I haven’t written a post in a while. After the LLS fundraising competition I truly needed a break from writing and putting myself out there. While it was so rewarding to do something so good, it was definitely tiring (I still haven’t had a chance to send thank you’s to all the wonderful people who donated). Now that it has been a couple of weeks I have had time to rest, recharge, and focus on myself a little more.

I have been shifting my focus toward building up my stamina and trying to move forward. Something that those who haven’t experienced cancer first hand don’t realize is that once you enter the world of cancer, you never really leave. Even when you go into remission, finish treatment, or when you start to return to pre-cancer activities such as work, there is no returning to normal. The life of someone who receives a cancer diagnosis is forever altered. That’s not to say that everyone who receives a cancer diagnosis has a profound change in the way that they live their life, but from what I have seen once you receive a cancer diagnosis your life is never truly the same.

I was trying to get myself back to a version of myself that no longer exists, so instead I am trying to figure out who I am now. So much has changed in my life in such a short period of time. I thought at age 29 I would be at such a different stage in my life, but to be honest it feels like I am restarting my adult life from square one. I am trying to get back to work to start establishing my career (again). I am living on my own and taking care of my two fur babies. The biggest change though is that I lost the love of my life and my best friend, and I don’t even know where to begin with moving forward from that. Not in the sense that I want another partner, but rather that I don’t know who I am without Luke. It has been 9 months and I still feel as if I am in a bad dream that I should be waking up from any minute.

I didn’t mean for this blog entry to turn in this direction, but often when I am writing I just let my thoughts flow naturally, and that is where it went. One of the hardest things about losing your person is not having them to talk to anymore. Every day I see or hear something that I want to send to Luke. So many things remind me of him. He was the person that I could tell anything and everything, and he was the only person I could talk to about some things. To go from having someone I talked to 24/7 for 7 years to having no one has been so hard. I know that I am not alone and I talk to friends and family on a daily basis, but it isn’t the same and it never will be. As hard as that is, I keep going like everything is okay even if it isn’t. I do everything I can to stay positive and put on a brave face as I face the world.

In other news things continue to go smoothly with my maintenance treatment. My side effects are fairly minimal, and the ones I do have are tolerable. My only issues at the moment are headaches/migraines. I don’t know if these are caused from any of my chemotherapy agents, changes in the weather, or something else entirely. I have suffered from migraines for years now but in the last couple of months the frequency of them has drastically increased. In the last 21 days, I have recorded 15 headache days. These are just the days I remembered to record on my side effect chart and range from a 3/10 on the pain scale to a 9/10 today (my average is a 6/10). If you have every experienced a migraine or a severe headache, then I am sure you are thinking, “you poor thing”, and you are right. I would honestly rather have monthly bone marrow biopsies than have headaches 70% of the month. Hopefully we will figure out a cause or find a preventive treatment that works for me soon.

This post has rambled on quite a bit. That’s how my brain tends to function these days. It is an endless stream of thoughts jumping from one to the next. Currently on my mind is how much I love my girls. Zoey and Penny light up my life in so many ways. They have been starting to get along a lot more and Penny has been so tolerable of Zoey when she gets a little too excited. It makes me hopeful that they will be friends in the future.

I am also so thankful that I was able to get my second Pfizer COVID vaccine this past weekend. It’s been a long time coming and I really hope my body creates the necessary immune response. Please please please go get vaccinated!!! I started my next maintenance round yesterday so I tried to time my vaccine when my counts would be highest. My oncology team said to do it as close to before the next cycle so I was so glad that I was able to time it well. On that note I’m going to stop rambling for now and try to decide what I want to eat now (om nom nom).

Love, LB