Single Digits!

This time last year I was holding my breath, I had visited my doctor because of a lump on February 23, 2018.
March 7th, 2018 was the second mammogram because of detected “abnormalities”.
March 16, 2018 I was diagnosed.

Exactly one year later on March 7th, 2019 I’m expected to finish treatments.

7 radiation treatments remain between me and the planned end of treatment. The end of treatment. It doesn’t even sound like a real thing.

So far radiation has been fairly uneventful, it just makes life pretty complicated. It takes about 2 hours out of the middle of every day, so I’ve had to get creative in getting regular things done like work and grocery shopping. But otherwise I’ve been feeling pretty good and I’ve been back to working out 4 times a week, only 1 workout short of where I was pre-cancer.

In the last week or so, I’ve definitely begun to feel the expected fatigue and have a lot of redness showing up on my skin. But compared to what I’ve been through so far, radiation is a cake walk. I’d love for you to continue to pray protection over the side effects, both short and long term, and for my skin to hold up just a little longer. Radiation is cumulative so now that I’ve started to see and feel the effects, they will continue to grow over the next 7 treatments. But we are almost there.

The end of treatment.

For many people, this really is the end of the journey and when they take their celebration trip to Disney! For me, I still have to deal with the tissue expanders for a few more months and will still have several surgeries remaining this year so I can’t quite say it’s “the end” yet, but reaching the end of treatment is a pretty major milestone. The hard stuff will be behind us, I’ll start feeling a lot more like myself, and life will start consisting of things besides doctors and appointments and medication schedules.

The countdown is on!

(And rest assured…planning for the Disney trip has begun!)