One year ago tomorrow I heard the words, “Really, I think you have cancer.”  Directed at me.  I was standing in Market Street in the cookie isle.  I remember it vividly, but everything after is blurry in fits and starts.  This year has been awful.  And wonderful.  I have cried tears of grief, anger, pain, fear.  I have cried tears of abundance and loved so big that my heart overflowed out of my eyes.  I have outgrown a fear of death from glimpsing the limitlessness that comes after this life.  
  In the last 364 days I have been cut five times.  I have been poisoned by infusions and by chemo pills.  I have been burned to a crisp by radiation beams.  I have lost my hair and then regrown it.  Every part of my body has been assaulted.  And for the time being some of that shotgun stuff seems to have worked.  So tomorrow I’ll add three cuts to my tally and make a HUGE leap forward when I have reconstruction surgery.  I was going to write it’s a leap towards being done with cancer, but that’ll never happen.  I hope that it will be more in the background of a full, long life ahead, but it will always be there, having left it’s scars and instant menopause and litany of maintenance drugs and tests.  And it has left gifts.   It has shown me that I am strong enough for me and my children.  I am the best damn organizer on earth after having cared for three children, worked and done cancer treatment.  (Thank God for my iPhone).  It has shown me that more people love me than I can count at the moment and will go to great lengths to prove it.  That last one in itself is the biggest gift.  I grew up wondering who would take care of me in this big world and now I have no doubt.
  I have been a little crazy this week.  Agitated.  Nervous. Pissed off.  I hope soon I will feel relieved that surgery is over.  I think Dr. Hotter will do a great job, and even if I wake up with no boobs it would still be better than these uncomfortable tissue expanders.  Truly they are medieval. 
  My cousin Sarah Merdian had ovarian cancer a few years ago and succumbed after a sixteen month brave journey through cancer.  She kept a blog too.  It was funny and poignant and a little more g-rated than mine.  Anyway, she ended each post with some punny sign off.  Her sign off before her first surgery was “Yours Til I’m in Stitches.”  I’m sure she’s looking out for me, as all of you are who are reading this.  Thanks for your love and support!

Yours til I’m in Stitches,
Brandie

I want to live my quiet little life in my quiet little suburb, eating my veggies and raising my kids with rainbows and unicorns.  But sometimes we are called to make a stink, whether we want to or not.

Yesterday I saw a post about the Komen Foundation withdrawing their funding of Planned Parenthood.  I thought, “I can’t know that.”  Honestly, I did.  Today I have seen more and more about it so I succumbed to researching the issue and then I just started getting pissed.

So I wrote a whole blog post about it.  Which I then accidentally deleted (!@@#$) and then sat wondering what to do.   I could tell my whole story again, about how I have been helped by both of those organizations because I was underinsured when I got diagnosed with cancer.  But that’s really not the point.  The point is that Planned Parenthood helps cancer patients.  The Komen Foundation is supposed to help cancer patients.  Fried chicken is not good for cancer patients.  (OK, I threw that in even though it has nothing to do with the matter at hand because I’m still pissed about the pink buckets.)

Planned Parenthood is an organization of nice people who are trying their best to help women.  They prescribe birth control so fewer women consider abortion in the first place.  They do cancer screenings.  As it turns out they do the intake vetting and interviewing for the Texas Medicaid for Breast and Cervical Cancer Patient program on behalf of the state of Texas.  Who is against all that?

Politics has no place in a discussion about cancer.  Because cancer affects Republicans, Democrats, young, old, fat, thin, Christians, Jews, rich, poor, Americans, French and everyone in between.  I understand that some people might not support the Komen Foundation because they support Planned Parenthood.  Maybe Komen was trying to look after the greater good.  I’m not sure because they haven’t said much since the news broke that they were withdrawing funding.

I’m not giving them the benefit of the doubt, though, because their leader is a Republican who is anti-choice.  And I think that agenda is getting in the way of energy spent on cancer treatment and cancer relief and I cannot stand for that.  Cancer and abortion have nothing to do with one another.  One of the Komen branches in the northeast has disaffiliated with the mothership and is still supporting Planned Parenthood.  Maybe they are onto something.   Maybe the organization is too big, too dedicated to preserving itself instead of preserving boobies.

I know one thing.  They need to spend less energy building roadblocks to diagnosis and hopping into bed with buckets of fried chicken and more energy helping women survive cancer and kick ass through any means necessary.

