I'm 30!

I finished 30 spins around the sun yesterday. I know a lot of people fear the 30-year mark, thinking this magic age marks the end of youth. Turning 30 will likely be one of the luckiest moments of my life. My lymphoma, if untreated, has the potential to take a life in a matter of months. Without the miracle of medicine, I may not have seen my 30^th birthday. This thought still chokes me up.

I will begin my sixth (and hopefully final!) cycle of chemo at the end of this week. I will admit that I’m a bit nervous. The bad days in cycle five completely kicked my ass. I won’t dwell on it here, but there were certainly moments when I just wanted to go to the hospital and have them put me on a morphine-induced holiday. Somehow I got through it, though, and I know I’ll just have to get through it again. A few days ago, I re-read all of my get-well-soon cards as motivation to face this final cycle.

Other than the four or five bad days, cycle 5 has gone well. All of my good days were really good, which allowed me to go on dates with Jason, spend quality time with family, and even go to a summer party at my boss’s house. Thankfully, my birthday fell in my good days as well. While I didn’t get to do a big 30^th birthday party, my mom took me on a nice shopping spree, and I received some wonderful cards and gifts in the mail. I’ll have to save the big party for when all of this is over and we’re up to hosting a lot of people again. Rest assured, we will start hosting our parties again within the year!

I’ll try to update this blog more regularly during cycle six. The fatigue and stomach cramps caught me off guard during the fifth cycle, so I spent my bad days on the couch not moving and the good days out of the house enjoying feeling good. I’m sure I’ll have plenty of emotions and thoughts to work through during what will hopefully be my final cycle, so I’ll attempt to share those thoughts here as I have them.

I’ll finish this post with a nice story:

I was walking to my car after shopping at Michael’s two days ago when I heard an older gentleman sitting in his car in the parking lot say, “M’am?” I turned around and approached his window to see if he needed anything. The gentleman, slightly hunched over his steering wheel with a head covered in soft white locks, looked straight into my eyes and said, “Is it cancer?” 

I was wearing one of my hats, but it was still obvious that I didn’t have any hair. “Yes,” I managed to answer, slightly surprised by his question, but curious where this conversation was about to go. 

The gentleman continued, “I had it 33 years ago, and here I am today. You’re going to be just fine.” As I held back tears, I managed to whisper the words “Thank you.” I wished him well and continued walking to my car. Once inside, I broke down. I cried and cried and cried, not because I was sad that someone could see that I was going through chemotherapy, but because I was happy that someone could survive so long after having cancer.

The worst part about having a cancer diagnosis is losing my invincibility. I’ve lived a healthy life, and to be completely honest, I never thought this would happen to me. Now I have no clue what the future holds. Maybe my lymphoma will return; maybe I’ll get a secondary cancer; maybe I’ll never have to experience any of this again. The fact is, I don’t know what will happen. I miss feeling invincible. But the old man in the car gives me hope. It’s possible to have cancer and then three decades later tell someone in a parking lot that it’s going to be ok.