Yesterday was the fiftieth day since my transplant. When I look back on what has transpired since January, I can't quite process it. I'll admit I am not in a place emotionally where I can talk about the cancer at all. It is very hard for me when anyone brings up anything to do with my recent health history, except for the recovery period from the transplant. There will be time to face that past, and I will need to take that time, but right now I need to put all my energy into my strengths.
Sometimes I worry that I will miss the opportunity to become a better person. When I'm full of fears and anxieties, counting the days and the limitations, I feel like I am turning my back on this incredible gift of the reminder that now is what we have, life is what it is, and my outlook is my choice. In this recovery I have even less control than I have ever had before, because I can't pursue my goals using nutrition and not pharmaceuticals. I have to accept these pharmaceutical drugs, and all the rules of the recovery process.
So I will embrace them. If I need to eat every five minutes right now, I'll just keep doing it, and I'll eat the things I am allowed to eat and feel so very grateful that I am not having trouble eating. If I need to ask everyone who comes into the house to wear a face mask, I will do that. If I need to drive to Boston weekly, then bi-weekly, then monthly, so be it.
There are a lot of small milestones in all of this. But one of the big ones is when I hit the hundred day mark. That is when they start tapering off the graft drugs, and this new immune system really becomes mine. Until that time, I have to be extra careful. For fifty more days. So I can revel in the fact that I have fifty days to focus on letting go, on reveling in the love around me, on feeling pretty good considering what I've been through. The doctors say everything looks terrific. Even problems they might expect me to have, I am not having. Even the small spot of graft vs. host disease that I did have is something they consider a good sign, because it means the new immune system is dominating and working.
The time to revel in this gorgeous late summer, letting my body become the dragon, fearing nothing and embracing everything, is now. So this is when I'll do it. On my hundred day vacation.
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