It's not so much the physical pain, though that does suck, it's kind of everything else.

A week ago Abby finished up her second year of college. She was home for about 3 days before Emily dropped her off at the airport. She's got a summer internship in Nebraska for 11 weeks. She won't be home until the middle of August. After that she's home for a couple of weeks and then back at school for her Junior year.

In less than a week a major system upgrade is taking place at work. An upgrade that one of my departments is running and coordinating. Upgrades are hard. EHR upgrades are harder. I've done probably 5 EHR upgrades in my time at my $dayJob. It's been about 10 years since the last one I was involved in.

Each one of them was a hard lesson learned. Not the same lesson, mind you, just a hard lesson. Each. Fucking. Time. So yeah, there's a bit of stress around that.

I'm also feeling mentally exhausted from everything. Eat at this time. Take these pills. Should I take pain pills before I eat or wait until I eat and deal with the pain until then? Am I nauseas or is this just stomach pain from something else? Wow, I didn't realize I'd get radiation burns in the front too. Oh shit, did I take my allergy pills? Oh shit, did I take my chemo pills? Why isn't my medication alarm going off like I expect it or?

Wait, what do you mean the recent wind caused a potential fungal spore that might be carrying Valley Fever?

Lots of people in the waiting room today ... best wear a mask.

Walking can hurt. Sitting can hurt. The only relief I'm getting now is from my sitz bath. I'm taking more of those.

But there have been bright spots too. Mike, one of the radiation techs, being super encouraging as I go through my last week. Austin, the Medical Assistant, telling me that from the outside he can't tell I'm in treatment. My writing group with Jeff, Trey, and Mario (with a special appearance from Baptiste) turning into just a chatting session and getting to hear stories from PyCon US. Emily being an absolute rock star through all of this.

A text from Eric asking how I was doing and looking forward to the next time we'll get to hang out.

Meals from friends.

Mario and Baptiste coming out to Palm Springs and having out at my favorite Coffee place (Koffi) for a couple of hours and me getting to feel "normal". The swag bag that they brought was pretty amazing too. So many stickers! And shout out to the guy at Koffi who reminded us all that the song we were trying to think of was Landslide by Fleetwood Mac ... that would have eaten up a lot of our time trying to figure it out if he hadn't said something!

And the pièce de résistance is the talking flower that Jeff gave to Baptiste to give to Mario to give to me! I love it ... Emily, not so much 🤣

Yes, this has been the hardest week from a physical perspective, but it's been made easier from a mental perspective because of all of the love and support I've been getting. It really does make a difference.

To all of my friends and family that have reached out, or just kept me in your thoughts and prayers ... Thank you. I couldn't have done this alone and I'm glad I didn't have to. You all made this process easier to get through. I'll never be able to put into words what it has meant to me.

This was my last week of chemo and radiation. I meet with my oncologist in a few weeks where we'll assess next steps. It could be more chemo (infused this time so I'll get to have a port 'installed') or it could be surgery. It will all just depend.

At the end of each day of treatment, right after I take my last chemo pills, I have a chart that Emily made where I put a star. It kind of started off as a joke. On the first day the radiation techs said I did a good job of not moving which I told Emily. She then printed up a chart with a path and 28 circles and got some star stickers so I could track my progress.

As I put my last sticker on last night I was overwhelmed with emotion. I slammed that last fucking sticker on the chart, high fived Emily, and proceeded to ugly cry. I mean, sobs and drool and just a lot. One thing this entire experience has been teaching me is to not hold in my emotions, so I'm not.