What's normal anyway?

A week from tomorrow I will have my last chemo treatment. I can't say I'm looking forward to the treatment, but I am looking forward to it being my last.

The past several months have taught me some lessons about what's important in life and what isn't. Cat hair all over the house and not having the energy to vacuum it up, well, it's not such a big deal. Eventually it'll get vacuumed! Being able to work from home and to keep my job and pay my bills and even indulge my Target habit during this time, that's what they call priceless.

What's been hardest for me is giving in to the fatigue and flat out inertia that the chemo brings on. I've found out the hard way more than once what it means to push myself too far beyond my limit.

Like this weekend when Friday and Saturday I was feeling close to "normal" ... that is, I felt I had the energy to clean off the front porch, to put away into the garage the multiple flower pots and gardening implements staggered around the back yard and the back porch, to put up some Christmas decorations, to shop at the grocery store. And then on Sunday I was down for the count. Not a drop of energy left ... all I could do was lay in bed until I was able to move downstairs to lay on the couch. That's my new "normal" as my doctor would say.

I probably wouldn't have had such a Sunday slump if I had been less of a stubborn girl who has to do what she wants to do right when she wants to do it! But that's me when I'm not sick, so why would I be any different when I am? That is, why would I let cancer change me that much?

That said, my doctor has said that it will be 6 to 9 months after I finish my chemo treatments before the side effects of the chemo are completely a part of my past life, so, based on that, I think I better learn to pace myself. So, okay, I guess I've learned that I should not push myself too hard on any given Saturday. I've learned that just because I think that I can do that "one more thing" I probably should not do it before resting a while.

My biggest problem here though is that I am fighting cancer, and I'm determined that I will not let it beat me. I mean, I've still got a lot to do in this life!

And really, after all that's said and done, that's my new normal.