One More

9 treatments down, one left. After a lifetime of sport, running rivers and martial arts, I can do "10" of anything. 10 sit-ups? got it. 10 push-ups? easy. 10 pull-ups? yep. So ten radiation treatments to the brain is a piece of cake right?
I'm not gonna lie. Anytime they bolt your head to a table in a wire mesh mask, and drive a bunch of outer space rays into your head, it's gonna leave a mark. The fatigue and nausea are staggering....Only ten treatments, you only need to complete 10....
I've had plenty of trainers tell me, "Come on [dickless]!!! You can do one more!" I can hear them yelling at me while I try to perform some physically relevant task as my muscles shake, the urge to vomit looms, and the sweat pours from my forehead to make my eyes sting.  As the linear accelerator moves around my head and cranks up the gamma rays, I can smell the radiation and it makes my stomach turn. Hiroshima anyone? Chernobyl? Okay, I'm exaggerating because (unlike Hiroshima and Chernobyl) my radiation is clean and focused, but make no mistake that the intention is to kill brain cells with radiation sickness. MY brains cells albeit cancerous ones.  One more treatment. Just one.
We won't  know if it's working for 3 months. Apparently, cancer lesions don't just shrivel up and die, although I envision this happening for my own personal satisfaction. I almost wish I could hear those little cancer cells screaming, begging for mercy. Funny thing about Cancer is that it's my own cells. My own cells are trying to kill me! Ungrateful bastards. I have treated this body like a virtual temple! Plenty of exercise, organic foods and great living, yet I am betrayed by my own genetics. After a lifetime of pushing myself to be a stronger, better, faster human, I can only speculate that my cells got a little pissed off from having to constantly recover from doing one more rep, one more set, one more anything and they are having their revenge. I drove myself into a constant state of inflammation  where my cells were constantly being asked to recover and create stronger, better, tissues. Now the great irony is I have to do one more radiation treatment because those same cells insist on growing out of control. The very training that got me here, is the very training I will need to survive. What my cells don't understand is that if they keep trying to exact revenge on me, they are going to kill ALL of me, including themselves. That is simply not an option, so we are at war.
I'm not sure why I have to walk this path. I keep searching reasons why. Where did I go wrong? What could I have done better? My husband keeps telling me, "It's not your fault you got Cancer," but I know I had a role and the only way to keep this from happening again is to address the behavior that got me here. I search for clues and answers and now I've got every Tom, Dick and Harry  trying to sell me on some non-FDA approved treatment that they swear is the answer. At this point, I'm tempted to try anything which is a dangerous place to be for a cancer patient, but I stay the course outlined by my very brilliant medical team. So far, the fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, paleo, vegan, organic, non-GMO, approach has failed miserably. Brilliant minds the world over are trying to find an answer for which I am grateful beyond words, but time is bearing down on me.  I can probably survive this round in hopes that this puts the nail in cancer's coffin, but if it keeps coming back, there will come a time where dogged stubbornness and unbridled determination are no longer successful. I want to beat this, now. The unfortunate reality is there is no cure for breast cancer. You can only beat it back. Until the brilliant minds of the world find a cure, and friends the world over continue to inspire me to tears, I can rise above. I can do one more treatment, shave my head one more time, and wake up one more day because that's what I do. That is how I cope.  There's nowhere to go but forward, and I can do one more of anything. Just. One. More.