Well ...

It's finally starting to hit me that I'm done chemo. Huh, that deserves more emphasis:

WOO HOO!!!!! I'M DONE CHEMO!!!!!

Still not enough, but I don't have the linguistic skills to describe it any better than that. Once the really bad days pass I can't quite remember how they feel. I just know there was exhaustion, and an irritation about feeling hungry but being able to tolerate nothing. Now I don't need to worry about it.

I owe some people thank you notes, some for a long time now. I have been so out of whack, half of those notes are actually written and are somewhere under my bed now. I apologize, and I want you to know it's my own damn fault you haven't gotten them, and I do sincerely, incredibly appreciate everything everyone's done. It's going to take me forever to get my life back on track. My house ... oh, my poor neglected house.

This week is better than last week as far as extra crises, thank goodness. I have my new computer, and I think everything else will work out okay. Libby and Charlie were here for the weekend, and that's always nice. The weather was amazing (which made me miss the pool), so we had a great Sterbakov family barbecue on Sunday night. It's always fun to have the uncles around, and it's even better now that my mom joins us. And thanks to Libby, I didn't lift a finger.

I read about radiation, and now I'm kind of dreading it. I don't even want the tattoos. I didn't know it would make me tired. I didn't know it could damage my ribs. Ugh! Enough. Also, now I'm worried about the BRCA test. During the barbecue, my dad mentioned that colon cancer runs in his family. Uhhh ... gene! I never knew there was so much incidence of it there. I thought it was a weird fluke that I got cancer, and I even blamed Ben's mom's side of the family for his cancer. It couldn't have anything to do with the Sterbakovs, I've always thought. Colon cancer incidence is definitely raised with the gene. Women with the gene have a 60-80% chance of ending up with breast cancer, and a higher than normal risk of ovarian cancer. Colon cancer is right behind that. For men with the gene, the big risk is prostate cancer, followed by colon cancer. The gene is passed directly from parent to child. If my dad has the gene, Jill, Lori and I each have a 50% chance of having it. If I have the gene, one of my parents has it. I'd guess my dad, if I had to make a guess now. I still have to schedule an appointment to get my results.

Fun things coming up: tomorrow night, Allison's band concert (7 pm at Harrington), and Thursday afternoon, Jonah's kindergarten music concert (1:45 pm at Larchmont). I think Jason's band concert is June 4, but I haven't received anything about it.