How could it be that I felt well, even energized, most days, yet my blood markers were quietly decreasing? Some markers were outside of the normal ranges experts say they should be, yet I didn’t feel different. Some markers were simply edging their way closer to too high or too low. What constitutes being too far out of range? At what point would I be at risk of infection or complications? At what point might they postpone the weekly treatment, waiting for my bloodwork to improve? Ugh. The thought of delaying this odyssey at all makes my heart groan. I just wanted to move past this.
In addition to bloodwork changes, my very thick hair was shedding more than its normal pace. Or was it? Hard to tell since I had so much of it to begin with. Was I to focus on how much hair I threw away on shampoo days or how much was still attached?
Cancer treatment is not necessarily a straight line. It was more like jumping on a trampoline, not knowing exactly where I was going to land each time. In those moments, the Holy Spirit would prompt me to breathe deeply and remember the excerpt from the Serenity Prayer below:
“Living one day at a time; enjoying moment at a time; accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.”
