June 7, 2017, my (hopefully) last chemo treatment ever, came and went. I completed 6 rounds of TCHP and 12 more rounds of Herceptin. I’ve been doing this every 3 weeks for 1 year. Add 3 surgeries, probably a hundred needle pokes, nearly a million dollars, and over a bagillion tears and it ends up being quite an eventful year. It must sound like a monumental understatement to say that I’m glad it is over.

I anticipated it being a day of immense relief and joy, like I would have pride in accomplishing something so hard and celebratory to not have to do it anymore. Instead, I felt tired, ready to get on with it, and very, very worried. Treatment is over. There is nothing more I can do to keep cancer from coming back. In fact, if the cancer comes back, it could be Stage 4 and terminal. Instead of feeling elated at my last treatment, I felt solemn as this realization sunk in.

Immediately, my busy mind got to work cataloging coughs and aches and blaming a metastasis. A sore spot on my spine landed me back at Radiology for a bone scan.

Negative. Likely a result of the Shape of You Videodance class at Ballet Austin. Or was it that fall on the boat? Maybe it was that heavy, new bathroom door installation.

Remember, Rach, life is getting back to normal. Sore backs are normal for someone who dangles from aerial silks, stumbles around on boat docs in various states of sobriety, and flings herself across dance floors in 7 inch platforms.

Worrying about this for the rest of my life is just simply not going to be sustainable. I never worried about being hit by a bus or murdered before cancer so why start now?

When my busy mind starts to get the better of me, I remind myself that I did it. And I’ll do it again if I have to. I’ll do it a thousand times, for myself and my parents and Cindy and Cinco, for all the people that helped me this year. I’ll worry about it when it happens, not before.

Photo by Pixabay: https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-alone-backlit-dark-278303/