  I’m nervous & excited about my upcoming surgery.  On February 17th I’ll have reconstructive surgery where they’ll take my 3-babies-tummy and transplant it to make new boobies.  Pretty cool!  It’s a micro surgery where they literally cut the skin and fat away and transplant it, reconnecting all the veins using microsurgery.  And they will take out these !@#$ Frankenhooters.  It’s a VERY long procedure – eight – ten hours with TWO plastic surgeons.  It will be Dr. Hotter and an associate.  I will be in the hospital for five – seven days after enjoying Baylor Plano’s delicious food and excellent nursing staff.  Dr. Hotter says I’ll have six drains after surgery – so looking forward to that.  I know the drains are good because they drain out stuff that you don’t want hanging around in there, but the stuff is so gross when the drains are emptied.  If you want to see a picture of what the “after” will look somewhat like you can click this link (this is not me, and the before pictures don’t look anything like me, for the record). 
  Lots of people have questions about nipples.  It’s one of the topics I have fielded the most questions about.  So in case you have been wondering and afraid to ask:
  1.  I had both of mine removed with my mastectomies.  She cut a hole around each areaola, took out all the breast tissue, areolas, nipples, and scraped out lymph nodes on the left.
  2.  I will not be getting new ones when I have reconstruction.  That’s a separate, after-market procedure.
  3.  I have not decided if I will get nipples or not.  They wouldn’t have any sensation, they involve a skin-graft from the groin, and are prone to complications.  Plus they cost a couple grand and frankly I’d rather go on a kick-ass vacation if I’m spending a couple thousand dollars.
  4.  You can also get areolas tattooed on.  I am not making this up.

  Recovery from surgery will take a while, as you can imagine.  One of the things that I’m having the hardest time dealing with regarding surgery and all this cancer crap is how it has affected my children and my time with them.  Like most moms I set off on this mothering adventure with the goal of being an awesome mom.  One of the things I learned along the way (from a book called The Mom Factor, BTW) is that to be an awesome mom it’s good if you can be a container for your kids’ emotions.  Hold onto them and feed them back in a way that kids can understand so that they can learn to process feelings appropriately instead of punching holes in walls, doing drugs, tattooing their faces, etcetera.  So when my kids cry I try to remember just to hold them and allow their feelings without trying to fix them or talk them out of them.  Well when it comes to surgery and cancer treatments they cry a lot.  So I find myself in a position of having to deal with my own emotions, which are like the streets of San Fran, and theirs.  That’s four people’s tears!  Of course their dad is a big help, but I think when it comes to emotional issues they come to me.  And I want them to come to me.  Except when I don’t because I’m already overwhelmed.  They will be displaced for about ten days when I have my surgery and it will be very hard on them.  And I feel guilty about that.  I know I SHOULDN”T so I’m working on it.  (Also working on not should-ing on myself  but you can see I didn’t do so hot here). 
  My surgery will be exactly one year to the day since I heard Dr. Radiologist Asshat say, “Really I think you have cancer” after looking at my mammo and breast sonogram and before I had biopsies.  I like symmetry.  I still do not like that Asshat radiologist. 

Lots of loving people have offered help.  I updated the LotsaHelpingHands calendar if you would like to bring a meal.  If you live afar I LOVE funny cards, not necessarily “appropriate” ones like you’d send Great Aunt June.  For the love of god please do not bring dessert.  I’m getting rid of my tummy I don’t need a new one.  Thanks again for all the love and support.  It has not been an easy year but all the ways so many of you have helped have made a huge difference!!

