Acceptance, Fear, and Dread

I woke up this morning around 4:45 a.m. with intrusive thoughts of my next chemo session. Slight headache and uneasy stomach too. How I would have preferred to remain in my earlier oblivous dreamless sleep state with no conscious awareness of my cancer or my bald head! ...But again, the Internet and my blog are comforting places to come. I know I need to complete my treatments, but it's getting increasingly difficult to use "healthy denial" to get through this. I know the side effects now and believe I will have them, I just don't know the extent to which I'll have them. I've been told by several people that the side effects get worse. Even LP, the nurse practitioner said that as time goes on and I do more treatments, I may need to take more time off work. I really HATE the idea of having to cancel client sessions with little notice. I've had to do it a few times and so far the result hasn't been too bad -- no clients have stopped treatment. But I'm used to being responsible and so my self-image gets shaken when I can't follow through on a work commitment. It's hard for me to accept this. I think I'd like to get to a place of accepting it, just holding on to the idea that yes, of course I'm a responsible person, and if I didn't have cancer and chemo, I'd be showing up for all my commitments.

One of the images that came to mind when I woke this morning was of having "my people," my loved ones holding my hands while I let the toxic chemicals drip into me next Thursday. In this image, my eyes are closed so I can rest, sleep, deny, dissociate. Another image is of having my dear ones hold me as I take each noxious Prednisone tablet, then sitting with me wordlessly, patiently, with acceptance and love as I will myself to keep the pills down, digest them so they can do their work.