Done!

In the past sixteen months since being diagnosed with metastatic colorectal cancer, I’ve had chemo, chemo-radiation, surgery to remove parts of my liver and colon, and more chemo. As of 12:30pm today, I am fucking done with all of it. The home nurse pulled out the infusion needle and I signed my discharge papers. I don’t have to see my oncologist until August.

There’s still some medical stuff left, but it’s clean-up: reversing the ostomy, possibly fixing things that the post-surgical infection screwed up, things like that, but those are all voluntary, rather than “you’re going to die if you don’t.”

There are also some scary scans in my future, starting in June. I don’t remember the schedule, but it’s frequent CT scans for three years, I think, and less often for five, and after five? Not so often at all.

Right now, though, my CEA is still normal, I have no symptoms, I’m done poisoning myself and I get to start to recover. I’ve gained most of the weight I lost–having chemo every three instead of every two weeks helped a lot there–and so next I need to work on the muscle I lost, which I haven’t yet been able to do much about.

Right now I’m tired and queasy, but that will mostly fade by the weekend. By next week sometime I’ll be able to start yoga again, and will be eating normally (chemo weeks are all about the toast, even for a few days after).

I really want to call my mother and celebrate with her.

Fuck cancer, fuck the sixteen months I spent being poisoned, zapped and cut, fuck the years that it took away from my mother, fuck the uncertainty and risk I’ll be living with. Even the successes hurt.