Surviving.

Sunday June 3, 2007 is National Cancer Survivor's Day.

St Clare's has invited anyone and everyone to an event being held in Randolph on that Sunday to unite old friends and new, to share stories and mark the day together. They're offering cooking demos. music, children's activities, relaxation therapies, lots of free literature. (it's sponsored by a drug company of course)...

I took the invitation from a box in my oncologist's office last week. It took a couple of days for the idea of my being a "survivor" to sink in. With the removal of my kidney and the biopsy that proved the cancer there had not traveled anywhere else in my body I am (as I was told) a Kidney Cancer survivor. The Hodgkin's is more or less a foregone conclusion as everyone treating me expects me to be free of it by my next CT scan (this wednesday) and the connection between cancers and treatment makes my "beating" kidney cancer seem odd because I didn't know I had it until it was found (obviously)...and treatment for that was surgery and that was it.

I could have had been living with Kidney Cancer since possibly 2003 and we never knew it. Getting chemo for the Hodgkin's is obviously more physically demanding as the course I've been on has been steady and unchanging since January.

Basically beating Hodgkin's was a six month task; two hours a day, twice a month. Beating Renal Cell was just four hours in the O.R.

That's why they feel different. Not that I am trying to minimize Renal Cell, that is still the cancer that worried my Dr's the most.

The prospect of "Remission" (now on the horizon) is a different idea as I wonder how I will adapt to rejoining the rest of the working world and no longer marking time on the calendar by chemo dates.

That's going to seem weird. Even though I am ready to jump off this train before it pulls into the station and get on with my life, I know adjusting to life after treatment can be strange. (or so I've read). As much as I want life to be "NORMAL" again, life has changed for this family and there is no such thing as "normal" anymore.

I plan on going to that event St Clare's is hosting. It may prove to be very therapeutic as I continue to immerse myself in this community of people affected by Cancer and I eventually disconnect from the people I see week in and week out at "the office" getting our infusion of chemo.

Maybe that's the reason rejoining life where I left it last year after my diagnosis may be hard to do because the people sitting in that room with me will no longer be there. Suddenly you just go back to where you left off...like nothing ever happened?

I'm not so sure that's a going to be an easy thing to do. The people I left at work have lived the last six months as they always have. I have lived the last six months in a parallel universe and in a couple of weeks I get to try and jump back in feeling like I'm six months behind.

I have to get past the CT scan on Wednesday and that will make the remaining 4 treatments fly by I'm sure. I will take the rest of this like I have taken everything else since December 19, 2006...one day at a time.