One Month Later. . .

I haven't been blogging much lately. I've been trying to get away from contemplating my navel and work on getting back to life instead. I need to focus on other people for a while.

There isn't much new on the cancer front. I meet with the plastic surgeon early June to see what the next steps are with him. I will likely not have surgery until October or November because my skin needs time to heal. Right now it is kind of leathery where I had the radiation.

I don't consider myself "cured" or "cancer-free" and I don't think my oncologist does either. Since I had cancer cells show up in my lymph nodes, we know that I had cancer cells floating around in my body. We tried to kill them with chemo and tried to clean up the original cancer site with radiation, but we don't know how many more are floating around. The tamoxifen I'm taking is supposed to help reduce the chance of the cancer coming back. But it doesn't eliminate the chance it is coming back.

So for now, I live in limbo. I have completed treatment, but the journey isn't over. The uncertainty is still there. It is the same uncertainty that everyone has in life, but most other people get to ignore it and pretend that it isn't there.


In an effort to begin ignoring it again, I'm trying to focus more outwardly. Last night one of our neighbors was taken away in an ambulance with oxygen. I'm making stuffed ziti to take over today. I just saw him out the window, so he is back home, but I'll take the meal over anyway. They are doing construction, so it will likely be nice for his wife to have a break from cooking.