Begin again

Tomorrow we begin again.  

After a long, lovely 7 day reprieve (a mini holiday of sorts), tomorrow we restart the serious business of fighting cancer. It begins with having blood drawn in Clinic 8, and then someone will determine (based on the cancer markers being up, down or the same) whether we start Round 3 of chemo (which means another 3 weeks and 7 individual chemo treatments), or a long and perhaps complicated surgery is scheduled.  

I have my own opinions and feelings about both of these choices, but this decision is not mine, I don’t get a vote.  I will sit quietly on the sideline and let these strangers, in whom I’ve put my faith and trust, decide what’s best for my daughter. 

Regardless of the decision made tomorrow, we officially begin again.

The precious few moments of fun and frivolity we were able to steal over the the last 7 days will, once again, give way to our new reality, cancer. The short glimpses of people laughing and smiling, having fun living their ordinary, everyday lives will be replaced with images of serious faces involved in caring for sick, tired, scared woman and whispers of important, weighty conversations about tumor sizes, cancer markers and differentiated versus indifferentiated cells.  

So today, we take a deep breath, try to steady and focus our minds, summon all of the strength and energy we were able to generate in the past week and we get ready to begin again, because really… we have no other choice.