cancer- day 62

This is cool . . . since the first biopsy in mid-April, well over two months ago, last night was the first relatively pain-free milonga I’ve had, and Jiminey, I had forgotten how much fun dancing is when you’re not in pain and fear of pain while doing it! And the longer I danced without the twinges of pain becoming more constant and severe (which is usually what happens), the less afraid I was of getting hurt by my partners and the more fun I had. Whew. I was starting to think my dancing was just completely gone from all this stress and pain and resultant lack of dancing, but I had a little glimpse of it again last night, a few moments of remembering what it’s like to be dancing in my partner’s music in the moment, and coming home remembering that I was ridiculously relieved. It had started to seem like my dancing only got worse and worse each time I went, ever since the whole diagnosis thing, and I tell ya, it was to the point that I didn’t even like going anymore. But I kept trying, hoping it would start to feel better again instead of getting worse and worse, I kept trying to remind myself how it felt, to not let myself forget that amazing kind of connection thing (“one heart, four legs”) that we were having in those last few practices with Mark before my doctor found the lump and everything went crazy. Even just last Friday at SFTX, I was still hurting enough that the fear of being led into sudden unexpected pain was keeping me incredibly stiff and resistant, completely unable to relax, which pretty much precludes anything akin to tango from taking place. Now, don’t go thinking I’m suddenly my old self on the dance floor again, far from it, but at least last night I finally believed I’d get back there some day. The last month or so of milongas have been soooooo disappointing, I was getting really discouraged about dance altogether. I even had a period of time where I was like, “well who cares if there’s no dancing in South Dakota where my parents live? It’s not like I can dance anymore anyway.” But, big sigh of relief, I will again some day. And if I’m really lucky, maybe I’ll even get to Buenos Aires for my birthday, if not this year, then next.

I added a little “current treatment status” to the top of my blog page, I hope people who don’t have time to read the tome of musings to find out where we are in treatment will find it useful. 🙂