Happy Anniversary?!

Best word to describe today..... bittersweet? Today's the six month anniversary of my diagnosis. Weird. I have to admit what is even more depressing to me is that I haven't had any type of anniversary in a really long time and now that I get one it's for cancer?! Yuck. I don't know, I mean, it's a good day in that by far I've definitely got the worst behind me. I'm done with the radiation, with all the really tough chemo, even with all the planned hospital stays, the worst is definitely over. At the same time though I'm sort of like, just six months? That's all it's been? I still have a YEAR AND A HALF of treatment left. I'm only a quarter of the way through. Yea, that's right. I still have a year and a half of chemo, of weekly doctors' visits and check ups. And that's providing that everything goes according to plan. My birthday was really sort of bittersweet too because it was like, hmmm I'm turning 22. A year from now I'll turn 23 and I STILL won't be finished with my treatment. I'll still have a full six months left of chemo cycles and LPs and biopsies. And again, that's if everything's still on schedule. I know I should be thankful that there's a light at the end of the tunnel, etc. etc. but frankly, it's really far away. And I feel so crappy so much of the time now it's really hard to imagine being back to 'normal'. My doctors told me it's the first six to nine months that are the hardest so I'm really focusing on just getting through this phase of my chemo, but as I said before, it's really really tough.

This past week I've just felt like absolute crap. My chemo has really smacked me around and on top of it I've kind of got a cold so that hasn't been good. I was able to get a week off from going into DFCI which was nice, but at the same time I have a feeling I could've used the check up to get blood or something like that. It's just been really hard because I haven't had the energy for anything, and nothing is satisfying and so I can't be like, Oh I feel really bad but X will make me feel better. There hasn't been any 'X'. I've just felt awful the whole time and I can't do anything about it.

I have to admit I do feel marginally better today. I have an 8am appointment tomorrow at DF for some chemo so I'll be in bright and early and hopefully they can figure out what's been wrong. At the same time though sometimes this is just how it is... or maybe it'll get worse??? The effects of chemotherapy are cumulative (how lucky for me?!!) especially with fatigue so who knows... This is why this anniversary is so bittersweet. I'm glad to be six months through, that's for sure. But I'm scared of what I have left to do because there's a lot. And there's so much unknown too. Like what if it came back? I know I can't live my whole life worrying about the what if's, but to think about them sometimes is really scary. And after being diagnosed with something like this, I know for a fact that anything can happen especially when I least expect it; so can you really blame me for waiting for the ball to drop? Ugh. Reason #5827498596835398247597 I hate having leukemia. Happy Anniversary to me.