Round 2, Baby!

Today I completed my second of eight rounds of chemo (assuming we can shrink those naughty lymph nodes in eight treatments). You know what that means? I am 1/4 of the way done! And I will probably have to come back to this post for encouragement this week when my nausea sky rockets to a blinding level or when Colin finally has to break out the razor and shave my hair off. Yep, this week. Anticipating my hair falling out paired with nausea and my husband telling me my chest lymph nodes are the size of muffins took a real hit to my normally happy self this last round. Oh, and don't forget the itching. But then day 8 hit. The nausea subsided (as did my maniacal popping of a Valium-like drug to reduce said nausea) and I was blessed with energy that felt like I was on speed. All week Colin cared for all six people in this house - meals, dishes, laundry, bottles, holding the colicky baby, homeschooling, etc.. So I had about twenty four hours on this high, during which I grocery shopped, reacquainted with my kiddos (Colin even said "mama's back! You have been gone a long time". This broke my heart because I have missed out on so much since this cancer hit me but children are amazing in that they wait patiently with open arms and pick up where we left off) and stopped to enjoy that I could feel normal, if only for a little while. That night I paid for over doing it with almost losing my dinner, but then had four days of being totally normal like I haven't been in eight months. I crawled out of my pit of despair, decided that I won't die since this has like a 99 percent cure rate and am still there.

Which brings me to today. I had mixed feelings going into chemo today - its poison. But it's a cure. But I feel like I have been hit by a truck. But it's a cure. And I will lose my hair. Soon. But it's so toxic. So we roll into the oncology clinic behind a lady who was coughing/gagging so hard that I couldn't tell if she was puking (ew) or just coughing from lung cancer. I decided to close my heart and mind as much as possible at that moment out of sheer self-preservation. Then I get settled in my chair and a meth addict (actually speaking to the nurse about methadone and how it's not as constipating as OxyContin). Then he complained about his IV and is back hurting and wanting more pain meds. I almost strangled him- as though any of us is without pain? One of my chemo drugs takes sixty minutes to drip and it burns and aches in my vein the whole time. I felt like telling him to suck up and deal, but I held back. And yes, I am starting to sound jaded. It's a roller coaster, folks.

The bright shining moment we had today was meeting again our "Tuesday chemo buddies". It is an older couple, Angie and Don, in their late seventies. I gleaned from last time that things aren't going well because her blood counts are too low to do treatments very often, so she comes in for blood cell infusions. Being the good chemo patient that I am, I didn't ask her which cancer she has. Well today she asked me what I have and looked sad when I told her (which probably means she's never heard of it) and she shared that she has colon cancer. I fear her story will not end the same as mine and the glistening tears in her husbands eyes tell me likewise.

I feel strongly that God is calling me to him through all this cancer ordeal- that my journey that once could have taken a lifetime may now be condensed into five short months - spiritually speaking. "Becoming a rock solid Christian by Spring!"- it could be a book title. I have to admit I have been reading about Job and oddly enough find solace in that story. I may not be scraping boils with shards of clay, but I certainly do feel like I am being tested by Satan many times each day. Which is just a refining process to bring me back to God. And that's alright by me.