  I think I should be feeling pretty excited right about now.  I had a PET scan at MD Anderson on January 5th and on the 6th found out that it showed no distant metasisis and no cancer in the local area of my first two incidences of cancer.  The only issue was a seroma at the site of my October surgery.  My experience there was “a bit like kissing your sister”, as my dad put it.  Good news on one hand, with a lot of caveats on the other.  They were hesitant to say I’m cancer free, using the word remission instead.  Three times they said, “there’s just no cancer we can see.”  Also they said I have a higher risk of recurrence because they consider me to have been chemotherapy-resistant and because I had a recurrence during treatment.  So I left there pretty much waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Which is funny, because when all this started over a year ago no one could convince me I had cancer.  Now I can’t seem to be convinced that I don’t.
  Today I went to the breast surgeon to have the seroma drained.  The surgeon did it in the office – she just put some lidocaine on the spot and with a sonogram to guide the needle she sucked out about 13cc’s of fluid.  Now I have a divet under the skin where she took out about a melon-ball size of tissue in October.  She said the seroma might recur and that she could drain it again if necessary.  Other than that she pronounced me awesome.  Even said I look cute today.  So I should feel excited about that!  But I don’t.
  And I am normally the excited one.  I’m usually like a golden retriever, going around hugging everyone exuberantly, pronouncing life grand at every turn.  I’m not really in touch with that at this moment.  I think it’s the side effects of chemo and ongoing drug therapies that are tainting my enthusiasm.  For one thing, as I type this my fingers are hurting.  They hurt all the time.  The ones on the right hand hurt in an arthritic way, the ones on the left are suffering from neuropathy brought on by drugs and lymphedema.  My chest is throbbing, my left arm is throbbing and I’m tired.  Tired to my bones.  And my mood stinks.  I have even done things to try to elevate my mood, like meditate, walk in the sunshine, see friends.  It’s all a little tarnished at the moment.
  Drug side-effects are awful.  I see why women stop taking their maintenance meds.  I had a friend that died of breast cancer.  She wasn’t a best friend that I had intimate talks with, but I loved her and sat in many bible studies with her.  Our kids played together.  She had breast cancer, went into remission, and then it came back.  After she passed another friend told me that the friend that had died had quit taking Tamoxifen and wondered if that’s why her cancer came back.  I can see, even after only two months on these estrogen-inhibitors, why women would choose roulette with their lives over taking these damn drugs.  Don’t worry, I’m not ready to gamble yet, but I have a forever deep well of compassion for those that say “fuck it” and don’t take them.  They affect your mood, your joints, your libido, and they cause weight gain.  I gained five-eight pounds in one month on them (Depending on which scale you believe).  And some of the side-effects, like arthritis, stick around even when you get off the drug.  I’m currently on Femara but am probably going to switch to Tamoxifen, hoping for fewer side effects.
  And the lymphedema.  It sucks.  And I don’t even have that bad of a case.  If you look at my left arm and my right you would probably think they look the same.  But they aren’t.  The left one throbs.  Did you know that people who give you a chuck on the shoulder or pinch on the arm ALWAYS do it on the left?  I’m thinking of getting a shirt that says “Don’t touch my left arm!”  I have actually had the thought, “I wonder if they could just amputate if this gets really bad?”  It’s not a good sign when discomfort brings the thought of removing the offending limb.  There are no lymphedema physical therapists in McKinney, and none that I can find anywhere that take Medicaid.  So I have to go to Plano and pay $100/session to get relief.  Which I will do but I’m thinking that our community can do better than that!
  I’m sure I’ll find some joy around here.  I know that what I give my attention to will expand.  Now that I’ve gotten this rotten stuff out maybe I’ll have more space for joy and warm fuzzies.  
  The definition of remission is a period of time during which symptoms of a disease are reduced (partial) or undetectable (complete).  Nobody knows if I’ll be in remission a month or fifty years.  If I’ve learned nothing else from this cancer trip it’s that I need to squeeze everything from every moment in order to be free.  So for this moment I’ll squeeze out the discomfort, anger, distrust, pain and foggy-headedness, be grateful that I am alive to feel all those powerful emotions and call it a day!

The tradition at new years is to make resolutions. To evaluate what you’ve done in the past year and what you want to do in the new year.  I guess the way we humans feel the need to divide time does create endings and beginnings, but, just like birthdays, the first day of a new year is just one day after the last day.  You aren’t a year older on your birthday than you were the day before.  Just a different number.  And it’s all made up. 

That said, I do think there is value in taking stock.  If I don’t spend time reflecting then I don’t have the chance to break unhealthy patterns and start healthier patterns.  This week as I have been reflecting on the past year the first thought I had was, “2011 can suck it.”  It was supposed to be the year that things turned around for me after the ordeal of Chris’ mental health break down, my marriage ending and my mom’s mental/health issues.  2008.  2009. 2010.  They all brought challenges like I had never faced before.  Huge, paradigm-shifting challenges.  And I prayed, practiced asana, wrote like hell, meditated.  Anything I could think of to relieve the suffering.  So when 2011 rolled in I thought I deserved a better year.  We tell ourselves that we deserve that after a bad year, and set ourselves up to feel cheated when a shitstorm hits, which it invariably does because life is a perfect balance of up and down.  And boy did this year bare that out. 

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I grew cancer, what it means for my life and my body and my spirit and my mind, and what I’m supposed to learn so that I can move on from this chapter of suffering.  I gave up the need to know why.  There isn’t an answer for that so living in the need for a root cause was only increasing my suffering. 

As far as what cancer means for my body I never know from one day to the next how much the physical toll of treatment is going to cost at the booth that day.  Most days my joints hurt, especially my right index finger mid-joint.  I have a hard time opening screw tops and holding pens.  My chest aches all the time because of the tissue expanders and various scars.  My left arm throbs because of the lymphedema, sometimes it’s low-level, sometimes it hurts a lot and my arm is weak.  On the bright side my vision is better now and I don’t have dizziness most days.  I haven’t taken pain killers since November and don’t usually take anxiety medication anymore. 

