September 21st - and SNOW on the ground.  Oh it comes and goes since the first part of September.  ha ha what a surprise - it's STILL SUMMER!!!  This is my third winter since moving to Canada.  Early definitely.  This is also my third year post chemo.  Thankful definitely.  but with that said. . .

A dear friend who helped me with that journey (he had walked the same journey), told me I would never be the same....normal would never be the same.  Fortunately, I am in 100% recovery.  Unfortunately, my friend was right.  Once you have taken that journey, you never will be the same.

Every year I celebrate several moments.  Several milestones. How I found out.  When.  When chemo started.  Every third week of having to get those white soldiers fighting for more white blood cells.  Neupogen pumped into me every third week for 6 months.  (important notation - in fact very crucial information).  Then there is the day of my last chemo.  What a day.  In honor of that last day, with a perfectly formed head sans hair, I had a friend artistically draw a Crown of Henna.  That was my honoring of beating the devil.  My humble tribute to LIFE.  BUT I never will be the same.  My normal will never be the normal I had before.

There are times when I "sort" of "forget".  Not often.  It always lingers on the back roads of my mind.  In the shadows but still there.  Maybe I'm different then others who take this journey.  I call it the Journey into Uncharted Territory.  We don't plan it.  It comes, sometimes, at the most inopportune moments.  AND then BAM.

Then an offshoot of it all are "friends" who can't deal with it.  Who stop talking or writing you.  You end up evaluating friends - my journey is the "test" of the friends...the associates I had.  The people who hung tight remain.  The ones that were unafraid to ask the difficult question, are still in my life.  AND the one that read me stories or articles via skype while I laid on my bed after chemo...well we married 9 months later in RedLodge, Montana.  My rock.

Normal is not the same.  This is the "new" normal.  And the flood of emotions keeps returning when you least expect it.  The simplest of things can trigger it...a smell...a color....a memory.

Am I unique?  I have no idea.  I only know when it hits I have a dread in the bottom of my stomach.  Like a ticking bomb.  When does this pass?

You're in the Studio with Mrs B