Maintenance

To a cancer patient, being given maintenance instructions by a medical professional is actually a very good thing. In fact, it’s great. We cancer survivors LOVE this.  Take this or that and don’t call me in the morning.  Maintenance provides a form of stability and a strange sense of reassurance we cancer survivors simply thrive on.

Given that chemo is the gift that keeps on giving, like so many cancer/chemo survivors, I am now unable to manufacture the right amount of Vitamin D. Very common apparently and also very fixable.  So, I mega-dosed and today went it to see how well I did.

I went from an alarmingly low rating of 19 to nearly 46.  Fifty is ideal but nearly 46 is apparently really good too. 

Now comes the best part.  I get to go on ‘maintenance’ which means I simply get to take a prescribed amount of Vitamin D every day and move on with my life. 

At least as much as any cancer survivor can.  I say that because five years later Robin Roberts, a poster child for breast cancer survivors if there ever was one, is now battling a rare blood condition and all due to the chemo and radiation she endured to beat breast cancer.  Talk about getting screwed six ways to Hades. And she has to go back and do more chemo.  And then a bone marrow transplant.  Just doesn’t get more grim than that.

Some of us cannot but wonder if we are next. I know from every cheerful phone message I get from my doctors because they all start out with me bracing for the very worse though so far, it has not happened. I tell myself Roberts had a much more aggressive form of cancer and more aggressive treatments than I did, both true.  But this does not negate the very real fact that I am going to battle health issues the rest of my life and many of them will be directly linked to having done radiation and chemo.

Meanwhile, I take my vitamins and I count myself among the lucky ones.

I am still on maintenance.

Such a beautiful word.