Spiritually I have been up and down.  I had been avoiding meditation for a couple of months, I think as a way of rebelling against feeling better.  Which I know probably seems odd, but I think I was convinced that I wasn’t going to be better so why bother trying.  After bad news and more bad news I was pretty discouraged in the fall.  I was so against meditation that I had actually sub-consciously placed a chair in the way of my meditation altar, and my altar was dusty from neglect.

I sat down to meditate Friday, contorting myself to fit in the tinier space now allotted.  I dusted all of my altar items, being present with each one by one.  A small jar that contains water from the Ganges from my friend Rudra Das, three greeting cards that are especially meaningful to me, my prayer jar which holds the names of people for whom I pray (drop me an email if  you want me to add someone), a silver cross from Chris’ grandma, a candle, a tiny vial of sand from a sand mandala made by Tibetan monks, two painted rocks from the rock fairy that came to me by way of my friend  Patti (one says “strong” and the other “be willing”), a gold mantra card with the mahamritanjaya (death-conquering) mantra  inscribed on it from Swamiji in India, a medicine Buddha blessing from my teacher Nimai, a mala from Cliff and a crucifix from a yoga student.  I’m a Christian, but as my favorite pastor says I get some vitamin supplements from other faiths.  I think it really is all the same. 

When I was satisfied that everything was clean and replaced just so I sat holding the mala and the rosary and the flood gates flew open.  I allowed the tears to come, giving space for the grief and snot and whatever else needed to come out.  I began to feel desperate about the new year, thinking that I cannot handle another year like the last few.  Thinking that I am just so damn tired.  I don’t expect life to be easy but this has been ridiculous.  Then I looked down at the crucifix.  This particular one has a little tiny square piece that completes the circle.  On one side there is a depiction of Christ and on the other is Mary.  I thought about Mary and the pain she endured watching her child die.  Then the verse came to me – “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”  (Philippians 4:13) I didn’t even know I knew that verse by heart and yet it came to me when I needed it.

Meditation reminded me that the reason to have a spiritual practice is to prepare for the storms.  If I had not done so much work, building my spiritual muscle by reading, practicing yoga, writing, praying, chanting, and worshiping then I do not know how I would have thrived in the face of these last few years.  All that work has paid off in verses or quotes that come into my head without me having to search and work for them in those moments when I’m crying on the floor or in the dark of night.   There are eight limbs of yoga for a reason.  Asana, the physical practice, is great for purification and strengthening.  But if we don’t also spend time breathing, meditating, practicing right speech and action, purifying and praying then we get into trouble when our bodies fail.  And no matter what our bodies will fail.  We begin dying from the second we are born.  The more we accept the body as a wrapper for our soul and stop identifying so intensely with our physical form then the more space we create for building spiritual muscle.

I have cried liberally this year.  (Guess even that part of me is a Democrat).  Some of the tears have been of grief and anguish, and some have been of joy and gratitude.  When the tears are falling, no matter the cause, they feel the same.  They feel free.  When they fall my heart feels alive and flowing; not taking root in one place but wandering through the emotional field like a sweet wind.  

These reflections gave me a resolution for this year, which is to reduce the thought “I can’t.”  If something is my desire and within my control then I can do it or have it.  If it’s not in my desire or under my control then I won’t.  But “I can’t” is toxic.  “I can’t” is the same as “give up.”   I can live another year with cancer if that’s what happens.  I’ll have a PET scan on Thursday at MD Anderson and get the results on Friday, then I’ll know more about what these next moments will look like treatment-wise.  Whether I’ll have none or still more I surely CAN do whatever is called of me.  Another Bible verse comes to me often and points me away from worry and “I can’t” and towards abundance.   I remember it as “Don’t worry – the flowers are perfect and they don’t worry at all!”   (The real translation Luke 12:27).  I’m still perfect and still here which means I already DID, so I know I still CAN!  Bring it 2012.

