What a long, strange drip it's been

I am done. I am done. I am SO done (hopefully) with chemo. Hell fuck yeah. It's definitely been a long four months that at the same time went very fast. I know some of you new readers are curious for the whole cancer saga in a nutshell, so here are some links that should give you the bigger picture. The phone call. Diagnosis. The facts. The hair. The wig. The photos. The surgeries. The alien drains. More surgery photos. The lymph nodes. More lymph nodes. Chemo.

I am so grateful for my wonderful, amazing, supportive friends, family and family friends who have been so helpful. I never needed any of those "support groups" because my people were that for me. I am truly blessed by these people. You'd be amazed how many patients I saw in the chemo ward completely alone. It's pretty heartbreaking. I'm also very grateful to my readers who have been incredibly encouraging and whose comments and emails mean a great deal to me as well.

I'm not, however, done with the hospital yet. Because of the kind of BCa I had, I can take this drug called Herceptin, which greatly reduces the risk of recurrence. Now, because we've had so many percentages and numbers thrown at us over the past seven months, I asked my doctor to recalculate what my percentage of recurrence possibility will be. I think it should be lower than 5%, but I can't fucking remember what I said two paragraphs ago, so obv. I could be wrong. But I do have to go back to the hospital and chemo ward every two or three weeks for the next several months, where, again I'll have to receive fluids for a half-hour to an hour-and-a-half through my port.

My Costa Rica trip to the Four Seasons on Peninsula Papagayo is set for the day after my 33rd birthday (ugh), then I'll have one day in between to come home and fly out to Vegas for my dad's 60th and Lynn's son's wedding, where I'll debut my Oscar dress to much fanfare I am sure. Though mom's Reem Acra is a show-stealer too.

Let me tell you, I am sooo looking forward to the boob swappage. My boobs will finally be soft and low enough to fit back into my clothes without having to wear a tank under everything to cover the tops of the tennis balls. All in all though, with the nipples not going on until October likely and then tattooing in the color after that, I'm not going to be completely done until Nov/Dec. Meaning, this whole ordeal will have taken an entire year. I suppose that it's been the most formative year of my life; at least let's hope so. I'm still considered a high-risk cancer getter and will eventually remove my ovaries. . . .good times.

Anyway, I'm off to start my life again. So far so good with the side-effects today.