cancer – day 205

Last night was amazing. I can’t believe how many people showed up. Actually, I don’t even know how many people there were, I tried to count in the group photo we took and it’s something over 55. Wow.

And people brought me stuff! I got three bouquets of flowers, and Shaula brought me this beautiful calendar of Renaissance paintings called Beauty & Grace. So thoughtful!

And uff da, Donna made this little speech after the group photo to thank me for the milonga and to say what an inspiration I am to have kept attending Sac milongas and supporting the tango community with my involvement even during cancer treatment. And everyone kept clapping and clapping until it made me teary. This sounds strange, but having cancer actually restored some of my faith in people. I didn’t even realize I was getting jaded from how poorly so many of us treat other human beings, until I had this experience of having so many people be so wonderfully supportive to me throughout my ordeal.

I stood chatting (and danced) too much, way beyond what the neuropathy in my feet would allow, and I’m really paying for that today. But man, it’s so hard to NOT dance! Even when it hurts.

The radiation burn hurts all the time now, and I’m sore everywhere in that area too. Now if I put my right arm straight up over my head, like in yoga, it pulls on the skin and muscles of my radiation site, and boy oh boy is that uncomfortable. I had one excruciating hug when someone lifted me up off the ground last night, and I kind of yelped like a hurt puppy and it took me a few seconds to recover. At first I thought I was going to faint from the sudden sharp pain, but that passed, thank goodness.

I had some really, really fun dances and a beautiful romantic tanda with Mark, and everyone had a really good time. There were even some friends from San Francisco who made the drive out to come to my milonga, how cool is that?