  Lots has happened since I last blogged.  Right after Thanksgiving a good friend got her breast reconstruction using transplanted tissue from her abdomen.  The surgery took NINETEEN hours.  NINETEEN hours.  That is not a typo.  Even the thought of this makes me pale.  She did finally get out of surgery after 1:15 a.m. and I went to see her the next day.  She was sitting up in bed talking to me and this was reassuring.  But the next Wednesday she had to have an emergency surgery to have a blood clot removed.  Then the next day she had to have the entire flap on the right side removed because it was not going to live.  Now she’ll have to heal and have reconstruction AGAIN in three months or so on the right side.  The left side is doing well.  When one of my fellow cancer patient friends endures something awful or gets bad news it’s very upsetting for the rest of us.  I have pondered why that is – I think it’s partially projecting someone else’s crap onto our own situation, partially because we love each other and don’t want to see each other hurting, and partially because we all think this cancer nonsense is impossible.  She is home now and recuperating well.
 I finally got an appointment at M.D. Anderson after all that paperwork gathering, which involves driving around to various doctors’ offices and then faxing stacks of reports.  I also drove around to get CD’s and films with various scans on them.  Once the last bit of my paperwork was received on Wednesday morning, November 30th, they set up an appointment for me on Monday, December 5th.  Poof!  Just like that! 
  I rearranged my life and left Sunday afternoon for my appointment.  I was nervous about going.  I realized upon waking that Sunday morning that it was possible I had signed myself up to be a pin cushion.  Or worse, to risk getting bad news.  Neither of those scenarios is acceptable.  Still I got in the car and drove in a ridiculous spitty rain all the way to Houston, adjusting my windshield wipers constantly.  Intermittent slow.  Medium.  On all the time.  Intermittent.  Fast.  For five hours.  Finally I got there, found my friend’s house and relaxed.  It was lovely to reconnect with an old college friend and meet her husband.  (Thanks again Joanna & Mike!)
  The next morning I went to register at MD at 11.  Then met up with my cousin Jane and had lunch.  She is my first cousin twice removed.  Translated, that means she was my granddaddy’s first cousin.  We chatted about family secrets and love affairs and it was lovely.
  The Mays Clinic is dedicated to cancers of the breast, ovaries, uteruses (uteri?), cervixes and any other female cancers I might be missing.    One thing that I found fascinating about lunch in that building was that I realized I was surrounded by other female cancer patients. When I was bald I felt like I was the only person like me everywhere I went.  (I know, you smart asses are thinking I’m one-of-a-kind with hair or not, but that’s not what I mean!)  There is an instant kinship among cancer patients, as I imagine there is with other populations that involve great trials and tribulations.  The air of familiarity in the restaurant of the Mays Clinic felt like a security blanket.  I almost hugged a stranger just because she made eye contact with me. 
  When I went to my doctor appointment they took my vitals of course.  I have shrunk an INCH this year.  An inch!!!  My blood pressure is fine, though, and I only gained six pounds even though I haven’t run since February.  Overall not too bad.  I waited in the little room with cousin Jane and then the Fellow came in.  I didn’t know this before, but Fellows have done residencies then have chosen to go on for even more training.  I think she was twelve.  MAYBE thirteen.  I realized I’m now old enough for someone to have gone to medical school, completed a residency and now is almost considered an expert in something can be younger than me!  Oh well.  She went over the timeline she had made based on my records then went out to get the doctor.
  My doctor, Dr. Koenig, is a woman about my age who looks a lot like my cousin Shelby.  She was very even-tempered. She also went over the timeline and asked what I hoped to get out of coming to MD Anderson.  I told her I had grown a distrust for my doctors because they told me I had a complete response to chemo when I had less than a 50% response.  She asked how they were measuring my tumor and I told her they were just feeling around there, no sonograms.  Then she asked me something no doctor has asked me until that moment.  “How did you feel about the treatment?”  I told her that I thought the chemo was working at first.  That I, too, felt that the tumor was getting smaller.  And that the pain I had felt was gone for the first three or so cycles.  But then it came back.  My medical oncologist said that’s normal, just the nerves rearranging themselves as the tumor shrinks.  I didn’t think that’s what it was, but I discounted my own feelings because I figured he was the expert. Plus, I was told you get the six rounds, no matter what.  Dr. Koenig said something like, “Well here, when a treatment stops working, we stop the treatment.”  Ah ha.  (Note to self:  You are an expert in You.  Please stop forgetting that!)
  The other issue that came up is my hormones.  My ovaries have been hibernating since April.  That’s a nice way of saying that they abruptly stopped producing the estrogen that I’ve been accustomed to for the past 26 or so years and I have been in menopause ever since.  I take a hormone blocker for any small amounts that come from other sources and the doctor monitors my blood to make sure my ovarian function hasn’t returned.  Dr. Koenig said the problem with that is that at some point it probably will return and if I’m taking the hormone blocker with working ovaries it actually has the opposite effect and will cause me to produce more.  Since the cancer cells in my body feed off estrogen it’s important that I have none so that they cannot grow again.  She recommended I receive injections every four weeks to keep my ovaries asleep.
  “Injection” to me translates to shots.  Well, be warned.  It can also mean they jab a hollow pointy tube that is way bigger than a run-of-the-mill hypodermic needle into your gut and then pull a trigger which shoots a pellet into your abdomen which delivers a time-release dose of sleeping ovary medicine.  Every four weeks.  Hysterectomy was already on my list for next year, which is good because I do not intent to get stabbed in the gut once a month for the next decade or so.
  Dr. Koenig said that my treatment has been “reasonable” thus far.  She ordered a PET at MD Anderson on January 5th and I’ll see her on the 6th for results.  Lots of people have asked where I am in treatment and whether or not I’m in remission.  I am not currently having any treatment except the aforementioned hormone therapies.  And I won’t know about remission until I have the PET in January.  And I am okay with that.  I don’t feel the need to hurry it up, and I probably will have to pep talk myself down to have the scan.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  Sometimes knowledge is power.  Sometimes it’s hard to tease out which one to root for.
  One more thing!  I have been the recipient of so much help and love this year, and that has continued into the holidays.  Karen Shackelford, of kare-nforcancer.com sent Ann and Carole to put up a tree at my house.  They brought a tree, and ornaments, and let my kids help them decorate it while I sat sniffling (I have a cold) and watching.  The organization is all about helping cancer patients at Christmas time.  What a LOVELY gesture and I cannot tell you what it meant to not have to mess with the tree.  I just wasn’t up to it.  And now we have a beautiful tree that is shining on me as I type this.  Also, the gentlemen who is 2nd head cheese at my car repair place (Economy Transmission in McKinney – go there!!) called to tell me he had something for me and the kids.  I went over there and he gave me an envelope with money and a gift card and a note that said I had been an inspiration to him.  People.Are.Good.  Amen.

