100 days later

My hair is thinned. My veins still ache. My muscle has diminished to nothingness.
But my mentality endured.

at the end of chemo

I've almost made it
Tomorrow will be 100 days since chemo began on the 29th January 2015.
And it feels like its been really long time.

I never believed I'd be the one going through this kind of thing, much less actually experience it. I never thought I'd get used to feeling that sharp spike of pain as the cannula hits my arm. The cold chill as the drugs smash through my cracking veins. The flood of relief as the drip is disconnected. The rush of nausea as I stand up for the first time, with cytotoxic drugs sloshing around in my veins. The nights of near delirious agony, clutching my stomach and telling myself it's one more down, Tom, it's one more down.

And, now, I can't believe it's (almost) all over.

Obviously at the moment I don't know how I will feel, on the eve of the last infusion; I'm imagining massive relief, alongside the inevitable nausea (the apprehension for which is turning my stomach even now as I write this). I really hope with everything I have that I have beaten this thing. That's that. Done for good. And, hopefully, life is there for me to reclaim.

I've been thinking a bit recently about who post-cancer-boy Tom will be. It's a bit strange, actually; I don't think it could be said that I'm an apt subject for one of those Hollywood-esque narratives wherein an originally obnoxious and self-centred boy turns into caring sensitive man via pain and adversity. I was already quite empathetic and not particularly self centred. Perhaps, behaviourally, it will have made a change. But, mentally, I think it might have just ossified things I already knew about myself, alongside shortening my shrift for things in life that people care about that I'd always kind of suspected were meaningless.

But let's see. I have one more infusion to go, 36 hours til it's all over. I can't wait for that final needle to be removed from my vein.

Bye chemo. It's been educational but, seriously, I will not be sorry if I never see you again.