The Party Girl's Guide to Cancer

Running around like a sailor on shore leave doesn't seem to be enough within the contiguous United States.  I haven't been to London or anywhere out of the country aside from Toronto in a couple of years and it seems another life, a geological age, 2000 or more years. My life B.C. is like a dream. Nothing feels the same and I am experiencing everything with new eyes.  I have a get out of jail free card.  Kevin is coming with me as he's never been to the UK.  April, my friend since I was 14, will join for a week and we will be there for her birthday.  Emma will be in the UK for a couple of weddings, so we can all have an adventure together.  Real World London style. My good friend Martin's wife Kate also has cancer, and her prognosis is not good.  Rather than torture herself with further treatments, she's facing the inevitable with the common sense and humor the British are famous for.   Keep calm and carry on.  She's having a going away ...

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Like any day it's going to get back and I'm going to have movie cancer.  I certainly haven't lost any weight.  I'm finished with the Taxol which was supposed to be the BAD chemo.  I got a break and now I go to a month of radiation, plus Herceptin IV chemo every three weeks.  Radiation is its own process as well.  It's not what I thought it was, as I was envisioning a mammogram but with more power, that it was uncomfortable and painful.  You hear horror stories, people being burned badly and it affecting other areas.  A friend relayed an experience of a relative and rang the alarm bells since that person had permanent internal organ damage.  Walking down the hallway of the hospital hallway, I saw the iconic "fallout shelter" sign from my post-Cold-War youth.  It looks pretty cool.  I feel like I'm on the Star Trek Holodeck.I see a cover of a magazine in the waiting room, and the woman looks...