The start of 2019 & the end of Chemo

By the time many of you are reading this, I’ll be DONE with chemo. After 16 rounds of drugs strong enough to kill you (they certainly tried), I’m finally finished with this first chunk of my cancer treatment. The past 20 weeks have both flown by, and also crawled at a snails pace. I’ve built all sorts of new routines that I get to throw away in my post-chemo world.

I’m giving myself 10 days of recovery from my final round of chemo and then I’ll be returning to work on January 14th for the first time since August. I’ll get to start a whole series of routines that aren’t new, but have had a 4 month break since they were last in use. Which coincides well with the New Year, when I often look at my daily & weekly routines and give them a refresh.

While I’m excited to return to work (seriously, I am, I like my job a lot, and the people I work with, and also, I’m pretty bored) I’m most excited for the chemo food restrictions to be lifted at some point this month. Its literally the first question I’m asking my oncologist today, “When can I eat uncooked fish?” – I didn’t quite realize that sushi and smoked fish are one of my key food groups until I couldn’t have them. I’m salivating just thinking about it.

There’s a lot of parts of chemo I’m glad to be done with. The nausea for one. And I won’t miss the sleepless night leading up to chemo every week, when I know I should be able to sleep for 8 hours, but my brain just won’t have it. And the emotional up-downs caused by the steroids, that’ll be nice to be done with. I will miss having to shave again … my shower routine is now down to a several minute routine that hasn’t been this short since summer camp (where hot water was a hot commodity, and I often didn’t get any). But it will be nice to have some hair on my head again, hopefully by Spring I’ll have enough to cover up my head zits – my head may have a nice shape, but the skin on my head does not appreciate being exposed to the elements.

The chemo had its moment. Its done its job. But now its time to say goodbye and move one. Good riddance!

Fortunately, chemo is done!

Unfortunately, its just phase one of a multiphase attack on my cancer. I’ll get a 6-week hiatus, and then it’ll be SURGERY TIME (surgery #1 is in the books for February 14th)