Today you did not steal my day!

Dear Cancer,

For the last eleven months, I have been on chemo which has bullied me around, as you have. I have been weak, and felt horrid most of the time, and sometimes wondered if you would finally get your way and kill me. Just over a week ago, I resolved to climb out of the hole I'd fallen into because of you -- the one that renders me immobile with overwhelming depression and fear. I worked hard to climb out of that hole, brushing off bits of you along the way, like unwanted crumbs. I resolved that you would not own my life anymore, and yesterday was a day you barely existed in my life. While I hate you for what you have done to me, I must live hand in hand with you and not allow that hatred to overcome my life.

I am so excited that yesterday, I did not feel like a woman with stage 4 breast cancer, no I felt like a normal woman - LIKE THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME! HA! I shed you, like a filthy old overcoat, if only for a day. If i did it once, I will do it again, if not for me, then for my dear friend Vicky whom you stole from her family or my aunt who's life you claimed just two months later. I shed you for this whole day, and lived as i have not in so many months. I accomplished tasks others might take forgranted, with glee, thrilled to find that there was still energy left inside me to do more. I baked myself some brownies -- I cannot tell you the last time I baked anything, I have not wanted to, nor been interested in doing so in months on end.

I have dragged myself through day after day, month after month, while you and the chemo beat me up for nine months now. In fact this last round of chemo did not knock me down, at least not yet, and we are on day number three. I want only for the chemo to knock you dead, cancer, which is all that you deserve to be. Dead. No one wants you. You are a life-snatcher, even when you do not kill, you steal lives as you did mine -- now my hiking boots gather dust instead of fresh mud. My soul needs the woods to thrive, and you have snatched that away from me. Today I snatched it back, and i am exhuberant!