AND I"M DONE!

My morning started out like all of the other mornings that I have to get ready for radiation.  I really had to 'grease' myself up this morning  because I am quite well done under my left arm and chest.   I wondered how our skin can stand all of that 'heat' and still stay on my body?  Who knows what my internal organs have gone through.   Mark dropped me off at the front door (as he always does) at Sletten and I ran into someone that would not normally be there!  AHA! I WAS RIGHT!  There was something in the wind!  Mark denied that the girls had anything planned when I asked him this morning but his eyes said other wise.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed some balloons BUT I did not notice that it was my little Autumn holding them....Oh my goodness...then I noticed friends and family all in a bunch waiting and smiling like they had really pulled off a great secret :)   I hugged all that I could before I ran into the 'holding tank'.  OMG,OMG don't let me start crying NOW!!!!!
I got called for my turn and I could feel my tight upper lip start to give up the ghost.  The girls that run the radiation thingy were all commenting about how awesome it was that my family and friends were there to hear me 'ring the bell'.  When a patient is finished with the last treatment he/she is taken to a sort of waiting room that has a bell on the wall with a plaque that reads " Ring this bell three times well it's toll to clearly say, my treatments done, this course is run, and I am on my way."  We read it out loud which is not a problem since I  DO know  how to read :) but I have great difficulty reading with a lump in my throat the size of my fist.  Many tears of joy and relief and who knows what else.  
Actually the tears started to well up while I lay on the table with the girls measuring the exact spot for the beam to zero in on.  My face has to be turned to the right (don't know why) and I have to lay very still so there was a pool of tears in my left socket being kept there by the bridge of my nose!  Please God PLEASE do not let me move and have them radiate the wrong spot!!!   Lots of hugs and tears and misty eyes after I got off of the table.  I will miss these girls just like I missed the oncology staff when I was going through chemo.  
I feel like a little bird that has been booted out of the nest and I am feeling unsure of who knows what.  I feel like my old hard shell , my only protection, is gone and I don't care who sees or knows  ... are you ready for this... How free I feel!  It has been an incredibly tough journey but it has been a journey that has taught me things that I would not have learned any other way.  How great is our God?  The pruning was necessary I know (but did you really have to take the boobs God?) HA! 

I have felt every range of emotion that is humanly possible over the last 9 or 10 months and I am physically exhausted yet somehow energized like I have never been!  Gratitude is not really the right word but I don't know of any other way to express this sort of out of body feeling.   I think that the Lord really is carrying me at this moment.   It is sort of like when mom died with me holding her hand 7 years ago...I did not want to talk about it because it was so special with the presence of God right there with us!  I felt that I would lose the awesome feeling if I shared it with someone that would doubt.  No matter,  I know that God is real and that He was with me every step of the way.  He kept whispering ' Do not be afraid'....and I KNOW that was real.

You know He is real too don't you?  That's why you were praying for me :)  Thank you and may the Lord richly bless all of your lives. 

I don't know if I will continue to blog but I probably will.  There is always something to chat about...right?!