Resolution

of all previous metabolic activity. No new metabolically active lymph nodes identified.

Remission is how my doctor put it.

The best news I never expected.

Scan Day

Today is scan day: the day that comes every three months when I find out how much my cancer has grown or not grown.

I know its always there. My silent partner. Til death do us part. I just hope it isn't spreading too much. Or at all. Halted, perhaps.

I think my expectations have become healthily realistic.

Here goes.

1/2/16

I've been spending my time working on my marriage and focusing on my little family. You would think that Brandon and I never had a chance; falling in love while I got a transplant, getting pregnant two months after, pregnancy, marriage, childbirth, a newborn, a toddler, a relapse/remission, relapse/remission/relapse... Still no time to work on us. To figure out how we fit together. But there was always love. So we made it. We are making it. We're working as hard as ever. I'm focusing on my husband, who has seen my every worst moment, my darkest places, and loved me anyway. I'm focusing on my son, because he has seen me shake in pain and cry in self-pity and he always wipes away my tears. Too young for any of this, but always there to put me back together when I fall apart. I don't hide things from him. Because I don't want him to hide his feelings. I think of what I want to leave him with, when I go. Healthy attitudes about expressing emotions, holding courage, kindness and love above all, knowing how he feels is valid- to examine it and let it pass. To allow himself to feel anger and sadness and then to breathe them out when it's time.

When you begin to see that you won't get the long life you expected, you realize that your time is more precious than anything in the world. I know it's cliche, and the English major still deep within me winces, but it's true. Every hour that ticks away at work or at a doctor's appointment is time taken from more important things. The most important things.

So I'm focusing. I'm focusing so closely that all I see are my husband and child. All I see are clocks ticking. All I see is the love that I have to give in the time I am given to give it.