T-minus 23 Days

My treatment tomorrow will put me at exactly 23 days away from my chemotherapy completion date. Exclamation points, smiley faces and asterisks could only work to undermine my excitement.

Tomorrow will be my 9th of the 12 weekly Taxol treatments I was prescribed, and while they have definitely been much easier to tolerate than the Adriamycin and Cytoxan treatments I had for the first two months, I am very much looking forward to purging all of these poisons from my system and starting on my path to recovery.

I am tired. Literally burned out. The temptation to skip classes this week, brush the papers and reading aside and sleep instead was almost more than I could take. My daily activities are continually hampered by my tiredness; it is similar to being perpetually drunk, except without any of the good feelings -- or perhaps it's more similar to being perpetually hung over: My head buzzes, my body aches, my vision is sometimes impaired, my speech sometimes slurs, and the abilities of walking straight, keeping my balance, listening, paying attention, remembering things and speaking coherently have never proved so difficult, nor have I ever felt so triumphant in being able to do any of these things in every day life. Of course, the longer into chemotherapy I go, the more tired I become and the more difficult these taken-for-granted abilities are.

But today I am turning around and looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, because it is not so far away now, and I am smiling, because even if the light is coming from the radiation I will be plunged into directly after exiting this damn tunnel, I've heard it's not such a dark and dismal journey, and certainly not so long at a mere seven weeks.