A year ago, this date, I was injected with a cocktail of poisons designed to kill any remaining breast cancer cells. It was the first of eight monthly injections. Turned out, it was the last round because it nearly killed my cancer’s host.
I’m still struggling with the after-effects of the chemo and the sepsis that took advantage of a staph infection lurking in my body after Covid-19 and mastectomy surgeries from almost twelve months earlier. According to the infectious disease expert (part of the team trying to keep me alive), I shouldn’t be here.
When I let myself think about what all has happened since mid-December last year, depression settles in. I wonder if maybe it would’ve been better to let sepsis win.
Then I remember the advantages I’ve had, the breaks, the unimaginable gifts of good fortune that have allowed me to live on, no matter the miseries, the pains and the permanent changes to this 75-plus-year-old body. And I feel ashamed of myself for the tears, for isolating myself from family and friends…for forgetting the blessings of life.
For, I am still here and that is what matters.
I am still here.
