An anniversary

Yesterday (call me slow but chemo brain allowed me to forget to post this yesterday) was an anniversary of sorts. It was one year since my last chemo infusion. When I was first diagnosed I was told a cancer diagnosis is a year out of your life. Well its been 18 months and I still don't feel back to normal. (To avoid discussion, normal is defined as to my previous state, not whether I was ever normal at all. That is an entirely different topic whether I was ever normal, sane or rational. My husband would be happy to have that discussion but since he's not writing this, we are not having the discussion right now.)

A year from diagnosis, I definitely did not feel normal. I had lots of fatigue issues, general overall crappy feeling, a crabby gall bladder, and my hair was too damn short. Well now, my hair is getting longer and able to be styled to my discretion as opposed to being limited by its length and it has returned more to its normal color (with a few more gray highlights that I would like but it is distinctly less gray than before). It also still has some Yertle tendencies which my husband insisted on photographing yesterday but will not be shared here. My gall bladder has been removed and now seems to be healing. But I still have fatigue issues. Not as often and not as much but I still run out of energy sometimes and am ready to collapse as a result. What I usually do is just go to bed really early.

Then someone told me recently you don't count it as a year from diagnosis or a year from the end of chemo but you count as a year from the end of all treatment. Well I finished radiation at the end of February last year - do I start counting then? Or do I count from when I had my gall bladder out in September? Whatever the date, its definitely been more than a year out of my life. Also, yesterday a friend and I were talking, she finished her radiation a year ago and I asked her if she feels normal and she said, no not completely.

This is the 'new math' version of how long a cancer diagnosis screws up your life. A year from whenever it ends and then you will feel better. Maybe it will be the anniversary of the anniversary of the anniversary of diagnosis or something. Well new math and all just doesn't make sense to me, I am still waiting to feel normal again. (And suffering so well in silence.) Anyway, happy anniversary to me.

Yesterday, I met a friend for coffee, ran some errands, made brownies, and we went to a party. It was nice to see people I haven't seen in a year. Today, we are going for a big walk and then making sure our Christmas presents are all set and organized. We just have this week before we go to California for a week. This means, we also have to take kitty to his 'vacation' home. This is a very traumatic experience for him as it means two car rides - which he hates. He will not be suffering in silence during them.