We Did It

Treatment Progress Check: All done, baby! I’m over the remaining side effects except that my feet are still oddly tender, so I wear my comfiest slippers everywhere. Then my sister-in-law showed me where to get even comfier shoes and I ordered them almost immediately.

This is the official end of the Treatment Progress Check.

Well, you read it already; treatments are done! Did I ring another bell? Reader, I did. Well, it was actually a bell app on my phone, and I shook my phone. And the bell was quiet because we were having supper in a restaurant, partly to celebrate me and partly to celebrate my daughter’s 8th birthday, which coincided with the last day of my pills!

The worst and most annoying of the treatment’s side effects are behind me, and I’ve been feeling really well for the past couple of days. (Some tummy troubles aside, but that probably has more to do with the quantities of Christmas gathering food I’ve been consuming than any pill stuff.)

One of the things I will not miss — and it doesn’t look like I’ve ever mentioned this on the blog? — is that while on treatments I’m supposed to flush every toilet twice. This was during my five cycles as well as during radiation / chemo in the summertime. The reason is that, while taking chemotherapy drugs, my bodily fluids become cytotoxic, meaning they can cause damage to human cells. Flushing twice is one way that I was meant to keep my toxicity away from others. In practice, it involved a lot of me standing there, impatiently waiting while the tank refilled so I could wash my hands and get on with my day.

One of the things I worry about, going forward, is that I will lose what I have learned about slowing down and caring for myself. I’ve written a lot about the impulse to Do All the Things when I’m feeling well, and the way I’ll push myself when it isn’t really necessary. Now that I’m feeling pretty well all the time, am I going to remember to take care of myself too? I’m not sure. It’s early days in my ‘break’ period, and eventually I might be forced to slow down a lot if surgery goes ahead like they’ve indicated. I’ll most likely let y’all know how it goes.

I’ve now got dates near the end of January for a sigmoidoscopy (like a colonoscopy, but not as ‘far in’ ) and an MRI. Then we get to await the results and talk about what comes next. In the mean time, I’ve got another period of just…carrying on with my life.

Oh! It might be early days to talk about this but I’ve been contacted by the CancerCare Manitoba Foundation to chat and become a featured story as part of a fundraising effort in the coming year. More info as I get it.