don't forget the joy, mom

Yani really gave me What-For on the phone last night after I talked to her about the mindshift I wrote about yesterday. She scolded me through frightened tears: "None of this stuff you want to do matters unless you are HAPPY, mom! Macaroni and cheese makes you happy!"

Focusing on being happy is the main strategy I should take, she insisted. I think she's afraid I'll try to be an ascetic who deprives herself of delight and joy while following a rigid battle plan for Operation Anti-Cancer. Wait a second: ascetic or soldier? I certainly don't want to be either one.

The kids and Laura -- and I'm sure others -- want to make sure I acknowledge and appreciate the milestones -- surgery, the end of chemo, the eventual return of my hair, the return of delectable food. No one wants me to have my fists poised so rigidly that I can't embrace joy.

Yani said it scared her that I wrote "I no longer assume that I will survive this disease" in yesterday's entry. She said what she needs to hear me say instead is, "I can deal with whatever I need to do to get better." I can say that. I can deal with whatever I need to do to get better.

I can say that and mean it. But the truth is that I feel safer not assuming health. I feel safer assuming responsibility for health.

Someone once said that growth is the increasing ability to bear competing truths. She and I are both right: the soldier and the singer -- and the sloth! -- all need to come fully alive in me.

Anyway. I'll acknowledge today's milestone. My counts were okay this morning, and I had my last treatment. When I got disconnected from the machine, all the nurses came in with little hats and noisemakers, and I half expected them to break into the "Friday's" birthday song. Then they presented me with the "Purple Heart Award." One nurse assured me, once more (I had asked, once more, naively hoping for a new answer :-/), that in just 6 months to a year I will feel totally well again! Blaaaaat on the noisemaker and give me a wobbly fist bump, girl!

No, but the nurses at the infusion center have been fantastic throughout this whole process, and this little send off was very sweet.

Still, my first thought as I thanked them and accepted my "award" was to wonder how war veterans feel about chemo sloggers getting the Purple Heart Award. I suppose I have been wounded by the enemy, but still.

You see some of the challenges the soldier, the singer, and the sloth are all up against.

Laura and I celebrated by walking my loop. She carried my jacket the whole way for me, to celebrate. We ate leftovers, to celebrate. We are having a quiet evening on our respective computers, to celebrate. We just put the recycling and garbage cans on the street, to celebrate. I am going to bed early, to celebrate today and to be ready for tomorrow. Competing truths.