I had an echocardiogram today. They are a pretty routine part of my life; I have them every few months to make sure that the Herceptin isn't damaging my heart. So far, so good.
It's kind of boring lying there, so I started to play a little game with myself. When I lay down at the beginning of the test, my resting hear rate had been 65 bpm (beats per minute), when I worried about my results, I noticed that it had shot up to 75 bpm (I could also see on the screen that my heart was whooshing away but I couldn't tell whether it was doing it's job efficiently). I took a few deep breaths and my bpm dropped again. I remembered that I have only bought one Xmas present and my rate went back up into the 70s. Up and down it went (I hope that I didn't affect my results by doing this).
And then it occurred to me that today is December 2nd.
Exactly three years ago, I found the lump in my breast. That day, the world tilted on its axis (I felt it do that as I stood in front of my bedroom closet not quite believing I had this big hard mass on the side of my right breast) and my life was irrevocably changed.
If you had told me at that moment, how the next couple of years would unfold, I never would have believed that life could be as good as it is right now, despite the cancer. Don't get me wrong. If I could choose to have never had cancer, I would.
I hate having cancer, hate being in treatment, hate the restrictions placed on me as a cancer patient and I do still grieve for all I have lost. There are many, many ways, though, that my life has changed for the better since December 2nd, 2005.
Maybe that's why, when I remembered the date, my heart rate didn't budge.
Whoosh! Whoosh!
Cross-posted to Mothers With Cancer.
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