A Night without Cancer

Last night Beni and I got to do something we probably won't be doing for a long while - or maybe for the next 15 years, since that is how long it took us to go to our first concert together. We went with two great, long-time friends, The Bucketheads, to see Blake Shelton and Brad Paisley in concert. What a great show! The entertainment was fantastic and the people-watching may just have rivaled it! Lots of cute, drunk, young cowgirls in boots and short shorts and one group of older, totally wasted, white trash two rows in front of us. Until last night I had never seen a woman with a beer gut. "Ridden hard and put away wet," as Beni would say, was the best way to describe her. Entertaining to say the least. I don't think I've ever been to a concert where so much beer was consumed and I've been to my share. At $11. a pop, I stuck with water and am proud to say that I was able to hold my pee the entire time! No waiting half an hour in line to sit in a nasty public restroom and listen to other chicks hurl for me, thank you. Brad Paisley, walked through the crowd in the seats, twice, stopping only twelve rows in front of us, to sing two songs. What a guy!

Somewhere during the show, I remembered, just for a moment or two, that I had cancer. It was surreal and bizarre. I had to ask myself, 'Wait, do I really have cancer, or was that just a bad dream?' It was hard to imagine that here I was, carefree and not thinking about it, but in less than a month, I will be bald and sick from chemo treatments. I made myself snap out of it and enjoy the rest of the night, knowing that those carefree moments would be few and far between in the next year. I know it will be fine and I am not sad. I just know it is going to be a rough road ahead. I know my friends and family will bring sunshine to my dark days and that in a year, I will be putting all of this behind me.

When we got the diagnosis, Beni wondered if we should still go to this concert. I said as long as we hadn't started treatment, or had surgery, why not? It was the best thing we could have done, because it was one big hoorah before I go on a little haitus, and one night that, for the most part, I was able to forget I have cancer.