  My favorite Thanksgiving tradition does not involve food, football or the Macy’s parade.  It’s the Turkey Trot in Downtown Dallas.  Dallas is the location of the original YMCA Turkey Trot, which started at White Rock Lake a long time ago.  It later moved to Downtown, with the start and finish lines at City Hall.  I find the energy at that race exhilarating and when you run eight miles in the morning then you can have two pieces of pie  – pumpkin and pecan – and have no guilt.  It’s usually chilly and the last mile or two is uphill but that adversity only makes the finish-line better.  This is the first year in seven years that I have not run in the Turkey Trot.  In fact, last year’s eight miles were some of the last I ran before I started having health problems.
  I was a little bummed out about not doing the race.  Instead I made homemade cinnamon rolls and ate them with my children and my love, in a warm house, and listened to laughter and a little sibling rivalry and found myself thankful that I lived to another Thanksgiving.  It’s cliche, I know, but this year I am aware of my mortality in a deeper way than ever before and realize that if I had not gotten treatment I might not have made it to this 4th Thursday in November.  And when I realized that I knew that I was in exactly the right place this morning. 
  I have been creating a mental list of other things for which I’m thankful – some big, some small.  (in no particular order)

-doctors, of course, but even more than them I’m grateful for all the people that work for them, who without exception remember my name after the very first time I meet them and who make torture seem a little less awful with their smiles, hugs and the love that each one gives.
-freezy, numby spray for the skin over my port when they are going to access it for chemo, blood draws, etc.
-broccoli and apples
-my iPhone.  I’m contemplating starting a charity that gives iPhones to cancer patients who don’t have smart phones because I do not know how I would have kept myself organized without mine.  Going through treatment is complex financially, physically, organizationally and my iPhone helped me keep track of everything.
-Bill Maher, Tina Fey and all the other people who make me laugh
-holistic healers.  My other charity idea is to help people in treatment get alternative therapies as well because they are a lovely compliment to western medicine.   
-parties in my honor and vacation sponsors
-beautiful friends who donated, participated, prayed, danced, wept, cooked, nursed, sent cards and gnashed teeth for me.
-the ability to write my observations, feelings and light bulb moments and be a conduit for others to have a glimpse into what this year has been like.
-yoga.  yoga = union and I have felt that union so often this year, knowing that there is no line between past and present and future, or me and you, or Texas and Oklahoma (despite what we Texans sometimes claim)
-music.  Nothing cheers me up more than dancing around the house with my babies singing songs I love at the top of my lungs.  ‘Instant Karma”, “The Sound of Sunshine”, “Better Days” and “Mountain Hare Krishna”.  And nothing makes me feel more soulful than Tracy Chapman “All That You Have is Your Soul” or a gospel version of “Amazing Grace”
-the beautiful, strong, wise survivor women I have the pleasure to know.  It’s a crappy way to join a sisterhood but a beautiful experience to be enveloped in it.
-tears.  I used to cry often as a child.  I think it helped me survive to adulthood.  Somewhere along the way I forgot how to be soft enough to allow tears to flow.  This year that softness grew bigger than my body could hold and had to flow out.  That leads me to…
-Cliff.  He has let me cry on his shoulder a lot this year.  Not that pretty cry that makes my eyes just the right shade of crystal blue.  No.  The ugly cry with shaking and a red puffy face.  I’m sure he had other things in mind for this year than to nurse me through cancer treatment.  But he never complained, never refused a request and never waivered in his love for me. 
-healthy children.
-my ex-husband who has been flexible with our childcare arrangements and picked up my slack in the fun department this year, and with whom it’s easy to raise our beautiful children.

