I am happy, very, very happy, - no, ecstatic! to say that I am DONE WITH CHEMO!!! I hope forever, but there are no guarantees of course.  Thought I was done forever after the first time, too.  I am looking forward to getting past the first side effects that hit in the first week, and then continuing to feel much better as Christmas nears.What I feel really good about is that I won't need to be going to the stores and fighting the crowds to do any shopping.  I either already have my gifts, or they have been ordered. That is a big relief.

While I am done with chemo, there is more "treatment" to come.  I will not be having radiation, but instead will have a mastectomy in February and a hysterectomy later on in 2014.  This is to prevent cancer from forming in those areas in the future - if it's not there, there is no place for the cancer to grow, right?  That is the thought anyway.  I had some genetic testing done and I do have a mutated BRCA gene, which is connected to breast and ovarian cancer, along with a few others, but those are the main two.  And those are the two I can do something about.  Skins cancer is another possibility, but I can't have my skin taken off, so I'll just have to be checked for that annually.  Talking to the genetic counselor was anything but an uplifting experience.  He had no good news for me, except to remove things and be checked for other things.  In other words, maybe I'm done with chemo, but I'm not done with doctors and being checked for some kind of cancer on a regular basis.

Still, even with that rather "down" news, there is life to be lived in between doctor's appointments and I'm trying to live it.  There is hope beyond the doctors, and I cling to that Hope in Jesus Christ - always.