Mattox Live

As an adult, I’ve come to love St. Patrick’s Day. I’m not Irish. I don’t go out and get drunk. But for years working downtown Nashville (before it became the insanity it is today), it came to be a night that, no matter what day of the week it landed, I knew I’d be surrounded by some of my favorite people having a good time. Somewhere along the way, I’ve come to go ALL IN on all the green holiday goodness.

I mean… I’m even wearing St Patrick’s Day themed CAT SOCKS today. They’re kinda awesome.

That being said, whenever I’m down in Texas helping my parents in their tax business, I have had the goal of being back in Nashville for March 17th. It’s just a thing for me, and that was the case in 2020. I flew back to Nashville a few days early, fully expecting to be going back in a week. Maybe two. Remember that whole two weeks to flatten the curve thing? Yeah. That.

I didn’t get back to Texas for more than a year.

As such, I look at St. Patrick’s Day as being when my world stopped in 2020. And everything just went sideways. And let’s be real: it’s just continued to go sideways for me since.

Today, though, I reclaim this day as nothing but a positive.

Something I left out of my last blog post, because I wanted to confirm it, was that my pathology report from surgery was the best it could possibly be… as in it showed no remaining cancer cells. Chemo did the job. I now move from treatment to get rid of cancer to treatment to minimize my chances of recurrence.

Today was my first treatment with that goal.

The joy on the faces of everyone at my oncologist’s office when they met with me just further increased MY joy. An acquaintance recently remarked to me, “This is just the start of a really great year for you.” and that hit me hard — in a really good way.

I’ll have hiccups along the way, sure. THAT’S LIFE. But its onward and upward from here. I’m going to look at this day forward as a reset from the crap that started three years ago.

Besides… three IS my lucky number.