What a Difference a Year Makes

The Emotional

Last year, on this day, Ithaca was preparing for "snow-meggedon," and I was on my way up to the hospital lab for what would be my last blood test. I worked from home, thankfully, because when the call from the doctor's office came, telling me for the 12th time that I wasn't pregnant, I laid on the living room floor and sobbed harder than I've ever cried before.

I couldn't catch my breath. I instant messaged Hope and she called, just to listen to to me cry, just to be on the other end of the phone. We didn't talk, but she was there. I tried to catch my breath as I paced the living room, not knowing what to do next, not knowing what it all meant.

It was the end, or so I thought.

Fast forward, somehow I've compartmentalized that pain -- and every now and then it re-appears -- and I've moved on. And just as I wrote about the next day, I packed up that plan, pushed it aside and went on to the next.

A year later, I cannot even imagine not doing this. I no longer imagine a little red-headed baby, a tiny little peanut that I would hold in the hospital. I don't even think about that baby anymore. I think about a baby who's about 10 months old -- sometimes she's older, sometimes he's younger -- with big, dark eyes, and beautiful dark skin.

A year ago, I laid on the floor and cried. This year, there are still some tears, but they are few and far between.

The Physical

I have been off the hormones for exactly one year. Over the course of three years, I gained 43 pounds. And while I hated it, hated what the past three years had done to my body, I honestly didn't have it in me yet to do anything about it.

At first, I gave myself until after my birthday. April came and went. Then I thought I would start working out again in the summer. I did -- half-heartedly.

And just as time heals all wounds, my motivation slowly came back. I am a year older, a year healthier.

I'm down 26 of the 43 pounds, and back to being that annoying person who says at the gym "I can't wait to be back here tomorrow."

And the photo evidence -- me on my birthday last April and more recently at a cancer fund-raiser a few weeks ago. Sort of the "before" and the "middle"....