Cancer feels like it has so many finish lines and milestones – and each one opens up a whole range of feelings.

Tomorrow will be my last day as someone with a port.

I though this procedure would feel like an afterthought – but it’s actually hitting a nerve.

I was speaking about this today with my therapist, and she said that it seems like this is taking me out of limbo.

It does feel like closing a chapter – and it’s bringing up some many feelings.

I feel like I should be desensitised at this point – both physically and emotionally – but instead it feels like it picks up the echoes of everything that can before, both in my body and in my heart.

There is relief and gratitude – I still feel a certain sense of shock that I have made it to this point. I feel so lucky.

There is also fear – it feels really scary to be putting my body through yet another procedure. This is planned to be under local anaesthetic, so I will be awake. But even though it is comparatively minor to them, it feels like a big deal to me.

And as I discovered today, there is also a great deal of grief.

It’s opening the floodgates to release some of the feelings I hadn’t had the space or strength to work through just yet. There is grief over the things that have been lost – my breasts, my health, and a certain loss of innocence that I think always accompanies painful losses.

But I was surprised to discover that I also feel a certain sense of loss that this time is over, that this door is closing.

It seems absolutely insane to me that I feel this way, but it is the end of a season of my life, one laden with a huge amount of change and struggle. And even though this period in my life has been so hard, it has also had a lot of beauty and deepened my relationships with the people that I love most.

It feels strange and scary to be moving into an unknown future, aware that I have been transformed in ways that have not yet bubbled to the surface.

It is a peculiar thing to be getting this done during October, which as my Facebook feed constantly reminds me, is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Just as the world is shouting about this disease, I am taking one step further away from it.

48 hours from now, I will no longer be hosting a foreign device in my body.

I will no longer be tethered.

Will I feel free?

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash