still surreal

I don't know to whom I should attribute the quote that the days are long, but the years are short. It seems hard to believe that summer is almost over (which you can tell by the crappy weather we've had today) and that I am done with chemotherapy. I put a lot of things on hold mentally and emotionally. Part of me is starting to process that now. Yet I still have so much to look forward to. You know, I have to subject myself to the next part of the scientific experiments that will grant me superpowers. So, I had my meeting with my radiation oncologist last week and today I had a planning CAT scan - yippee, more radiation. I was poked in ways that I won't describe and tattooed with four little "jailhouse tattoos". That's where they put ink on your skin and then jab you with a needle. You can't imagine the fun, and unfortunately they refused to make any interesting designs. Just your basic dots. Then they used the CAT scan to line me up so they would have a roadmap of where my lymph nodes and stuff are for my daily radiation treatments. Next Wednesday I go in for a "dry run". They will put me in the machine and instead of radiating me with radiation I will be getting an Xray. Then the doctor will make sure things are perfectly lined up and starting Thursday (August 26th) I get daily doses of radiation. My last treatment is scheduled for October 5th. I know time will eventually move along, but at the same time it is so odd what becomes a "new normal" .

As an example, appointments are scheduled at the same time every day and some people have 60 or more treatments. Sitting in the waiting room I was able to watch quite a few these souls and their interactions. Lots of them had developed weird relationships with other patients and the medical staff. For one woman today was her last day. The receptionist was congratulating her on "graduating" and more than one person made the comment "you won't know what to do with your afternoons now that this is over". Her response was "I can think of a lot of things I'd rather be doing." She didn't want to be there and I just wanted to scream "I don't belong here either!" I don't want to be one of these people who comes in day after day chatting it up with my new "friends". I'm sure most of them are lovely people, but I have allowed myself to be sane because I've refused to admit that I'm sick. I don't know if I'm just having a little emotional roadblock brought on by the anticipation of the next phase, or if I'm just overly stressed this week. Pile on top of that the fact that I am disappointed that today was one of those days where I didn't get to see the kids at all. I was on a conference call hiding in my basement before they got up and by the time I was done, they were gone. I then had a dinner meeting that went until 10 pm and of course they were asleep before I got home. Remember the post about balancing things? Yeah, that was this week. Posting about it didn't seem to make it all better. Since it's late I'm going to sleep on it and see if that makes things better.