…and my body is alone again, alone, namely completely without dirtbag! This is absolutely fantastic and we are all happy. But one after the other.
Flying low through Christmas
Oh you merry!
In the middle of December I gradually go to my knees. My energy level tends to zero, except for gawking, bumming around and participating in online advent calendars, not much is going on anymore. When I also read a newspaper article about two not-so-old women in hospice who had initially put their cancer well away, but then fell ill with it again, this time incurably, I am overcome – despite a continuing and touching flood of gifts and greetings – by a middle low. I wonder how I, in my youthful recklessness, could ever assume that everything will be all right again and that I will survive this whole mess. What if this whole ordeal is in vain and the scumbag returns in two or three years?? I am completely exhausted and can not and do not want more, at the thought of the next chemo I just want to run away. Instead, I make an appointment with the Psycho-Oncology Service (POD), and even though there isn’t a free appointment for another four weeks, the prospect of it helps for now and I can think straight again.
After this trough we dedicate ourselves to the Christmas tree question. Cheri, Hotti and I don’t really need one, but Lotti does, and since this year is frustrating enough, she has to be brave all the time anyway, and climate change doesn’t hang on this one tree, we acquire a lucky organic blue spruce from the Raspberry Valley, which Hotti and Lotti have been clamoring to get – "AU!", "THE PIEKST!!", "AUUAA. " – drag into the kitchen and pompously prepare.
Complete remission of known breast carcinoma
Two days before Christmas Eve I get the second to last chemo dose in this modest year, then I curl up under the organic spruce and let the days pass me by. Cheri bans me from cooking indefinitely and rocks the kitchen, Fanta reliably delivers a hot meal on Wednesdays – even during the vacations – and Hotti and Lotti manage a special surprise this year by giving me a ready-made present for once. On Tuesday after Christmas I get the last infusions for this year and the most beautiful present, namely an ultrasound with the miraculous interim finding that the tumor is no longer detectable. The scumbag is gone, has vanished into thin air, is just not there anymore, "complete remission of known breast carcinoma", and I could cry with relief. Sing hallelujah, once again!
The further days pass again quite uneventful. Since I’m in cytostatic delirium, Hotti bakes the birthday cake for Lotti, Lotti’s friends and Fanta prepare her a heartwarming corona-compliant present at the front door, and New Year’s Eve somehow passes too.
The end of the dry spell
The new year begins not only with hot flashes, but as a result of the paclitaxel treatments, a few numb toes and tingling fingers as well. My body has obviously had enough. I take one more chemo session, then we stop: The numbness is increasing, the tumor is gone, and so I am spared four more poisoning sessions with the Gallic magic potion, which I am really not sad about. There will be some other treatment stages to follow, but these seem comparatively manageable to me.
After the long chemo drought, things pick up again: We repeat MRI, mammogram and ultrasound, and the result is the same everywhere: the scumbag is gone. So we make an appointment for the upcoming surgery in the breast clinic, where the formerly cancerous tissue, which Doc Huhn had marked with internal piercings months ago, will finally be removed. The funny doctor only finds one of the two piercing clips during the ultrasound, but she considers it unlikely that the other one got lost in the vastness of my milk ducts: "We’ll find it again at the latest during the operation!" How beautiful, the house loses nothing.