the daily medication reminding me that although I’ve cut it out of me, killed my own healthy cells to eliminate the bad ones, medicated and irradiated it, it was not without lasting effects to my health, to my well-being, and to my identity.

Both Molly and Stella have asked me, at different times, “Is it gone?” “Are you better now?” “Did you beat it?” I believe so, but then I guess I was never really worried about that. I was lucky: it was caught early, and I was only as sick as the “cures” made me. I made it through every treatment there was to throw at it, and the chance of reoccurrence is minute. What I hated, and still hate, is the feeling that I can’t keep up, that I’m taking it too easy, that I’m not doing my job well enough or showing up the way I should for people who have given me more than my share of understanding for all of my shortfalls when I was sick.

So at the end of the day, what I need to recover from has nothing to do with cancer and everything to do with how mean I have been to myself all along, never giving myself the break I would easily give to another, always thinking the worst of myself when there a thousand things more kind that I could think. So yes, I’ll lose those ten pounds, I’ll regain my fitness and my energy, and my ability to slam through obstacles even when I’m not sleeping, even when there is “too much to do.” But what I am learning to leave behind are my old thoughts and limitations, my tendency to believe every criticism and discount every compliment.

Yeah, cancer is so 2020. But so are self-doubt, limitations, “shoulds,” and thoughts that don’t serve me in creating the life I want for myself and for my girls. In 2021, I recover. And then…well, I can’t wait to see what I build from there.

January 5, 2021