Bubbles

Last chemo yesterday. It hit me that it has been six months of chemo and cancer. At the oncology center the nurses blew bubbles and offered hugs and congratulations. When they were blowing the bubbles, nurse Felicia joked about making John dance, I felt myself shaking and swallowed back the tears that sat just below the surface. His six months yes, but mine too. Six months of short changing work, missing sleep, worrying about everything, scheduling our lives around “chemo weekends” and six months of fear. The fear is not over. Now come the CAT scans and the regular blood work to see if there is still cancer somewhere in his beautiful body.

Everyone asks, “Are you going to celebrate?” And we laugh in reply, “Oh yes, on Saturday when the infusion of FU is completed for the last time.”

Maybe someone who has been through this will understand. We came home from chemo and had a big fight. Out came all of the tension and all of the expectations that were hidden under, “If we can just get thru six months” and that now leave us with much less obvious but scarier medical steps to take. And too we are now left with the relationship, no longer hidden behind, “When chemo is over.” All of that, all that was hoped for, fantasized and deferred has burst on us just like the soap bubbles that came as congratulations.