The Merits of the Case

This was my last week of classes this semester. Up next...finals.

On one hand this semester feels like it has been the fastest one yet. On the other hand it feels like it has lasted for a year.

I have begun reviewing some of my notes in order to start my outlines, and I am beginning to realize how much I must have had going on in my head during the last few months. I don’t even remember discussing some of the things I have written down. I’m not sure if that’s chemo brain, or just the fact that I had a lot on my plate throughout the semester. Either way, it looks like I have some ground to make up in the next couple of weeks to prepare for these tests.

I saw the oncologist on Monday and he said that I look “pretty much perfect.” I need to have a mammogram done in the next couple of weeks and then I won’t see him again until February. I’m really happy to get to take a break from medical procedures for a few weeks, but it’s a little bit scary to think of being “on my own.” He warned me that there’s a high probability that the radiologists will see “something” on my mammograms in the near future and that they will recommend a biopsy. He explained that this was mostly because I had the bracytherapy radiation. Since it is a relatively new procedure, my mammograms will look different to them and they will recommend a biopsy to evaluate those differences. He told me not to freak out when that happens. And I’m glad he warned me about it, because I would (will?) freak out.

I am still feeling better and better with each passing day. As a matter of fact, I mostly feel completely normal. And then I catch sight of myself in the mirror and realize that I still look very much like a cancer patient, even if I don’t really feel like one. It’s a strange place to be…looking sick but not feeling or being sick.

I am going to be attending a conference in Milwaukee this weekend and I talked to one of the conference organizers about it earlier in the week. After I hung up the phone, I realized that it may have been one of the first times in the past many months that I have talked to someone who doesn’t know me as a cancer patient. She has absolutely no idea that I don’t have any hair, that I have been through a kajillion medical procedures in the past few months, or that I have spent the past few months identifying myself as a cancer patient to just about everyone I talk to. It felt good not to have that as a part of my identity, even though the gig will be up when I arrive at the conference tomorrow night. What I’ve been through will be pretty obvious when they see the scarf and lack of hair/eyebrows/eyelashes!