One Hundred and Sixty Nine

Friday was the last day of hard core chemotherapy for Brinley.  I've never felt so many emotions all at once.  I was happy, relieved, frustrated, angry, and sad.  Of course being happy and relieved stems from finally being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel involving this disease.  I'm thrilled that we're "getting there" we're getting to a beautiful place of healing, and we're now steps closer to being cancer free, or "cured". This is a milestone in a long race, and something I have learned in the last 7 months is that there is no small milestone when dealing with cancer.

However my frustration, anger, and sadness stems from the one hundred and sixty nine days my daughter has spent in pain and distress fighting this evil disease that threatened her life.  I'm angry because she's 4, and has had to endure a lifetime of medications, surgeries, procedures, and needle pokes that most people have to endure during a full lifetime.  I'm frustrated because cancer isn't prejudice, his victims are chosen at random. I'm sad because Brinley had her first soccer game, it was the first time she refused to take her hat off, she was worried people would laugh at her, or ask her why she doesn't have hair.  Even at 4 she has an idea of self image that cancer has tarnished to an extent.  There are days that she does amazing and could careless that she doesn't have a strand of hair on her head, and there are days that thinks she's ugly.  The other days I asked her, "what am I going to do if I can't kiss your beautiful head?" and she said, "you'll just have to learn to like kissing my hair"  fair enough.

The next 2 weeks we have blood draws, we have one on the 12th, and another on 19, and everything is good on the 19th, she will, get another dose of chemo. Then long term maintenance.   I do expect her to be delayed the week of the 19th, it seems that it's pretty common, so if that means more relaxing, then so be it.  Brinley and I both seem to be battling a cold, and I'm fingers crossed that it doesn't amount into something serious for her. Her immune system has been taking an ass kicking due to drugs, so hopefully it'll pass quickly.


So here it goes, 169 days down, 603 left until off treatment...4840 until she's cured.