Something Evil This Way Comes

Well, faithful reader, as you know, I did my first work shift today.
It’s been almost a year since I buggered off to have surgery and expected to have a 6 week recovery period from that operation.
Of course, before that six weeks was up I was already making friends on the chemo ward. I still remember that feeling that I had been sucked up into the engine of a jet. You know, one day I was just happily bumbling along in my life and the next thing I knew I had a 10 inch scar on my belly, hot flashes, and strange men poking me in the wha-zoo.
I’m sure you can understand that it was all a bit of a shock.
It didn’t take long till I felt pretty natural in one of those stupid blue gowns.
And now I am on the other side of that process. Kind of the 180 degrees away from that, trying to crawl back into the real world after having nearly smothered in the land of the nasty-illness-that-no-one-wants.
So, I am trying to move back into that world and today was a pretty major step, what with the going back to work.
Now, to be fair, I didn’t really do work today.
I seem to have been hired into a new position with the same organization and today was a training day. So, I sat with my co-workers and listened to a variety of presentations and it was pretty cool.
The best part was the hugely positive reception I got from my co-workers and bosses.
And that everybody thought that I looked great.
(Everyone says that, and everyone also sounds kind of incredulous when they say it… I always feel like I should look more wretched or something…)
Anyway, it was really, really great.
There were tons of people there that I don’t know, who have been hired in the last year, but all the folks who were there last year were super-supportive and kind and they made me *want* to be back at work.
And it’s also really exciting to remember what it is like to feel competent at something, and to be treated as competent by the people around you.
Because I have spent the last year pretty much being defined by the disease, and that’s understandable, but it’s nice to think and talk about something else and to be treated as a respected co-worker.
I really, really liked that.
I liked it so much that I am not even pissed off that I got a $25 parking ticket on my first day back at work.
That was the day-time chunk of today.

Tonight, there was a “member appreciation night” at my gym and they did a head shaving and cancer fund-raiser.
Two of my good friends, Shaira and Sky, had their heads shaved. By me.
That was kind of fun, and the gym raised over $500 for the Canadian Cancer Society, so that was pretty cool.
Somewhere along the line, I got out’ed as a cancer survivor, and that was cool.
The woman who was representing the Canadian Cancer Society was really sweet, and the staff at the gym were spectacular, and my friends are the best (especially since they have both shaved their heads twice now because of cancer. Hooray for them!)

All in all, it was a pretty good day.

And now I need to go to bed, because I am planning on having another one tomorrow.