The beginning of the rest of our lives

So I've been quiet here for a really really long time.  It's actually been a nice vacation from internet land these past few weeks.  Last week we spent honeymooning totally unplugged from technology, and that was soooooo nice.  Now I am crawling out from that and ready to share with you the goings on inside my head.

First of all, I feel like I should have written the day it happened, because it was beautiful.  ING race weekend...and sharing that experience with my Husband, Karen, and Rebecca.  The symbolic beauty was touching, and filled with emotion.

Michael has been a sturdy beam of support throughout it all.  He's been there from the very beginning...that morning where I woke him up at 6am the day of my bridal shower and forced him to surf the internet with me trying to make sense of my symptoms and what it could possibly be.  He was there at my primary care physicians office with the bad news.  He held my hand through it all, and continues to be there for me--for better or worse, right?

And Karen...she was there with me the night it dawned on me that I might have Lymphoma those many moons past, and on the eve of my wedding, at my blessing way, she gifted me the promise that she'd run the half-marathon in my name with the Team-in-training group for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society.  And she DID it!!!  She, with the help of so many of you, raised a lot of money for this group to help those with blood-borne cancers.  Karen truly rocks, and I am so lucky to have been able to call her friend for over 25 years!!!

And then there is Rebecca.  Karen connected me with her when I found out about my diagnosis.  I was scared, and it was so nice and incredibly comforting to be able to talk to someone who had gone through the same thing.  Over lunch at the Flying Biscuit I got to hear her story, and to see how she has been cancer-free for 10 years now, with two beautiful children and a loving husband to boot.  She's healthy, and happy.  She is my inspiration.

I remember her telling me, while I was a crying mess, that the beginning was the hardest part--the coming to grips with the fact that you have cancer.  I didn't fully understand that when she said it to me, but now, having gone through it, I do.  August was one rough month, really the toughest I have had to date in my life.  Rough.  And yes, going through chemo wasn't a walk in the park, but it was what it was--we were beating the enemy and winning!!   

So here I find myself, after 6 months of accepting, treating, and beating cancer, with these three people at 6 in the morning in Centennial Park in downtown Atlanta.  It was a blustry morning, with the threat of rain, but the energy in the air was amazing!!  Thousands of people were buzzing about in anticipation of this race--a race that was run for so many different reasons. Here is her story about the experience:  http://teampurpletrain.blogspot.com 

So that was an amazing start to the beginning of the rest of our lives!!!!

And then we headed off to our honeymoon... and it was....perfect...