Finished Chemotherapy
I'm home from the cancer centre. While I still have the bottle for the rest of the week, this is the end of this treatment series. It's the last time I'll visit the cancer centre. I have one final followup appointment before I transfer to a new oncologist.
I thought about ringing the bell as I left, and absolutely would have been welcome to, but it didn't feel like treatment was over, because it'll never be over, and couldn't do it. If I get another break, I hope I'll take my chance.
I'm a sentimental person. I cannot describe the confusion of emotions I'm feeling. The cancer nurses are some of the kindest people I've ever met, I hate that my health necessitated our meeting, last year I was so ready to say my goodbyes and never see any of them again because I was going to live, and now, after another very hard round of chemo, a much more bittersweet goodbye, with the promise of a new chemo centre and more difficult rounds of treatment.
From the comments
James Petrosky: I very rarely think about the R word (not that one, but I guess also that one), but I am today, and it isn't easy. I wish I could articulate it all better. But it's impossible.
James Petrosky: Frankly I'm being dramatic for the fun of it, the word remission has no special power.
Holly Kay: Love you cousin!
Rebecca Liddle Blair: In the work I do, I am often meeting people on not their best days or times; still, I am grateful for the experience and the time together. I’m guessing the nurses and care professionals that worked with you probably feel that way about working with you as well. It’s a different kind of relationship with complicated feelings to go along with it.
Brennan Moline: I am also a deeply sentimental person, despite my best efforts to avoid it. My parents still tease me about how I cried when they got rid of our old fridge or old car. When I left for college, I cried in the bathroom, hard. Sentimentality always felt like a curse.
Brennan Moline:I don't know that it is, anymore. I don't know how you feel about sentimental moments, but the fact that human connection can be so strong that we can miss it before it's gone feels both deeply beautiful and deeply sad.
Brennan Moline:I'm sorry I made this about me (part of me wants to delete this comment), but I feel what you're saying
James Petrosky: Brennan Moline my new experience is ending an interaction with a friend, both knowing it's the last time. My knew surreal experience is knowing that this is a skill, and one I'm going to get fairly good at fairly quickly. So long as I'm only a little awkward about it, I hope we can focus on the beauty in a strange and terrible situation.
James Petrosky: The way society handles grief and related emotions has never really worked for me. And I didn't outright say it, but this is all partially about grief. And for me, talking about grief in a personal and largely secular/nonreligious way is very important. Which may not have been your intent, but it's how it was taken.
Brennan Moline: James Petrosky Absolutely agree.