A Letter to my body

Dear Body,

Thank you!  You have put up with so much and are still here, ready for whatever comes our way.  When I was a kid you put up with broken fingers, twisted knees, sprained ankles, even a sesamoidectomy (look that one up on google).  In college you tolerated a night or two of too much alcohol and a cafeteria based diet that no one should live by.  After I was married you helped me to carry and then deliver my beautiful daughter and then recover from the experience. 

Most recently you helped me through the fight of my life.  Cancer was scary and terrible and painful and exhausting but you, body, stuck with it and here I am.  You dealt with high powered chemicals being injected into you.  You have handled countless x-rays, CT scans, PET scans, and MRI scans - who knows how much radiation and radioactive material that equals.  You not only accepted a whole new immune system but you figured out how to keep its strength in check while allowing it to fight my cancer.

In addition to the medical side of it all you dealt wonderfully with the variety of diets that I put you through.  From the apple sauce and jello diet, the popsicle and gatorade diet, the ice chip diet, the clear liquid diet, and (my personal favorite) the "wet" foods diet, you dealt with them all and sustained me throughout.  The "wet" foods diet raised a lot of eyebrows but you never questioned me as others did.  You never asked "what do you mean by 'wet' foods?" or "Why exactly isn't milk a 'wet' food?'  You accepted, without, question that "wet" foods was any food that tasted or felt wet, milk felt dry.

You have dropped from a, perhaps, too healthy weight (ie. maybe a little on the high side) to a far too low weight, and now up to a weight that we can all happily live with.  The low weight made it difficult to walk any distance without feeling week.  It made us think about going downstairs because we weren't sure if we would have the energy to get back up.  It made us take multiple hot showers each day to keep warm despite the 90+ degrees and 100% humidity. 

You, body, brought us through all of that.  You amaze me.  Thank you.

With Love,
Elizabeth

PS. My next letter will likely be to my brain...didn't want to exclude it in the thank you!