I always stay up late on Chemo Day, even though I’m exhausted as all get-out.

I’m antsy or something. Maybe part of it is that steroids are part of the treatment. And the antsy feeling . . . . or whatever.

It just took me about five tries to type out antsy correctly. Chemo Brain strikes again! Sheesh!

I forget words. Simple ones, and do those gestures like old people do, like, “what’s that word, Chester?”, and people try to fill in for me, but it’s usually not quite what I was thinking, although sometimes they get it right.

There’s a lot of old person stuff in this here chemotherapy. The hair that’s growing in the middle of my head is pretty white. I have to take what I call “old lady remedies” (laxatives, O-KAY?!) to keep me-self regular or else I either have one problem or the other due to the chemo (I know, I know, TMI — too bad!), and there must be other things but of course I can’t remember. Oh, and I thought my eyebrows and eyelashes were fine but my eyebrows are kind of sparse and I have about four lashes on my lower lashes. Just the lower ones; the top ones seem fine so far (*Judy is right now furiously knocking on wood*).

Oh, who knows what I’ll lose, what I won’t lose. The simple truth is that cancer changes a person. Not just physically but from the very core. I don’t even really know all the ways I’ll be changed yet.

I do know some things. I did an awful lot of complaining and whining about my PBC (Pre-Breast-Cancer) Life and yes, there were some things wrong with it. I don’t write about work here so I can’t address those issues. My family life? — all things considered is pretty damn swell. Other things? — well, a lot of those are things I can choose to have in or not have in my life, so if I have them in my life, let’s assume that I want them in my life.

I complained way too much about things that didn’t matter. I probably still do, human nature and damnable steroids being what they are, but I also must MUST say that today after chemo, I went to the mall and treated myself to three new Italian charms for my Italian charm bracelet. My birthday present to myself, you might say. One of them, and maybe my favorite, is a simple one that says:

I <3 [the heart symbol] my life.

Because I do.

You know what? Life is messy and ugly and sometimes Just. All. Wrong. We all make mistakes, sometimes huge ones. Some of them, there’s no going back from them. Some of them, we can “fix” or make things better than they were, but we leave those like the Walking Wounded — maybe not forever, but possibly for a long time. Or maybe we’ll just never be quite the same.

Life is just downright M.E.S.S.Y. And sometimes really hurtful. And horrible. There are times when things seem absolutely bleak and like the darkness will never end.

But it does.

Why are there so many people going into this Chemo Room fighting for their lives if they didn’t think life was so incredibly worth living?

Winter turns to spring, the sun comes out again, the flowers bloom, and Judy writes a sentence that starts to sound like a damn greeting card, for garsh sakes!!

It’s possible that I’ll lose both breasts, and I don’t care. If the tumors in my liver are taken care of in one way or another, that’s what I’ll ask for, a double mastectomy. Take them off and give me smaller ones, ones that I could wear a tank top in and go braless.

I just want to continue this messy life because even in its messiness, it’s beautiful.

My word, things go wrong all the time. Sometimes, though, things actually go right. Sometimes, the right people do find each other and fall in love. Sometimes, the mother keeps her baby. Sometimes, bonds are formed between the most unexpected people. Sometimes, the news comes back No Evidence of Disease. Sometimes, all of the prayers and good wishes work and the woman works her way back to the self of PBC, the laughing, smiling self that people know better than the grieving self.

Even if I feel like crap tomorrow, still . . . . .

I. Heart. My. Life.

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