The beginning of the end is the beginning.

It’s been a few days since I finally received the results of my biopsy.



Negative. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Zero.



The surgeon said he took a good sample and my oncologist joked that there might not be much left in there. According to the results, all that is left is dead tissue.



To say I struggled with the idea of a stem cell transplant would be a large disservice to my feelings prior to the biopsy. There was a moment in the days leading to the surgery that I settled myself into a peaceful state and simply said “no”. This was not going to be my fate. For once, I felt like I had a choice in the matter. Of course, this is a shocking revelation, having felt more like a machine than a human lately. The feeling of getting dragged around was becoming very old, very quickly.



There were times in the past few months when I felt like I was in the middle of an action movie. The kind where there is no plot, but ample budget. The kind where I’m convinced the director is thinking: what else is there to do but blow shit up?



My own sense of body and self was becoming fragments in the collateral damage of treatments and procedures.



After a few days of hydrocodone-induced sleep after the biopsy, I stopped taking the painkillers. This inevitably made me cranky for the few days following this decision. However, my body has been healing quickly. I’m still removing bandage residue around the wounds that were once covered with butterfly bandages. Tugging that sticky crap off my body is in some ways more painful than the healing biopsy holes.



Prior to the biopsy, all things considered, I was feeling pretty good. My lungs aren’t quite at the capacity they had been since before the surgery. However in the past few days, my chest no longer feels like it’s going to explode just going up the stairs. The feeling of being shot has been replaced with a dull ache that tends to occur most when I roll over on my side while sleeping or, oddly, when I sneeze. Then again, these are small potatoes to having a tube in your side, in my humble opinion.



The past week, while recovering from surgery, I had been giddy about random things. I was cooking, knitting, reading, writing, and meditating. All like a hurricane: finding the eye, finding my sense of calm. Savoring those moments in gratitude.



Even my own attitude had changed within the week. Things that didn’t quite make sense before are now making sense to me. Recognizing the moments when I need to push myself and the moments when I need to let myself rest both physically and mentally.



While I had a minor amount of duress realizing I’d have to go through yet another chemo on Friday, with another one scheduled in early September, I hold onto the feelings of recovery post-biopsy. Feeling myself emerge from the cancer fog and the struggle to find normalcy beginning to cease. The blood test right before my chemo confirmed this as well. Within a few weeks of the delayed chemo, even after surgery, my white and red blood cells were all on the better side of normal. It startled me to know my body was rebounding so quickly.



There is a part of me that desperately wants to ask: how soon is now? However, I have to keep in mind, in the push and pull, there is balance. In chaos, there is order. In cancer, there is peace.