It's spring again and I didn't know if I'd live to see it

 So the spring equinox is passed and as usual, St. John's doesn't quite feel like spring yet. Winter is always hard on me because of seasonal affective disorder but as of March 2023 it was so much worse. My breast cancer had me forced into menopause at 40 starting last March...so here I was in the middle of winter getting major sweats at 41. There have been some very stressful events involving some friends who are having troubles, and aside from that? All through February I had one foot in the grave leading up to my February 29th CT scan. The combo of it all had my hot flashes triggered like crazy. It feels like a heating pad covering my whole body when it happens and I absolutely hate it.

My last CT before this one was on November 30th, and no joke, I got the results on December 1st. God heard my prayers because I was in absolute agony. You see, my breast went from being very hard and discoloured with a pulled in nipple to looking almost completely normal. This is a good thing only for the fact that now that I can't SEE the improvement my imagination runs wild. My report showed no more shrinkage of my tumours but I am stable. That's fine because apparently Kisqali is namely meant to prevent spread. I was actually lucky to have shrinkage of my tumours because not everyone gets that. But it's now causing anxiety because I no longer can see if it's stable or improved. Only that it seems relatively the same. So I was panicked.

Well, such was the case in February past. It was even worse. I'd watched the movie "The Fault in Our Stars" about 10 years too late. It was a movie I always thought to watch and didn't and I had completely forgotten that the story revolves around cancer. While Mark died of cirrhosis and not cancer, the story hit hard. SPOILER ALERT in case you are like me and still haven't seen it...

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In this romantic drama, the boy is the one to die (though they both have cancer.) But what really hit home aside from the obvious of lost love and me having cancer was this song I'd never heard before by M83. "Wait." I'd always loved their song "Outro" (and I really need to get to it and evaluate more of their music) but...this song, "Wait," from the end of the film...it haunted me. It haunted me like the ghost of Mark. Hearing the words "No time" over and over just really got to me. The wailing of the singer as the music builds. I felt my mortality so strong. I felt Mark. And I felt my Saviour. So naturally I turned it into a video. I've made a lot of videos on my YouTube about me and Mark (as well as fan videos of different things) but I honestly think this is one of the best videos I've ever made. It's on the video page on the drop-down menu as well but I'm going to include it here as well before I continue:

So this was an intense video to make. Many would never believe it, but I was there to see it and hear it from Mark's own lips. He had major regrets. He'd told me he wished he could do his life over. He was scared of going to hell because he'd done a lot of bad things in his life (those are his words.) He also told me he'd asked God for a kick in the pants just months before we became a couple. When I met him while working at Marie's and he'd come in from panhandling, sometimes he was drunk and sometimes he wasn't. I knew about his reputation but for those who got to know him, he was...as I put it often...an unconventional angel. It broke me when I lost him. A couple different people had told me he wanted to marry me so after he died I took his last name in honour of that. To me, he was my husband. I consider him as such, though I have to say boyfriend or partner to some (because otherwise they'd be confused.) There was every intention of going there. 

When Mark died I think my body broke down. Not only had I lost him but before him I'd been in verbally and physically abusive relationships with different people. I had been under high stress for a very long time but...when I lost him there seemed to be a very quick downward spiral. I've included my blogs (I used to have on another website) on here regarding my getting diagnosed with ER+ PR +/ HER2- metastatic breast cancer. I mean...I didn't really have a chance to fight it. I was diagnosed stage four from the get go. 

Fast forward to today...I'm happy to say it was a lucky leap year and my February 29th scan showed I'm still stable. Only this report had more details. My oncologist at the cancer centre told me there is now only one metastasis in my lung, one on a bone in my back and of course in my breast where it originated. She said all my lymph nodes look the size of a normal healthy human being now. I know I will never be cured but I really needed to hear that about the lymph nodes. I also originally had metastasis on an adrenal gland but that all but disappeared and became so small it couldn't be seen on CT scan months ago. So I went from two tumours in my breast, one super large and one smaller, lung mets, bone mets, adrenal mets, and enlarged cancerous lymph nodes to it all looking pretty calm. I know the calm usually comes before the storm but...I have a way of dealing with the storms (or trying to) that I will discuss in a separate post. For now, it's calm waters.