Number 14 down!

I am so excited to say number 14 is done and I have ONE MORE TREATMENT this next week and then I will be done with Round 1!  As usual, I didn't feel well afterwards, but the knoweldge that I only have to do this one more time is giving me strength.  We met with the oncologist again this past week to get a check up (all good) get a flu shot (arm still hurts thanks to the ease with which I now bruise) and to discuss the next round.  I will have a two week break, over which I was given the ok to enjoy a drink on my weekend away with Jay in Lake Geneva (so excited!) Seriously, I am so excited for a glass of champagne that it made my day.  I think it is just because it is something that I used to regularily enjoy and it gives me a feeling of being normal again, if even it is only for one evening.  Put my wig on, get dressed up, go to dinner with my husband, order a drink and maybe no one in the dining room will be none the wiser as to what is really going on in my life.  I will just look like a normal 30 something out to dinner.  Wouldn't that be nice. 

Round 2 is going to be so much easier than this first round, or so I have been told.  No daily injections, no daily medications.  I will go on Thursdays to get a new chemo drug whose side effects are much milder, and most don't expereince any nausea, just fatigue.  I think I can handle fatigue.  This round is also shorter, 12 weeks.  So, on November 11th I start Round 2.

I can't believe I have been through 14 weeks of chemo.  I think about how much my life has changed since April, when I first found the lump and it makes me mad, angry and sad, but mostly sad.  I am sad for many reasons, what this is doing to my kids and my husband is what hurts the most.  I hurt for James the most, who is having the most trouble with this.  It is so hard to explain this to a 5 year old, and so hard to help him get through this.  He shouldn't have to hear these things, experience his mommy being sick and deal with his routine and life being turned upside down.  I feel bad about what this is doing to Jay as well.  He is working so hard to make his business a success and the last thing he needs is this mess.  When he decided to start the business I pledged to handle home and make it easy for him to just focus on builidng a business 24/7.  I have failed that miserably.  Instead, I can see how hard it is for him to juggle his business as well as doing his best to take care of me and our kids.  I know he will never complain about it, but I know it is not what he'd like to be doing right now.   I am mad at myself for somehow not finding this sooner so I could spare my famiily some of this pain.  If it didn't get so far, I wouldn't have to go through so much treatment, and then I wouldn't have turned my family's life upside down.  It's just hard not to have any control over your life, and to know that even though there is an end in sight, and I will be ok, that this will always be a part of me.   It will never really be over as there will be my body as a daily reminder of what I have been through, scans, tests and doctor appointments for the rest of my life.  I will take all that if I could just know that things will eventually return to normal and most importantly, James and will be ok and I won't have scarred them permanently. 

I'm trying my best to keep my life normal, do the normal things, but no matter how hard I try, I can't get through a whole week of my normal life.  I fear that my life will never return to normal, and this new life will be normal.  I don't want that. 

Thanks for letting me vent- and thanks for being there for me.  Support of my family and friends is what gets me through this, especially days like this when I am feeling down.  I appreciate all the things that every one of you are doing to make this journey easier for me and my family.  I thank God for famiily and friends like you.