small milestones

You're darn right today is the one year anniversary of finishing up intensive treatment! That means that for the last year my body has mostly been allowed to heal! Let's celebrate!
9/14/08:
9/14/09:The hair is the most obvious difference, but I've also put on about 10-12 lbs of muscle since taking that first picture... and I don't have fatally low levels of platelets! So that's an improvement.

Today is good. Today I turned in my first grad school assignments, I lifted weights, I rode up the big hill by school twice, and now I'm at home and I'm going to read about French and German war strategy and start on my law paper. For fun I might read about sales tax in Oregon. I say NO to atrophed muscles, NO to baldness, NO to chemo brain, and NO to non clotting blood!

And the best, best, best thing about today? That's right: SEASON PREMIERE OF GOSSIP GIRL!!! Don't judge, just love.

A new hero

Forget Wolverine and Lance (who's a neo-con, anyway)

This is my new hero:
Maarten van der Weijden (he even has a cool name). He just won a gold medal for distance swimming and he had ALL seven years ago AND a bone marrow transplant. Thanks, Duane for the link!

New life plan: learn Dutch, move to the Netherlands (where they have good health care and attractive people), marry Maarten and be happy forever. Swimmers are hot.

The last day of steroids, cont

I felt like the most bad ass cancer patient in the world this morning. After going back to sleep post-post 1, I woke up and packed my Ortlieb bag with everything I would need for yoga, work, and chemo. This required a high degree of organization. Then I BIKED to yoga (ok it was a flat mile) but it felt so amazing. I haven't been outside on my bike in almost 10 months and I LOVE riding my bike. I mean, I really love riding my bike and for some reason I just got kind of scared off after the cancer and my legs started failing me. But this morning I did it!

Class was great. I felt good energy to just push hard and got a great sweat in. Afterwards I talked to my really rad teacher a lot about cancer and she told me that I was inspiring. Compliments, compliments, compliments. Then I rode my bike to work and worked, worked, worked. Then I kind of crashed. I stopped feeling like Lance Armstrong/Wolverine and started feeling like the world was crashing down around my shoulders. Shit. You know what Lance Armstrong and Wolverine will never have to deal with? Getting their period. Yes, it's here again. Hallelujah, but steroids and hormones together? Jesus, if it weren't for all my freakin meditating I probably would have had a complete melt down already. As it were, I'm just giving myself a break here, drinking some coffee and I called my mom and she's going to drive me to chemo as opposed to my original plan which involved biking to chemo... Some day!

Some days I just feel so good. I talk about this with my therapist and we talk about it a lot in yoga--not expecting things to be the same every day. Not letting yourself think something is going to be hard or bad just because it once was. I talk a lot about being ready for anything to happen, but when I say that I mean I wake a lot of mornings expecting to feel wonderful despite all the shitty things going on inside my body. So while my uterus does jumping jacks and my colon takes its sweet, sweet time moving anything out of my body, today is my last day of Decadron and JENNY AND RICHARD ARE COMING TO VISIT. Maybe I'll put off my weekend of despair for a bit to eat lots of unhealthy veggie food with them.

Tonight I get pho!

Peace

I took two Xanex, slept for 10 hours, and am no longer on the war path. But sanctimonious fucks who shave their heads for little kids to get attention from their friends still suck balls. Run a fucking marathon like everyone else, tough guy!

I think Wolverine would probably give them a slashing.