Six Months

It dawned on me that I’m coming up on 6 months since calling the doctor about a little tiny bump, setting off this shitstorm of events that led me to now.

I wish I had a milestone moment, or at least some happy little wisecrack to share, and I wanted to - I keep wanting to - but it wouldn’t be genuine, and so what’s the point of pretending. I notice I'm getting fewer "I read your blog it's so funny!" Or even, "I read your blog!" And this is understandably due to the Eeyore-inspired posts I've been shooting off into the ether about my mom getting her head cut open and my boob getting a little teeny chunk cut out of it (both of which were successful, yay!) along with the dumpster of emotions that have been coursing through my hormone-altered body.

But the bottom line is that I'm still adjusting and it's not necessarily easier. Actually - it's harder. I take all the complaints from the first 3 months of treatment back, because these last two weeks make those early days look as easy as making Miss Savage cry in 7th grade. (I.e.=REALLY EASY). Poor lady.

Six months in, battling a cold on a Sunday, I am officially in bed, on Day 9 of my first AC dose, sick and idle and binge-watching Bloodline. And as I watch it, and as the screen goes dark between scenes, I catch my reflection. It looks like a floating baby bobble head. Six months in. Six months! And my breath still catches and I frown at myself and I'm taken aback by how alien I look. Again and again and again I do this, in mirrors and other reflective surfaces. Again and again and again.

Plus I worry, worry, worry. Will I ever calm the fuck down? Will I forget? Will this whole thing be a trauma, like the pain of childbirth, forgotten and inaccessible, so I won't really remember how brutal some days were?

I suppose you could look at how I'm handling all of this, six months in, as a regression, surely you’d think so if you listened to me in my darkest moments talking to my therapist about my despair and my hopelessness, as my back is spasming from the Neulasta shot and my stomach feels like it’s in my throat and my hormones are haywire - but that’s not the case exactly. I haven’t regressed. I’m just in the thick of it right now. The thickest thick. And it’s hard to accept that, when I've got six months behind me. For me at least. I want to be “almost done.” I want to be on the other side.

So here I go, again, ending a post with sort of a positive spin on things, praying the poison I get tomorrow doesn't lay me out like the first one did. But even if it does? Guess what motherfuckers - it's 2 down 2 to go. HALF DONE.

That's a milestone.