Pacific Northwest Gardening: MY Charlize and her opportunity to live a wonderful life!, 1 by Soferdig

Soferdig wrote:
The end of Charlize chemo therapy is now! She received her last chemo wed. and we are all excited. My SIL comments below the thoughts of this event. I for one at a distance am thrilled. I so miss my Charlize.
It is very surreal to know that Charlize is finished with her chemotherapy treatments, and that she will not be getting any more poison pumped into her body. It has been all that we have known for the past six months. Our lives have been dictated by chemotherapy and its affects. To know that we are going to experience much different days ahead is very surreal. The emotional response that I though I would have at this point was very different then I imagined. When I arrived at the hospital after work on Wednesday afternoon, I did not know that Charlize had already received her last dose of her chemo; I thought it was scheduled for the evening. When I walked in the room and sat Caedmon on her bed, she looked up with her biggest smile and while bouncing on her knee’s exclaimed with excitement “Dad I am all done with chemo, I had my last chemo today, I AM ALL DONE!” I looked over at Leia with disbelief and we both began to tear up. I gave her a big hug and a soft little kiss on her head, and told her I loved her very much and that she was such a strong and brave little girl; “You did it babe, no more chemo.”

Another aspect of why things remain surreal is because I know and acknowledge that she is no longer getting chemo, but the affects of it are still devastating her body. She is still doing great with normal stools, and the vomiting is remaining at a only a few times a day, but she is also getting paler by the day, and the pain has began to set in. The worst part of this all for me is when she wakes up in the middle of the night screaming in pain, and there is nothing I can do to take it away. Mommy is the greatest medication at that moment; snuggles from mommy coupled with Ativan take away everything bad and awful. The TPN and Lipids are a constant reminder of her fragility and the fact that they are sustaining her function and life in a large degree. We still have another 6 months of rehabilitation of her GI system until it will be functioning normal again, but this week the doctors are going to be weighing in on all the options for how to start the rehab of her GI system and see how quickly we can begin to transition off of the TPN. We know that this transition will not happen for another 3 weeks, but I am looking forward to it with as much anticipation as I did to ending her chemotherapy. It is the Joy of what God has done and continues to show us that gives us the strength to endure and allow him to ripen the fruit of patience in our lives, as we move through this season. God is good and does good and we have been called according to his purpose, our only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given us. (Psalm 119:69; Romans 8:28; Acts 20:24)