It’s every 6 months or so now, not every 3 months, or every few weeks, like it was. But it’s still a hard/scary day. We do our best to stay cheerful, to not worry about the fact that they, probably, won’t ever say “you’re cured/healed/safe”. We do the scans, meet with the doctors an agonizing week or so later, still. And, always, hope.

Every day is a little better. And when we take that step towards better, we realize how many steps we’ve taken, hand in hand, so far and it’s like those deceptively shallow steps you sometimes see, zig zagging across a tall hill. The short step making you feel like your stride is out of sync, the length of the stair always taking more steps than expected so you feel off kilter, no matter how much you concentrate on trying to find a way to alter your steps to speed it up. No matter how much you work at it, you reach the top of the hill slowly and the top, it turns out, is merely the landing at the bottom of the next flight of stairs, the next thing to heal, the next project to tackle.

Every day is a little better. We do our best to not focus on where we were, what has changed. We focus on what we’ve gained, the elevated level of trust, the personal growth, the deeper friendships. Staring down the well of lost things will only drown you. Drinking from the well is poison. Some days, it’s hard to realize we’re still dealing with this, all of this.

Every day is a little better. We are lucky. She survived. We have each other. It’s hard, in the face of people who have lost more, to grieve for what we’ve lost. A teetering balancing act where we have to remember to be grateful for what we got to keep and still, so much has changed. So much will never be the same. This illness still walks with us and informs so many of our choices, every single day. The fatigue, the grief, all the symptoms managed, slowly improving.

Still, every day is a little better.