Did You Ever Think Life Was Gonna Be This Way?

I have the tendency to leave out the messy, sad, difficult parts of my everyday life with cancer. The reasons for that are legion, but they boil down to one: we all like to present our best selves. No one likes to feel vulnerable and naked to the world. I don't want people feeling sorry for me or pitying me. There are only a tiny handful of people that I really open up to about this terrible disease, and that's because it's a huge burden and frankly, I don't want to trust just anyone with sharing my load.  But I don't want everyone to think life is all rainbows and sunshine, either.  When one of my closest friends, who loves me very much (and the feeling is mutual), urged me to stop obsessing over certain things and gave me a well-intentioned pep talk about how the big crisis was over and it was time to find my "new normal"...well, I knew I had some 'splaining to do. If someone that close to me thinks that we're all done with cancer around her...

I had my first SBRT session today. Can you feel me glowing right through the screen? I actually fell asleep while they were doing it. I hope that was okay because last time, there was this issue where I was breathing too slowly and so I had to speed up my breaths without hyperventilating. Try it some time. It's super fun. Seriously, though, if I don't breathe in the right pattern then they accidentally might get some normal tissue and I'd like to hang on to as much of that as possible, thankyouverymuch.  So, one down and five to go. Apparently it made me a little bit tired. (It also, I noticed as I was getting ready for bed, left me with permanent marker all over my body - x's and circles and lines - so that they can be sure I'm all lined up correctly for the machine. All this technology at their disposal and a Sharpie is the best they can do? Really?) Anyway. As we were leaving, I caught sight of another patient and she was in a bad way. I couldn't help but thi...