Happy Cancerversary!

So even though it's an anniversary of sorts, I don't feel like celebrating.
Well, maybe a little since I'm not dead.

Feeling kind of, well, blah. That's me--what was I thinking about here to look so serious??  I'm only 2!

Yesterday was one year to the day that I got that phone call from Dr. N telling me I had thyroid cancer.  It's one of those moments indelibly etched in my brain and I can replay it in my head word for word.  In some ways it's so hard to believe that a year has passed, and other ways it seems like the giant cloud of doom that appeared that night is still hovering overhead. It's moved a little futher away over the horizon, but it's there nonetheless. 

Sis and I, standing on the ginormous snow mound, February 1978.  I'm the taller one. Or I was then.

It also doesn't help that February 6 is also the anniversary of the infamous Blizzard of '78.  If you grew up here and lived through it, you'd get the reference.  Not exactly a good day now, was it? If I put a positive spin on it, as a 4th grader, I loved loved loved playing on the ginormous snow mound near my house and was loving being out of school for weeks. 

I'd like to say that I have become one of those people who has taken on a whole new look at life, carpe diem and all the motivational stuff people tell you you should feel after a horrible, life-changing event.

Yeah, well I'm feeling too crappy to carpe anything.

While my sleeping situation has improved a little, last night I woke up 6 times.  It's weird--I become completely awake, and within seconds or minutes, a hot flash takes over everything.  And let me tell you--jalapeño hot, not just black pepper hot.  Ridiculous.  The difference lately is that I can fall back to sleep until the next one once I've cooled off, dried off all the sweat and reclaimed the down comforter I threw off in utter frustration. Remember--this isn't supposed to be happening to me at 42!

I feel like such a whiner when I say I'm tired, or that I feel like I'm on the verge of tears due to another bout of hormonal instability.  Sis says she can see "cognitive differences" in me.  I'm too afraid to ask exactly what she means, but I think it has to do with my semi-functioning memory and slower processing speed?  

I'm off to Dr. N on Friday, praying to hear the word "undetectable" again.  However, I'm really anxious about how all the other numbers will come out since she tested everything, and I mean everything--all my hormones and then some. 

I'm staring to feel like a hypochondriac.  I must be doing a great job at covering it up though--Mr. Wonderful said he didn't realize just how awful I have been feeling until we had a "discussion" and cleared the air on a few issues.  Either I'm not clear enough, or he's not hearing everything. I swear he's going deaf after years of fire engine sirens blaring around his head, so maybe he wasn't exactly catching everything.  The reassuring bear hug with "We'll get through this too" was just what the doctor ordered.  He regained his title with that one. 

Anyway, happy cancerversary to me.  I know it could be sooooo much worse, and I'm not being ungrateful.  It's getting harder to remember what it was like to feel "normal".  And that just sucks no matter how you try to reframe it. 

Now let's see what Friday brings as we lurch into year #2!  Time to take some melatonin and try to catch a few hours of sleep...