I could go on forever because I’m blessed beyond measure.  But I’m off to dance around the house before pie-eating begins!  Happy Thanksgiving!

  My last day of radiation was Tuesday.  It was quite a milestone for me.  I sobbed like a baby for an hour afterward.  Part of it was relief.  Going to Plano every Monday – Friday every day for 41 days was exhausting.  I knew it was taking a toll on me physically, but I had no idea how much of a toll it was taking emotionally and mentally.  Wednesday I woke up and felt like a whole new girl.  I upped my walking to two times around Towne Lake.  I worked.  I had no cancer appointments!! 
  Over the weekend I got to ride in Santa’s sleigh in the parade when he came to Fairview.  It was a beautiful evening with perfect weather and Christmas magic.  I felt like I was a kid again.  Then last night came and I was in a foul mood.  Today I realized the reason I’m in the dumps is because after five days off from cancer drugs, doctors, and radiation therapists I had two cancer-related appointments today.  One was for PT for lymphedema and the other to the medical oncologist, who is my primary physician again now that I’m done with radiation oncology.  The PT went fine – most of my arm is smaller than when they measured in September, and the part that is bigger is only 1cm bigger.  Considering I had all that radiation that is a much better than expected outcome. 
  Dr. Jones, the medical oncologist, gave me a prescription for Femora, which is the post-menopausal estrogen blocker that I’ll be on for the next ten years.  The brochure, which is covered in pictures of women over the age of sixty who have gray hair and wrinkles, says that Femora is for post-menopausal women with early stage cancers.  None of that applies to me, but he assured me that it is the best option for me because my family has a history of blood clots and Tamoxifen has a higher risk of blood clots than Femora.  I am resentful of having to take it, even though I know it’s a choice.  I just don’t think I can pick the “just don’t take it” choice and sleep at night.
  Part of the process of this year for me has been grieving the body and life I had before I got diagnosed, and surrendering the idea that I will get that body back.  I will not.  I now have this body.  I know nobody has the same body they had on February 28th because we have all aged.  But the body I have now has six news scars and four tiny blue dot tattoos, a pissed off liver, numb fingers and toes, a swollen left arm, a bad case of CRS (can’t remember s!@#), hot flashes, radiation burns, joint stiffness and pain (which I’m told will probably get worse with the estrogen blocking medicine) and visual disturbances, which are probably a form of brain neuropathy from the chemo pill.  Some of those things will get better, like the neuropathy, the incision pains, the arm.  Hopefully I can detox my liver.  The burns will certainly get better, but the skin and muscles around there will forever be changed.  I will not resume my cycle and will probably have a hysterectomy next year.  This is my new normal.
  I have sent my entire medical history and shoe size to MD Anderson.  Hopefully I’ll hear this week or early next about an appointment date to go for a review of my case.  Since by my doctors admissions I’m out of the “recipe book” I think it’s best if I go there to make sure that my treatment plan for the future is the best.  I’ll go back to the breast surgeon in December, have another PET scan in January, then hopefully reconstruction in March.  That’s my current plan anyway.
  I have been enjoying my walks in the morning.  Even on days that I’m extra tired, or it’s cold, or I have too much to do I still go walking at the lake.  I feel connected with God when I see the trees and the water and ducks.  It’s as if the lake habitat is one body that I become a part of for the time that I’m there.  Lately on those walks I have been thinking about happiness and how it’s not the absence of tribulations.  In many ways this has been the happiest year of my life.  My children are all healthy and perfectly childlike, reminding me to play and have fun as often as possible.  I have a wonderful man in my life who adores me.  I feel more loved by more people than any other time in my life.  My friendships are richer.  In this year I have learned to cultivate joy in some pretty horrific moments.  If my joy were dependent upon perfect health I would have missed so much.    For me, joy is being present in the exact moment that I’m in.  Even if that moment is one where I’m crying so hard that snot is pouring from my face, if I find gratitude for something, even if that something is the ability to cry, then a shift occurs and the moment is transformed, bringing more ease.  More room for joy. 
  I reminded myself of that joy today when I was grouchy.  It helped.  I’m looking forward to spending the week with the kids, and to a Thanksgiving celebration with family.  Mostly I’ll be reflecting on all the wonderful blessings this year has brought.  Happy Thanksgiving!!

