Today I packed up cancer

...Our lives are better left to chance, I could have missed the pain, but I would've had to miss the dance... (Garth Brooks "The Dance")

Exactly eight months ago I paced back and forth at the Boulder Community Hospital getting up the nerve to call my brother, to call my sweetie, to call my friends. I painted on my happy face. I practiced perfect sales technique -- stand, smile, speak. I pretended to be happy. I pretended everything would be OK. I pretended until I didn't need to pretend anymore. And today -- I packed up cancer.

A pill a day keeps the side effects away, and another pill keeps the side effects from the pill that keeps the side effects away, and another pill keeps those side effects away...and a lymphedema sock, thermometer, various secret herbal remedies, and ginger. By god don't forget the ginger! I shan't think that I shall ever eat crystallized ginger again.

I'm ready. Two boobs, check, overnight bag, check, throw away all my bras for life, check. The morning of my double mastectomy. Kristin, I can't think of a more appropriate time to have the memories of our marathon in New York than wearing this shirt to one of my biggest events.

And I woke. I wasn't wearing a cast (good thing!) so my friends signed my "wall". Well, they also took a sharpie and drew happy faces on my knees and ... OK not really, but it would have been funny!

Into every one's life a little hair must fall! 12 inches!

Second chemotherapy. This is fun. I swear! But I recommend signing up for a root canal first.

And then it's over. Seemingly as fast as it began chemo was over and my debut singing "You've gotta have boobs" began.

For the encore, "Staying alive," before my second surgery to replace the sinking water balloon!

And the after hours party I prepared for that radiation glow.

Beam ON! And then it was over -- 6 weeks in the blink of an eye.

Cancer was a journey. Today I looked over at the most wonderful man I know and said -- and believed -- we're not meant to be on this earth to figure everything out, to analyze everything. We're just here to live and have fun doing it.

A gigantic thank you to those that went before me, to my friends that stood beside me, and for all those wonderful people I get to meet in the future. (And to finally writing about something else besides cancer!)