Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!

It's great and all that all this treatment is saving my life, but it's left me rather pathetic. I'm nothing like what I used to be like it seems. Before all this crap happened, I was a new graduate student, very excited, and looking forward to everything. I worked out 3 days a week every week, and so I had a pretty good body. I played with our lovely doggie all the time, going to the dog park and what not. My life was actually productive. Now I'm left with very little. Instead of being a fresh grad student, I'm a second year that's just way behind everyone else. I really can't see finishing at this point. I have no clue how I'm supposed to catch up when even now I'm still not well.

My body has certainly gone down the tubes. 30 pounds and nasty stretch marks are just lovely things to see in the mirror every day. I mean, my chest is purple. There's no way around it. I really really cannot stand to see myself. As much as I hate having this pathetic 2mm long hair on my head, the rest is much worse. Even my face looks awful. It's still big and round from steroids (though part is certainly from the weight gain). My nails still split apart and look funky.

I'm tired all the time. I can't even get myself to keep up with cleaning the apartment. And as much as I love Fritz and know he's an awesome guy, I can't help but sometimes wonder why the hell he still hangs around me. I have nothing to offer. I'm just an empty shell, and the shell isn't even pretty anymore.

I secretly sometimes think the chemo and radiation are being wasted on me. I'm never going to get away from cancer, I'll have to have PET scans every year for the rest of my life. When I turn 30 I'll have to get MRIs twice a year because I'm likely to get breast cancer (lovely radiation). And apparently whatever caused my Hodgkin's means that I'm just prone to cancer in general. So I get to expect to go through this again. How many times I don't know. For the rest of my life I'll have to struggle with insurance, cause who wants to insure someone who's probably going to get cancer? And then there's the issue of relapse. As in, getting Hodgkin's again within the next few years. Apparently the treatment I'd have to get if that happens puts chemotherapy to shame. I really really REALLY don't want to find out for myself. I have a 15% chance of relapse (50% if I don't do the radiation).

I've never ever once thought "why me", but I sure as hell think it sucks, a whole lot. And right now, I just can't see a future for myself, no matter how hard I try. All I can see is cancer.

And I'm tried of being told to just snap out of it and get on with life. Like it's no big deal now that the worst is over. But then it's only considered the worst by people that haven't gone through it. For me the post chemo part is harder. Now I'm supposed to magically get better, hop right back into school, be cheery and social with everyone, and act like nothing happened. Well, something DID happen. And it changed everything.