I'm Thankful For...

Wishing you all a happy Thanksgiving.

I joyfully spent the day cooking a big turkey dinner, eating pie, and talking and laughing with family and a friend.  All in all my idea of the perfect Thanksgiving.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I had just finished chemo a few weeks before and was getting ready to start radiation therapy just after the holiday.  I was bald and bewigged, but still surrounded by family and friends--one of the many things I was thankful for that year, too--but sick and tired of dealing with cancer and everything that entails.

This year, thankful for the clear scans I've had since then, the hair that has grown back and the cancer that hasn't, and absolutely thankful for being done with surgery, chemo, and rads, and, of course, still being alive.

I've definitely had some annoyances thanks to cancer, I won't lie, and sometimes they really tick me off.  I have lymphedema and wear a sleeve and glove every day, I have pain in my back and hip that are apparently not cancer and may be unrelated to the treatments but the timing makes me wonder, and I have some "chemo fog" that worries me a lot.

But I also believe that with locally advanced and fast growing cancer, the discovery and treatment absolutely saved my life.  I've read that the median survival time for untreated breast cancer (discovered by lumps not mammography, the date is, understandably, quite old since very, very few people choose not to treat cancer, fortunately, now that we have good treatments) is 2.7 years (if you're checking out the link, scroll down a bit for the 2.7 part).  If I were right at the median I'd have one year left by now, assuming I didn't end up below average, which may be a more reasonable assumption given the fast-growing grade 3 nature of the cancer.  I guess that will make next Thanksgiving my own celebration of the 2.7 mark, which will be very sweet, indeed.  A little ghoulish, maybe, but it works for me.

I try to focus on the good, not the troubles, because it makes me happier to do that.  And the very best of the good is that I'm alive.  Alive to see my family, alive to cook and talk and laugh, alive to avoid "Black Friday" shopping, alive to eat too much pie and wonder if breakfast of sweet potatoes is a good idea.  Just plain alive.

Wishing you all so lovely things to be thankful for this year, too (or at least enough lovely things to overshadow the ones that tick you off!).