Finis

Round last. Day last.

And so it ends.  This is the night I would have taken my steroids. Instead I had a party to celebrate my birthday and my last day of chemo. Tomorrow I would have gone to the hospital, parked in the cancer centre, weighed in, and had my infusion. Instead, Melissa and I will take a walk in the hills and talk about our lives. I have put away my steroids, my anti-nausea medicine, my antihistamines. I have put away the thermometer, the salt water mouth rinse next to the sink. I have put away the pitcher with the orange water that is the only thing I can taste during those days when my mouth feels carpeted. I have put away the chemotherapy.

 

I have pictured this day for so long. I have imagined the thrill of having this chapter closed and the next chapter opening. I feel a little surge of delight at the thought of it, butterflies in my stomach. Tomorrow the chemo ward will be filled with people—frightened, sick, putting on a brave face. But not me. Tomorrow night people will come home sick, take to their beds, hope for a gentle round. But not me. I am awash in gratitude for the grace of passing time.

 

Now I have finished. I am standing at the top of this big climb, looking back at the pathway. Chemo was not what I expected it to be.  In the appointments before I began, the doctor and then Debbie took a long time to walk their way through the list of side effects. As I listened to them I remember thinking, “I do not think I can bear this if these things happen to me.” Then, at my last chemo, I told the nurse I had been doing really well, although that third round was brutal. She pulled out the side effect list to see which ones I’d gotten. Yes yes yes yes yes. Other than the genuinely horrific (the ones that require hospitalization or blood transfusions), I had gotten each of the side effects—plus extra ones. But none of them had been so debilitating or stayed for so long or been so frightening as I had once imagined. Living through it, I didn’t (often) have the sense that I couldn’t bear it.  Perhaps that is how our sense of future pain always is—something we think we couldn’t bear until we live it step by step. And then we do bear it, because really what other choice is there? The sun rises and sets, the tide comes in and out, and we face our pain and terror and move through it.

 

But just as I once thought I couldn’t bear this, I also thought I would come through it to a different place. I looked forward to 15 June as the day when all my side effects would be gone, when I would walk into the new chapter with chemo fully behind me and the way ahead clear. Instead I struggle with the throbbing pain in my fingers as my nails threaten to fall off, and I watch as my eyelashes and eyebrows continue to thin perilously. I believed that the chemo time would be a contemplative space where I would come to understand the person I would be next. I knew that I was confused and disoriented as I headed into chemo, and I thought that on this day I would be oriented and clear. I was wrong.

This morning Carolyn and Melissa and I climbed up the big hill at dawn. We braved the winter winds and the threatening rain and chattered our way up up up the hill, distant mountains shimmering. I was weary on the climb, the fatigue from this round still hanging around even though the chemo is officially gone. But I made it to the top (for a while following some sheep on the path), as I suppose we tend to do. We arrived home to a house redolent of garlic with a cheerful Michael cooking away for my party. Soon there were four of us in the kitchen, and then the house began to fill up with friends and laughter.  We ate chili and cornbread and sang over polka dotted cheesecake and flourless chocolate cake (I baked with real sugar…). I do not know what happens next. I do not know who I’ll be next. But I do know that tomorrow will be my favourite Monday in as long as I can remember.

And so the next chapter begins.

Here is my very favourite healthy cookie. Enjoy!

These butter shortbread cookies are crispy buttery deliciousness.

Adapted from Detoxinista.com

Ingredients

(I always make a double recipe of these because I love them so much, but you can start with this much…)

• 1 cup almond flour
• 2 oz butter, melted
• 1½ Tablespoons maple syrup
• healthy pinch of sea salt
• 1/4 tsp. vanilla

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 150 C
2. Mix all the ingredients in a small bowl until a batter forms. I like the cookies about a teaspoon big, and I roll them with wet hands into a ball and flatten them.  I gently flattened my cookies using a fork. Thinner cookies will be more crisp
3. Bake cookies for 20-25 minutes, watching closely to ensure they don't get too brown.
4. Remove cookies from the oven when they are lightly golden brown. I like them best once they are cool and crisp all the way through.