It's all true...

[Louise O'Brien]

I didn't believe it a year ago when I was lurking. A year ago when I had just finished chemo and was about to begin a year of Herceptin. A year ago when I was pale as parchment, no eye brows, no hair and very fatigued from low blood counts.

It's a different story now. I "feel" healthier, my old energy is returning, the colour is back, and I have a full head of hair.

Monday is my last Herceptin treatment. St. Patrick's Day. Too bad they can't put green in the IV bag. Three weeks from now I'll have the portacath pulled out. I'll be a free woman.

But the emotions I read about a year ago (and had a hard time believing) are there just as predicted. I feel like I'm falling off the edge of a cliff. Just as everyone described. What's next - waiting from year to year for the other shoe to drop? Will it drop? Or is it just a given? Next year? Two years from now? When?

Truth be told, I'm a bigger mess now than I was when I was first diagnosed and told of all the treatment ahead of me. I survived all that because "you do what you gotta do" - and I actually wondered why I wasn't more emotional over what I was going through. It's as if all of this has just hit me and fear is settling in like one hard, cold knot that just won't go away. Is this the begining of the end?

I should feel elated that it's coming to an end but in fact I'm just terrified. I know in my head it's probably a normal feeling and that it will hopefully go away but that's easier said than done.

A year ago, when other posters would describe their feelings on ending treatment I just couldn't understand. I thought to myself - God - I'd be jumping for joy. But my joy is very tempered these days.

August 8 2006: small calcifications detected on mamogram; follow up biopsy.
August 27 2006: diagnosis - invasive breast cancer, stage two, grade two.
Sept. 22, 2006: left breast mastectomy, Er-Pr-,HER2+
1.5 cm tumour. Clear margin, no lymph node involvement, sentinel nodes negative
Nov. 15, 2006: Chemo - 6 rounds; 3 FEC, 3 Taxotere
Feb. 28, 2007: End of chemo
March 28, 2007: Herceptin begins 3X weekley
March 17, 2008: End of Herceptin
April 11, 2008: Portacath out