After each treatment, I get areas of skin that ulcerate and take weeks to months to heal (being almost healed then flaring up with the next treatment)  Given my history of skin cancers (and tonight’s reading confirms what my education suggests), these areas are most likely areas with early skin cancers that are being killed by my monthly treatments.  This is good for my survival. Painful for my current life.  

Processing the above odds is hard.  I have to remind myself, the odds of being the first person to see your brain tumor are minuscule.  The odds of my dog knowing and alerting to it are almost as rare.  I have been beating the odds my whole life.  Can I continue to?  

My brain continues to heal from all the trauma of the tumor, surgery, and radiation. My endurance is improving each month.  I am still only at about 60% of where I was a couple years ago.  Each month I am able to see more patients.  Do more with my family and friends.  I am slowly making progress.  I am also paying more attention.  Appreciating all the amazing people in my life.  Even without this disease and diagnosis, I have always been aware of the fragility of life.  The blesssings we are all touched by. 

Living with this cancer and the uncertainty it fosters, I am working harder to express my gratitude and love for my family, friends, clients, and patients.  How amazing and blessed to be able to still be a veterinarian. To get texts, cards, emails from clients telling me I am their favourite vet ever. They come in and see me and their faces light up and they hug me and tell me how glad they are I am still here.  Some even cry with joy as they watch me work on their pets.  Yet tonight, I spent most of an hour being an ear and words of inspiration to a fellow veterinarian who is struggling so deep in her depression she can not remember the joy of practice.  She struggles to get out of bed in the morning.  She wants to stop breathing.  Tonight I talked about my journey this year.  I sent her images of my tumor. The midline shift that has since resolved.  She kept saying Oh My God as she looked at them. I talked of the broken shattered pieces of my heart from the losses I have experienced.  The suicides of friends and family.  How I know in my heart, that while she is feeling so alone, she has touched so many people in her community.  That they would be so upset and lost without her.  In a few hours I will call her again. Help her get up and head to work.  To be clear, tonight was the first time we ever talked.  Yesterday out of the hundreds of vets that commented on her post, she felt the need to reach out to me.  Ask me to call her.  

Make the most of your day my friends.  Please keep me in your thoughts, prayers, etc.