The past few weeks have been oddly normal. Work, socializing, groceries, bedtime routines.
A girls weekend filled with laughter, ridiculousness and poking about. Memorial Day weekend with our sixth wedding anniversary, our former Au pair's wedding and a friend's 40th birthday. Brunches, wine-filled afternoons, trips to the pool. My Mom's 70th birthday dinner. More socializing than we have done in months.
I feel pretty good for a girl with cancer. If you didn't know, you wouldn't know.
I have enough energy to get through the day. My eyesight is coming back. I can see the clock (as well as any forty year old without glasses) in the morning. My wedding ring fits. My ability to focus is growing. I can think beyond just trying to get through the day and to the point when I get to lay down.
Chemo already seems so long ago. The Tuesday routine is purged. I don't have an "Oh, wait" moment on Tuesday mornings. This is the shock of my post chemo world. That I could slog, fight, crawl and scrape my way through a literally inconceivably difficult life event and not shudder every Tuesday morning for the rest of my life.
This is not to say everything is restored. I still have a tendency to retreat to the Jelly Lounge in the evenings after the kids' bedtimes. I still have a fair amount of angst about some silly things and some serious things.
And my anxiety grows. I mean at least with chemo the hair is a fairly easy thing to discuss with others. I'm a little less inclined to chat about how swell I'm feeling about surgery. I long for a little anonymity. An old fashioned trip out of the country only to return when everything had healed and resolved sounds like a dignified approach.
Instead, I'll slog through this week's small indignities before next week's larger indignity. Final pre-op appointments and testing. The fateful and dreaded MRI. A technician's post-MRI expressions to interpret. The various statistical implications. A full work week. Two kids. One husband. And me pretending to enjoy summer.
