Hurry up and wait.

Hi, cancer blog. It has been a while. What have I been up to, you ask? Well, healing. I had the surgery. I am done with the chemotherapy, all 16 treatments. I am done with the radiation, all 25 treatments. I am done with the cancer center. I am now busy forgetting about cancer. I don't want to talk about cancer really. I don't want to write about it. I want this entire year in my rear view.

Now, I am in the waiting place...the most frustrating place ever.

For one, I am waiting for my skin to heal so I can schedule my boob implant surgery and nipple reconstruction. (Right now, I have Barbie boobs, little round mounds with no nipple. I still have the expanders in...not the permanent boobs yet.)

I started my hormone therapy and am waiting to see if my body tolerates my new medication okay. I am a month in and so far so good. I have hot flashes every night and I break out in an itchy rash whenever I actually try to exercise. I am perpetually bitchy, but other than that, I am tolerating this estrogen-robbing Tamoxifen okay. I'm going to keep swallowing the pill every day. Estrogen causes my cancer to grow, and this medication keeps my estrogen low.

I am waiting to start a clinical trial. I soon will be adding either Metformin or a placebo to my list of meds. The medical peeps think insulin and estrogen and breast cancer could all somehow be related, and I have volunteered to be a guinea pig. Honestly, I only agreed to it because the only real side effect mentioned for Metformin is weight loss and well, that is one side effect I wouldn't mind. Knowing my luck, I'll get stuck in the control group with the placebo.

I am waiting to see if cancer stays away. Now my life turns into a series of diagnostic tests and screens to see if the cancer comes back. This fact, this waiting place, frustrates me the most.

So what have I been up to? Healing...and waiting...and trying to forget...and living.