August 14th

Eve of 1 year with Follicular Lymphoma

I just want to start off by asking why Follicular is not in the spell check?

It is a real word........and yet it is always underlined, online, in my computer text writers this blog etc. That should be fixed.

A year later and I still have great support (was never alone) and received so many things, cards, words of inspiration, socks, jewelry, scarves etc some are tucked away, or set aside. They are my closet (yes closet not closest) friends and I won't share them and I won't give them up.

I skipped writing about my third maintenance altogether, and number two still sits in draft stage. But today it is important to post and a day of reflections for May 15th marks the telling me after years of pain what finally was wrong with me. As much as I would like to say I was smart enough to know what Follicular Lymphoma was, I did not. I just remember them walking me into prep me for surgical biopsy nonchalantly telling me and me thinking that is not good and I believed I uttered those very words to Ed as we were ushered in and my girl was sent back to the waiting room. That is not good.

Nope not good. And I think it took another few weeks for me to say cancer. 

I have cancer. 

And now a year later my scalp is back to being tender, and my bones ache some days more then others. I have been poked, prodded, injected and drugged. I have had multiple scans, but luckily (yes luckily) no radiation and 3 different biopsies. But it could have been so much worse. I have seen that and I know that. What I have had to endure is minor compared to that pain I knew before or what I have had to watch others endure.

I had cancer

That is what they told me at the last scan in March. But I have the kind that can come back. Sometimes even more fierce then when it started and no way to tell where or when, because it likes my marrow and my bones, and they are everywhere. 

So I watch and I wait and I remember. Every bump brings fear, every ache is a reminder of what was and what could be.

But chin up I will be ready, chin up I will run.