Six Months

It's official. Six months ago, today, we removed Chelsea's last bag of chemotherapy. Forever. She is cancer free, she beat the monster. It seems surreal. Has it already been six months? Did any of that really happen? I can hardly fathom life before cancer. One of my latest projects is cleaning up my craft area in the basement. I've reached a point, a point I can't seem to get through. I've reached all of the things I was working on a lifetime ago.

After I sifted through the boxes, bags, papers and junk that had piled on my tables over the past year, I began finding little reminders. Scrapbook pages I was working on last September, that I never finished. They were pages and pictures from our family camping trip last August. The pages were half - finished. I had forgotten that I was even working on them. Then I began looking at the pictures. Pictures I haven't looked at since the cancer. Pictures of Chelsea right before we found out she was sick. She was happy, she was playing, and she was smiling ... as always.

I then came across a baby sleeper I was making for a friend's new grand-baby. I promised I would finish it and bring it to our Jazzercise class on Thursday. Chelsea was diagnosed on a Wednesday. The sleeper was never finished. Pieces of fabrics, of patterns that I began but never made. Remnants of fabrics from a quilt I made for my dear friend who lost her baby that August. Has it already been a year? I haven't sewn since her diagnosis.

It's almost as though I was a different person then. I had hobbies and pastimes, things I once enjoyed, but have now forgotten. But we're done. The cancer is gone, and she has been off treatment for six months. I still haven't picked up the pieces. I still haven't put our lives back together. It's time to move on, and start living again. Our lives fell apart that warm, sunny September afternoon, and I haven't bothered to pick up where we left off. It's time, and I'm moving on. We're moving on.

I have picked up my old sewing projects, and have new plans, new ideas; a Christmas dress for Chelsea, and reindeer pajamas for Logan. Imagining those two on Christmas morning warms my heart. We didn't even sleep under the same roof last year. I stayed at the hospital with Chelsea while Logan trotted through the cold streets to the Ronald McDonald House with his Daddy. Logan arrived Christmas morning with his old tennis shoes over his footed Christmas pajamas, which were a size to small because he had worn them the previous year.

So today is a big day, no it's a huge day. Chelsea had a wonderful report from her oncologist yesterday, her counts are better than ever. My fear of relapse has faded tremendously. Her counts are up, they are strong, they are steady. Once we get through the next six months, her chances of relapse drop drastically, less than one percent. I am confident she'll fly through the next six months. The cancer is gone forever, and I'm back. We're all back and ready to live again.

And one last note - Chelsea's oncologist ordered for the last of her post chemotherapy medications to be discontinued. Yesterday. No more lists of medications and dosages to remember! She was always the best medicine-taker in the hospital. Fortunately that was one battle we didn't have to fight. The kid won't eat M&M's but she loves medicine!

Here she is taking her last dose of Bactrim. Can you imagine our next doctors appointment? When they ask what medications she's on, I'll answer with pride, "NONE!"




Because mom has the camera out, it's time to make faces ...