NO EVIDENCE OF DISEASE!!

AS PUBLISHED BY FIG LANCASTER

Pull on your party pants and uncork that bottle because the news arrived and there is “No Evidence of Disease”! 

It is an overwhelmingly surreal feeling.  I am, of course, ecstatic but it feels as if I am floating through an alternate universe.  Just two weeks ago,  I was lying in my bed counting down the hours until I would be unplugged from my chemo pump and now…it is done.  It is behind me and it just doesn’t feel real.  To be quite honest,  it just feels like it was all a bad dream.  I had cancer and now I don’t. the sentence is so very easy to write…but feeling the sentence, understanding it and living it has left me spinning as I try to connect it all.  I am trying to feel the excitement but more than excited,  I am simply comforted by the things I missed the most.

 I am not dancing like a middle aged Mardi Gras dancer, on a parade float as I imagined I would be.  Instead I am snuggling the cold winter away with my daughter wrapped in my arms as we watch Scooby Doo for the bazillionth time.  I am picking her up from school early so that we can have a mom and Bean day filled with a trip to the Library and fruit smoothie. 

I am re-organizing my closet and planning our summer vacations. I am embracing the little things in life that I missed so much.  I am grocery shopping and cooking soup because it is a cold winter day and not because it is what my chemo diet demands. I am getting back into the swing of things at work and am relieved to not be sleeping through the week,  every other week. 

I am finally living my life 100% of the time,  I have been on a 50% schedule for far too long and having my life back 100% of the time is a feeling that leaves me without words.

 So this year,   I am remembering how quickly life can take a right hand into the parking lot of hell and I am living life to the fullest.  I have plans to go paddle boarding and camping and swimming,  I will be catching fireflies at dusk and having margarita fueled dance parties on my deck at night.

 In 6 weeks, my sister will have her PET scan,  and when they tell her “there is no evidence of disease”…well, then there will be dancing and on that day, I will grab her hand and we will walk boldly into 2015,  middle fingers in the air as we spend the next year making memories that will overshadow the memories of the last year.

 In 6 weeks,  we will know it is all behind us.  In six weeks,  the celebration will kick into high gear.  In 6 weeks, winter had better damn well be on its way out because this type of celebration will call for fancy shoes, and no one likes stepping over a snow bank in fancy shoes.