Finished with Chemotherapy

I can gratefully say that I have finished the 6th and final round of chemotherapy. I'll have a series of tests in July and August to determine how well the chemotherapy worked. I'm not whooping it up, because it hasn't sunk in that I'm finished with chemo. I suspect in about 3 weeks when I'd be thinking about the next round, it will hit me that I'm finished. Then I'll start celebrating.

A number of people have said to me, "Wow, it went so fast." Yes, time goes fast. However, for me, chemotherapy did not feel like it went by fast. It was painstakingly slow. The week prior to the next round of chemo, I would start dreading what I had to go through during chemo and the couple weeks after as the chemicals wreaked havoc on my body. So, No, chemotherapy did not go by fast, but Yes, I'm so glad that I'm done.

Prior to my final round of chemo, my oncologist said to me, "I never thought you'd get this far." I didn't ask him what he meant by that. Perhaps, he thought because I was so sick during the first few rounds of chemo, that my body wouldn't tolerate the full 6 cycles. Or maybe, because I started getting increased infections, the treatment might have had to be stopped because my immune system was so beat up. Or maybe, as in what happened to a friend of mine, the chemotherapy actually causes the cancer to start growing faster, and it could have sent me spiralling downward to death. But I suspect the real reason might have been that I'm so ornery that my doctor worried that I might have said, "Enough. I can't tolerate what chemo is doing to my body. No more." Ok, I admit, I may be ornery, but I'm definitely not stupid and I knew I needed all 6 rounds of chemo to have a chance at a remission.

Now I'm in recovery and rebuilding mode. In addition to my immune system being pretty much decimated, I am now out-of-shape from being inactive for 7 months, I have various aches & pains from the drugs, my liver is stressed along with other internal organs, and my fatigue levels are still sky high. So, the way I figure it, as I said in a previous post, "I have today." And today I am Oh so happy to have survived (literally) chemo.