Last night I dreamt I could walk.

Last night I dreamt I could walk.

I used to have wonderful, fantastic dreams of flying. I would dream of soaring through the sky, swooping and gliding, powerful and strong.

Now, I dream of walking. I’m walking quickly, zipping through stores and down sidewalks with my long, graceful strides.

This has been a long, hard fight with cancer. It’s been over two years since my first surgery. I have dealt with so much; losing my hair and my energy, gaining scars and battle wounds, learning to live with constant pain. With each blow, I struggled and persevered. But losing the ability to walk has been devastating. Now even a trip to the bathroom has to be planned in advance. Stairs have become impossible mountains. When I left the house the other day and got to the car and realized I had forgotten my keys, I burst into tears. Just the thought of all of that wasted effort was overwhelming.

I am still doing almost everything I did before. I still go to work, do the shopping, cooking and cleaning. But now I have to ask for help with all of it. My co-workers see me pull up in the mornings and they come out to help me with the door and carry my coffee in for me. My sister cooks for us sometimes. My kids do a thousand little things that my persnickety self wants “just so”. Tom has taken over more than half of the shopping and cooking and all of the laundry. Nick has learned how to make my evening cup of tea.

Everyone has stepped up to help out. I appreciate that so much. But I am an independent person; I want to be able to do it for myself! It is hard to let go of the control. I am trying so hard to deal with this. Everything else is so good; the cancer has not come back, my family is healthy and happy and closer than ever, we have everything we need and most of what we want. And yet, I still dream of walking. Every morning I wake up with a glad heart and think, maybe today will be the day I will walk again! Then, I stand up and the pain tells me no, not today and my heart sinks again.

So I dream of walking. The freedom, the joy.

And I keep holding on…