This week marks 18 months on my cancer journey.  Eighteen months ago this week I had my mammogram that began my journey.  When my journey first began I was never given a time frame for my healing.  Conventional medicine would have pushed me into surgery before the end of the year.  I could have awakened from this bad dream with only a pill or two a day as a reminder. Right now, if I had had chemo, my hair would be growing back.  Perhaps I would be considering taking off the scarf I had had wrapped around my head for so many months.  I imagine the burns left by radiation would have faded.  By now the doctor could have proclaimed me NED--No Evidence of Disease.  By now all this could have been, more or less, behind me.

Natural medicine wasn't as forthcoming with a timeframe.  No one ever said in six months they expected me healed, or in a year for that matter.  One doctor told me I would know if things were working within a couple of months, but even then there was no promise of healing within that time.  It was simply a way of telling me that if there was no improvement within that time I would need to consider surgery again.

So, I sit here contemplating all of this.  The fact that my cancer, as far as I know, is still here.  The fact that, for all I know, the cancer could be growing.  I think about how I worry at times over every ache and cough.  "Is the disease spreading?" I wonder each time.  I look into the future and wonder , if I will see my children graduate from college, if I will be at their weddings, if I will meet grandkids some day. I don't dwell on these thoughts.  They are simply the same thoughts you might have, the same thoughts many kids have when they wonder if they will get married and have a family when they grow up.  At some point the answer to these questions will become obvious.  For now, I know that I have peace with the path I've chosen regardless of the answer to those questions.  I am not second guessing my choices, and I am content with whatever God chooses to do in my life and in whatever way He sees fit to do it--good or bad.