I was musing to my husband last night.

"How weird is it that last year at this time my whole world was reduced to being able to pass gas (okay, I'm not sure that's the terminology I used, but this is a family blog!) so that I could get out of the hospital and go home?".

His response? "Well, that's bloggable!"

Last year we knew that a cancerous growth on my kidney had been removed. Silly us, we thought it was a stage I renal cancer. We thought the toughest thing we'd have to face as a family was an eight day hospital stay and the possibility of missing my daughter's eleventh birthday. Boy were we in for a shock a few weeks later...one that we still are experiencing repercussions from.

But we're here. By grace (and only by grace) we're standing. Scarred, and humbled, but still standing.

There's a surreal quality to the statement "I'm a cancer survivor". For me, it begs a few questions:

--When does one begin to "count" their survivorship? Am I a one year survivor because
I haven't physically had a visible tumor in my body for a year now ; a six
month survivor because that was the last of the chemotherapy, or a five-month
survivor because that was when I finally began to recover physically after the
last white cell crisis?

--Cancer didn't really make me all that
sick, at least until my body decided to try and evict my kidney. The
treatment, on the other hand, almost killed me three times, made me lose my
hair, eyebrows, thirty pounds (okay, that wasn't so bad), most of the lining of
my mucous membranes, portions of my memory, my hard earned muscle tone and
endurance, and a huge chunk of my personal dignity. So...am I really
a cancer survivor, or a chemo survivor?

--Is it just me, or is it
really ironic that I was diagnosed with an "orphan" cancer (now that my
specialist has moved to Atlanta, it feels even more orphan) during the month of
the pink ribbon?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for awareness and I understand
that this affects many, many, people, but all cancers deserve awareness and
funding. Personally, I got tired of people assuming that I had breast
cancer.

--Can anyone truly understand this unless they've lived it out?
Cancer makes for some strange and wonderful bedfellows. There isn't a day
that goes by that I don't pray for Helen (from my first round of chemo in LA),
although my heart tells me that she's with her Savior now; for my clinic buddy
the soccer dad and former World Series ring-sporting Minnesota Twin; for Julia
from the library who is fighting her second round of mets (and who I wonder
about if I don't see her there on Mondays); and for the many amazing individuals
I've "met" through their cancer blogs.

The musing hit again in the shower this morning.

"Do you realize", I pointed out, "that between your short hair and me being bald last year, we're still using the same bottle of shampoo that I bought when we moved here in January, and that it's still a third full?"

That I can reflect on something so silly is good. So is being able to obsess over the color scheme for my daughter's birthday party (don't ask), or fuss over having to wipe mango off the dining room wall (don't ask), or feel my husband run his fingers through my hair.

It means that one year later, life has moved beyond basic bodily functions and back to living.