It's Friday

And today is the longest I've gone without doing chemo in four months.  It's all up from here, methinks.

Think About Pink: The Code Words of Breast Cancer Awareness

a great article from the NYTimes, which I think echoes the feelings of many Breast Cancer People, myself included.  At least breast cancer gives you new things about which to feel righteously indignant.

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Think About Pink:  The Code Words of Breast Cancer Awareness

A friend of mine’s 12-year-old daughter has taken to wearing a bracelet, one of those rubber, Lance Armstrong-style affairs, that says on it, “I ❤ Boobies.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said, vaguely, when questioned about it. “It’s for breast cancer.”

Really?

It’s hard to remember that, not so long ago, the phrase “breast cancer” was not something women spoke aloud, even among themselves. It wasn’t until the early 1970s, with the high-profile diagnoses of the former child star Shirley Temple Black, the first lady Betty Ford and Happy Rockefeller that the disease went public. A short time later, Betty Rollin, an NBC-TV correspondent, published the groundbreaking memoir “First You Cry.” Back then, her grief over losing her breast and the blow cancer dealt to her sex life was greeted with hostility by some critics and dismissed as frivolous. Mammography was just coming into use to detect early-stage tumors. The American Cancer Society was still resisting the idea of support groups for post-mastectomy patients. A woman like Rollin, some said, was supposed to be grateful that she qualified for a radical mastectomy, stuff a sock in her bra and get on with it.

Read the rest at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/magazine/14FOB-wwln-t.html?_r=3&ref=health

Who Never Has to Do Chemo Again? THIS KID.

CHEMO IS OVER!  I had chemical warfare agents infused into my veins for four months and lived to tell the tale.  What is that, you say?  You're made from mustard gas?  You're suspended in detergent and you'd like to be injected into my veins?  Whatever.  Been there, done that.  Old news.

The cool kids are now focused on growing hair.  Oh, and swapping these temporary chestrocks for something a little more comfortable.

GO HAIR GO!

T-1 HOUR

UNTIL MY LAST CHEMO EVER.

I should probably get out of bed and put on some pants.

I Don't Need Witty Subject Headers

BECAUSE MY LAST CHEMO IS TOMORROW!

I just moved into my very own apartment and it is truly fantastamarastic.  Since I never knew what would be cause for a "situation" in my old apartment (a dish in the sink? having friends over? not taking out the trash ten days after a mastectomy?  not taking the cat to the groomer often enough during chemo?), it was actually more stressful dealing with my roommates than coping with cancer, a bilateral mastectomy, and chemo all put together.

I'm looking forward to coming home after my VERY LAST chemo and for the first time being able to relax and focus on feeling better instead of walking on eggshells and hiding in my bedroom trying not to set off an explosion that I'm too drained to effectively deal with.  PRO TIP (now tinged with bonus bitterness!):  If you ever know someone who gets cancer, try to remember that while it may inconvenience your life somewhat, it is inconveniencing the Cancer Person to a degree you cannot comprehend.  Though you didn't sign up to be a Cancer Friend, they did not sign up to be a Cancer Person.  It's unfair to everybody, but try to maintain a certain degree of human decency.  Otherwise you'll have to accept that you're a different kind of person than you may have liked to think you were, and accept the friendless, lonely, small life that's part of the package.

I don't have a couch in my new place yet, so in the meantime I am going to construct a box fort to end all box forts in my living room, complete with pillows inside so I can invite people in and lounge in it.  I'm imagining something like this, except inside a number of cardboard boxes:

In just over 24 hours, I'll be finishing my last infusion of toxic chemicals ever.  Don't put the party hats on quite yet, but hold them at the ready.