Is this real?

I had a moment tonight when I thought back over the last year.  Has this really happened to me?  It seems so surreal that I, at age 44, have spent the last year battling cancer.  Cancer!  Really?  Did I really sit in my doctor's office and tell my husband "It's going to be fine!"?  Did I really spend my summer pumping poisons into my body to kill what had become part of me?  Did I really have surgery twice?  Have I been fighting my body to heal a wound that started out at as a huge abcess and turned into a gaping 8 cm wound?  Am I really packing this wound every day in the hopes that it will heal before I get too much farther into radiation.  AM I REALLY GETTING RADIATION?  I feel like if I just pinch myself I will wake up and this whole thing will just be a horrible dream and that my life is on the track I want it to be on.  Reality... Yes all of the above did and is happening.  I am surviving what has been the biggest challenge of my life. 

How though?  How did I survive hearing such a horrible diagnosis?  How did I survive 20 weeks of extremely aggressive chemotherapy?  Surgery was not much of a challenge -- in and out in one day at least the first time.  But then...the abscess and infection.  I was so convinced I had my life back I almost gave it away.  Luckily I had some fantastic medical providers who were not going to let me get in my own way.  That's over, but now the wound.  I have spent 4 months trying to get the wounds to heal.  I am having radiation only because I pushed and begged and pleaded to have it done before it was too late.  My doctor is watching me like a hawk to make sure no infection forms.  OH my head! 

It takes only a look in the mirror to know that this has been my last year.  But then again, I have also spent the last year in grad school and will graduate in January.  I will have my masters in special education and will spend the rest of my working years helping students to get the best education possible.  Would I have been able to do that if I was working full time or would I have wrapped myself up in my work and not pushed to get beyond?  I'm not sure which way that would have gone.  I would like to think that pushing myself beyond is what has gotten me through the last year.  I would like to know where this strength comes from and why I cannot apply to the other things in my life I would like to accomplish, like losing all this weight and building a healthy lifestyle.  Maybe this year...

Keeping the faith! :~)
Kim