Looking back on the road traveled

Tonight is one of those nights....you know, the nights when you can't seem to settle down, despite the nice warm shower, the clean feel of the sheets, the way the fan blows and makes you slightly chilly and you burrow under the covers a little deeper. Tonight my body feels it's age and mileage. My previously broken foot aches, the nerve pain that was my constant companion while I was so sick seems to be revisiting, and my stomach seems to be protesting the amount of food I consumed at our "date night" with the boys tonight. (I guess thats a positive though...my stomach has shrunk a bit since i started dieting and working out!) I've taken a couple of Tylenol PM....I know that sleep can't be too far off now. I laugh internally at how much of a "lightweight" I am when it comes to medication now. Fifteen months ago, Tylenol wouldn't have touched my pain, and it sure wouldn't have made me sleepy. I've done a lot of thinking lately about the road I've traveled in the past two years. Exactly two years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I remember the day so clearly; my memory gets a bit fuzzy after the start of all the different chemo regimens, but I'm not sure I'll ever forget the day I sat in the surgeons office when he confirmed that the mass in my abdomen was cancer. I already knew it...just a gut feeling I guess. But to hear the words...well, it's not something you're ever really prepared to hear. Over the next eight months, there were a lot of new terms that I learned the meanings for; Infusion Therapy, Power Port, kidney failure, stent, Radiation Therapy, edema, clear margins, white count, platelets count, nuetropenic, clean room, blood transfusion, neurological side effects. I'm sure there are more that I've forgotten....like I said before...things get a bit fuzzy. And medications...oh, the medications! Fentanyl, Oxycodone, Phenergan, Compazine, Adivan, Morphine; chemo drugs like Adriamysin, Ifosfamide, Gemcitabine, Taxotere....the list goes on. I gained and lost more medical knowledge in those short and long months than I'll ever have again. There were moments I didn't think I'd ever have another normal conversation without the medical jargon. There were moments I knew I couldn't keep going, yet somehow I did. There were moments I didn't want to. Fast forward sixteen months after the surgery that should have killed me, and I sat in a restaurant with my husband and two of my children. We stuffed ourselves on everything from brick oven pizza to fried scallops to hamburgers. We laughed at the ketchup that covered Jonathan's face from eyebrow to chin. We shook our heads at Jacob's creative ways of escaping from the table. We reflected on Austin's military service as we found out someone anonymously paid for our dinner after seeing Austin in uniform. We chatted about our day. And we lived. And we loved. And the road traveled doesn't seem that long or difficult anymore.