June 9, 2005
I just walked into my home with a certificate of completion in hand. For the second time this year, I have graduated again from a ‘school’ I never chose to attend. Today was my last radiation treatment.
All of the staff at the cancer center was so supportive and caring. I have found it to be a bittersweet parting when I have completed each stage of my treatment. A part of you is so grateful to move on but another part of you lingers with the familiar; Faces you become accustomed to, personalities that appeal to you, the caring focus that is directed upon your condition, the place you fit in even though you would rather not be there.
When I pulled into my special parking place for the last time, which is personalized by ‘cancer parking only’ on the curb, I thought of how comfortably accustomed I have become with this world. Likewise, how ordinary the act of walking through the double doors with the yellow radiation warning sign on my way to treatment became. My initial feelings of repulsion and rejection of my cancer and subsequent treatments last year has been replaced by a peaceful acceptance of it. Not that I am overjoyed about experiencing it but I have learned to embrace the lessons and blessings of it.
I was told radiation treatment would be a walk in the park after chemotherapy. Having completed radiation treatment, I would not say that unless you are referring to a walk in a scary, dark park. Radiation treatment is not easy. It is an event to deal with not every three weeks like chemo but daily. Your treatment zones are marked with colorful markers and reapplied whenever needed. It is unnatural to submit to lying on a table and being ‘zapped’ with radiation. Soon your skin begins to show the signs of the treatment with redness, intense itching and burning. Wearing clothing on your treated areas becomes an added burden. The altered condition of your treated areas will take several months to return to a normal state. Fatigue is touted as the number one radiation side effect and it affects not only your physical being but your emotional being as well.
This journey has been long but doable. I am not a good traveler and would never choose to travel alone. I especially appreciate the company and support of my devoted family, friends, and my Lord on this particular journey.
Next week I begin another phase of this journey. My lymphedema therapy begins at 8:30 a.m. every morning and will continue for the next few weeks. I am actually looking forward to proceeding ahead with therapy so that I can learn how to take care of my arm. I have accepted this permanent side effect of my treatments and though I may have difficult moments of adjustment, I know that I can do this too.
Special note:
Our local television newswoman, Mary Ellen died this morning. I felt a special kinship to her because she battled breast cancer a few years ago and a re-occurrence this past year. She was only forty-five years old.
Why breast cancer takes some of us and leaves others to survive is incomprehensible. It is challenging not to wonder if re-occurrence will be part of my future too. But I can only live today. And because He lives, I can face tomorrow.
2 Corinthians 4:18 While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal: but the things which are not seen are eternal.
