Fear to Hope

All in all today was another good day. Nausea was pretty subdued - less than a “1” on my scale. Rear pain was more severe today than it has been for several days. Most of the pain is caused by the muscles you use (that you really don’t know you’re using) when going to the bathroom. The (other) rear pain [from just standing] remained minimal today.

I mentioned in a previous post that last Friday was 12 weeks since my diagnosis. Today was 12 weeks since my first appointment at the Mayo Clinic. So much has happened in these past 12 weeks. I’ve experienced the devastation of bad news, a lot of fear, shame and a loss of dignity, and some of the worst pain of my life. But I also experienced the joy of good news, the comfort in the trust I have with my medical team, and HOPE. With Jon’s help I learned how to challenge the feelings of losing my dignity and how to understand there is no shame in how my body was responding to my treatments. No matter what I experienced I was never alone. Good or bad, it is all part of the journey necessary to rid my body of this cancer.