Happy? Anniversary

I started my day bright and early this morning; it was 2:45, to be exact. I took Zane to the airport in Kansas City, and we almost made it before I got a ticket (75 in a 65. Come ON!).
Something about the situation kept my brain tingling. Kansas City...lots of snow...something was very familiar. Even the date, March 1, kept jostling for attention in my head.
I had already dropped him off and had nearly made it back out of the city before it all slammed home.
Two years ago today, on March 1, 2011, I had eggs harvested.
Two years ago tomorrow, on March 2, 2011, I began chemotherapy.
I remember the procedure right up to the part where they knocked me out. My stomach looked like a pincushion from all the hormone shots. I was crying roughly five times per hour, at everything; the sky, the way somebody looked at me, the bloated feeling all those shots gave me.
One thing I never cried about in that time, curiously, was having cancer. Call it a happy little bubble of denial. Call it whatever you want.
I was just glad that I got through it without throwing a giant pity party. I didn't even throw a little one.
Of course, had I known then what I know now, I would never have had to have that procedure. If anybody needs some frozen eggs, by the way, I know where six are that you can totally have. Maybe a little freezer-burnt, but other than that, really fine specimens.
I guess. I never met them or anything. I'm just going by what the doctor told me.
And once I got those eggs harvested, I didn't want to wait even one more minute to start chemo. I called Via Christi and begged them to move it up so that I could get crackin'. They obliged, and so it was that I went from one procedure to the next before I had too much time to think about what was happening.
Have you ever gone through something that, at the time, didn't seem like it was anything, but later, you can't imagine how you got through it? Yeah, that was cancer.
It sucked, but it seemed like I had the best possible experience with it anyone could have. I had an amazing circle of support. I had Sarah Burkybile and Marilyn Edmonds to coach me through each step. I had an incredible family (still do).
All of that love and light in my everyday environment helped fill me with determination, even as I got the ever loving shit kicked out of me by all of that poison.
Two years down. I'm no math scholar, but that means I'm two-fifths of the way to survivor status. I don't want to tempt fate, but I am just as much, if not more, determined to beat this thing once and for all than I have ever been.
I have things to do. I have a kid who is going to graduate before I know it.
I have a master's degree to snag.
I have a doctorate to get after that.
My third book isn't going to finish itself (much as I wish it would).
My other goals are much more personal, but that doesn't make them any less real.
The point is, even if you "beat" cancer, it never really leaves you. It whispers after you at the oddest times. It reminds you of its presence every time you pay a medical bill.
I remember it every time I have my blood pressure taken and remember the cuff has to go on the left arm.
I remember it every time I see my scar, or my radiation tattoos.
I remember it every time I fill out a form that asks for past hospitalizations.
We will be together forever, in some form, and I have accepted that.
Still, though, two years feels pretty damn good.
And I still enjoy every sandwich.