Update on the Cancer

Today I am 13 weeks out from my last chemo. That's a quarter of a year! I am still having people ask me on a daily basis, "how are you feeling?" 

Dear Everyone: 

I AM FEELING FINE. I FEEL LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. YOU CAN STOP ASKING ME THAT QUESTION.

My hair is getting a touch unruly.

I still have a sparse spot in the front and center of my forehead but Ben claims it's filling in. It's hard to tell in this picture but I think it's going to end up the same red color as always, which is a relief. People are asking me what I'm going to do as far as a future hairstyle and I have no idea. It took four years to grow it out to the length it was before so clearly I don't really need to worry about it at the moment. Mostly I just want to look like I have a purposeful haircut again, and I think I'm almost there. Maybe another couple of weeks.

I have six more months of Herceptin and 119 months of tamoxifen (my doctor says 59 months, but I'm pushing for the 10 years. Just to be safe, you know). Neither of those things give me any trouble at all, so I really think this is mostly all wrapped up and I can just have a normal life again. Of course, that's all assuming it's not coming back (or presently hiding in my body, which to be honest is my main concern), but everyone tells me it's probably not. About twenty percent of the time I believe them. That's an improvement over what it used to be, so hopefully with time I can maybe even get up to believing it 50%. 

In the meantime I'm trying to live a normal life and do things I like to do - hanging out with Ben, talking about how cute Papaya is, reading, planning vacations, exercising, cooking, working my way through my Netflix queue. There is this sense of urgency underlying everything now that I don't think was there before; I definitely have more of a drive to do things and go places. I think that's a good thing, though, as long as it doesn't get out of control.