I'm in the white gown with the blue 1950's design of triangles. I hear the Trilogy's motor rev up, it is going to move into position over me. I start praying for the radiation to hit the cancer cells and squish them dead.
I am visualizing a shield over my left lung and heart and spine, to protect them from collateral damage.
I take a deep breath to give my lung cells all the oxygen possible to fight off the radiation they will get by their location. In and out.
Visualize the shield, visualize the squish of cancer cells popping. Breathe. Visualize.
Interrupting this rosary-like recitation comes my own voice clear and strong in my head saying, I am cured. I have no cancer in my body.
My mind stopped. What?
Nothing. That was it. Two sentences spoke out from somewhere deep inside.
The machine keeps humming and moving and zapping. I keep my arms and body still, but I am done. It has worked. All the surgery, chemo, radiation, prayer, visualization, and Arimidex to come... this has worked. I am cured. Tears are coming down my face. The techs come in to make sure I haven't shifted, and they politely ignore my tears. They have seen this before I am certain.
I leave the treatment room, I take off the tent-like hospital gown and put on my top and fleece. The techs wish me well and tell me, God Bless. I can't stop the tears, happy, upwelling of emotion. Into the waiting room where S is, this was only twenty minutes, my shortest appointment ever!
Oh, how funny life is. If this had been a normal length of an appointment, I would have walked out the front door and been surprised by a white limo filled with friends and champagne.
COOL!
But I was done fifteen minutes earlier than normal, and the limo was still in downtown Winter Park gathering the well-wishers. S could stall me five minutes say, but not the fifteen minutes needed for the limo to get from there to here! I had no idea, this was all a surprise. All this was unknown to me, so I was floating along, happy as a clam. Not knowing there was a blip in the carefully crafted schedule. I'm a little teary-eyed still.
I have decided to not wear my wig anymore. I have a half inch of hair back already. Looks like a seven-year-old's crew cut. It will grow back, and we all will watch and celebrate.
Back to my house we went. Moments after getting home, up drove the limo and friends. AHHHH! I got all decked out in pink. Pink cowboy hat, pink feather boas, tiara with paste diamonds, blinking flamingo necklaces. Looking at the photos, boy I was cheesy, posing and swishing my boa. And I loved it!
 |
| Yoga pose, I was HAPPY! |
That line of thinking lasted exactly ten seconds.
My second wave of thoughts washed out the first thought. Second wave said, This is SO COOL and I want to wear all the pink and Look at all these really neat women and I'll take a glass of champagne and Let me pose and This only happens once so JUST FEEL IT and Swim in the pool of happiness!
Piled into the limo, drove to nowhere and back, waved Bye-Bye at the Cancer Institute of Florida Hospital as we passed, a lit at Park Plaza Gardens where more friends were, Table 1 and Table A. Bubbles and beads and pink balloons. Delicious strawberry champagne.
Lovely lunch, hugs and smiles and love. Just plain love. Every woman there had gone out of her way, way out of her way, to give me a flower for my bouquet of kindnesses that carried me through the past nine months. NINE MONTHS, I could have made a baby!
Some of my dear ones were out of town, but I thought about you during lunch. You guys have brought me dinner, soup, DVD's, flowers, books, texted me, lunched with me, walked with me, taken me to doctors, the list goes on and on and on.
S surprised me the night before, came down from Charlotte and was at home when we got back from dinner. Can you believe it? That in itself turned my melancholy into a celebration. Then the surprise of today revved it up even more. I was walking on sunshine, to coin a phrase.
I asked a few of the women there what was their experience at the end of their cancer treatment. Similar to mine, you are all geared up to fight cancer, then it's an anti-climax. Too tired to celebrate. What do you do now?
Mike said doctors are trained to fix illness, they don't focus on wellness. They just don't do wellness well. You have to do that yourself.
M said, trust God will show you how to help others with what you have learned. Don't stress out over finding who to help or what to do. He will show you.
I gave out pink pearl bracelets to those who didn't have them yet. Remembering three thank you's -
1. Thank you for being a flower in my kindnesses bouquet
2. Thank God for loving us with an everlasting love, for healing
3. Thankful hearts for trials, as they bring out love. They make us who we are today. Remember the oyster, who makes beauty from an irritating grain of sand.
Being an only child, I have the big fear of being alone. I know one of my weaknesses is needing other people. Now I also see this as a strength, as it fuels me to gather people together around me.
I have seen through the course of this healing that I am not alone. I have learned that I really do need my dear friends and family to shower me with love. And I want to shower them with love. I really do need God, who shows himself through me and others. I have learned to ask for comfort. I have learned to receive love. I have learned that I am not alone.
I have learned that God will show me the way.
Lean into him and trust.
Goodness is right around the corner, goodness and loving-kindness.
I can't always see it, but it is there.
Words emailed last night from a dear friend L:
The absolute joy and complete "in the moment" abandon with which you embraced everyone and everything that came at you made our time together magical.
Thank you, dear friend, for allowing us to join you, through these past nine months, to surround you with the love, respect, support, sadness and happiness we felt with and for you. That we might learn, remember and understand that one should embrace challenges with a balance of knowledge, resolve, vulnerability, determination and courage.
That reaching to others and asking that they walk with you allows a depth of friendship to surface, otherwise, possibly unsaid, unexpressed.
I am not alone.
I am loved.
You are loved.
With an everlasting love.
Off I go
knowing God will shine his light on my path
and shower you and me with love,
forever and always.