  This year is an exercise in ridiculous, and last week was the epitome.  I took our sweet dog Meatball to be put to sleep on my way to radiation.  That right there is crazy.  As I sat in the treatment room waiting for Meatball to get a catheter put in his leg a coordinator for MD Anderson called about the appointment I’m trying to set up to go for a second opinion.  I couldn’t answer since I was in the middle of something else life-changing and devastating.  
  I knew for a while that Meatball was not going to make it.  He had a tumor in his sinus on the left that was inoperable.  It was causing breathing difficulties and pushing his eye out.  I hadn’t told the kids all that – I figured hearing that their dog had a tumor was a little close to home, especially since Meatball was going to die and I didn’t want them to think that’s what was happening to me.  So I told them he had a problem with his nose and that Meatball might die. 
  I have never made the choice to have an animal euthanized before.  But it was pretty apparent the time had come, and he went peacefully.  Cliff was there with me, and we both cried, as did the office staff.  Meatball was well-loved, and showed us that the best way to be there for someone is just to be present, with no expectation of ball-throwing, treats, or whatever the person-equivalents of those things would be.  He laid in bed with me for days at a time after chemo, going outside to pee only 2x/day so that he could keep his vigil.  He is already very missed.
  I only have four more days of radiation now.  I completed my original 33 days in the two main areas they were treating.  The surgery interrupted one of the areas, though, so I had a seven day delay from that.  Then because the margin was only 1mm under my 7 cancer cells that they removed on 10/26 they are treating the remaining radiation as though I had a lumpectomy with bad margins.  What that actually means is that I’m getting extra radiation, just on that incision (which isn’t all the way healed, BTW) which will be over on November 15th.   Oh, and Rad Onc said that he was encouraged by my surgery pathology because treatment effect was evident.  He said, “This means we have a chance.”  Which is good news!  But I didn’t realize we thought we didn’t have a chance before.  So sobering good news.
  Radiation has been much harder than I thought.  Because I take the Xeloda  (chemo pill) the radiation burn is really bad.  I am taking pain killers to sleep at night and even with the two stupid creams it’s awful.  I think the creams are just to make patients feel like they are doing something for their care.  I am weary of going to Plano every day, Monday through Friday.  Weary of getting on that table, half-naked, with my arms over my head and praying that they get me lined up just right.  Weary of getting my blood drawn once a week.  Weary of my arm hurting from the nerve damage to the surgery.  Weary of numb fingers.  And of my body being controlled by so many outside forces.
  I do see the light at the end of the tunnel (don’t worry, not the death one).  Tuesday will be here before I know it.  Then after that I’ll have a little cancer hiatus for Thanksgiving.  I’ll still be in this healing body but won’t have many appointments.  Hopefully in December I’ll be traveling to Houston to MD Anderson for them to review all my scans and reports and surgeries, blah blah blah.  My hope is that they will say that all my treatment so far is exactly what they would have done, and that moving forward my doctors all have the right ideas.  I’ll get on Tamoxifen, heal from radiation and my two recent surgeries before the big reconstruction in February or March.  
  I continue to be grateful almost every single moment for all the prayers, love, food, money, gift cards, greeting cards, rides and support in my life.  I am blessed, and I am not alone.

  I haven’t blogged in a while.  I’ve been so tired getting radiation and preparing for surgery that I haven’t had much to say.  Also I think I lost my sense of humor this week.  The radiation has started to really burn my left side, leaving blisters and some raw skin under my armpit.  It causes a low level of constant, nagging pain, which in turn makes me have a constant, low level of crankiness.  I’m taking a 1/2 a hydrocodone twice a day to take the edge off. 
  Monday I went for radiation, bloodwork, and pre-op at the hospital.  Tuesday I saw my Rad Onc for our regular weekly visit where he looks at the burn and then tells me to go ahead and take the pain killers.  Already on that, doc!  Wednesday morning I went to radiation before surgery.  Then I checked in at the hospital for day surgery.  I was cranky checking in because of that whole “nothing by mouth after midnight” thing.  It’s no secret that I’m cranky without breakfast.  It is the most important meal of the day, after all.  (I’m sure that by now you have noticed a theme:  cranky).  The nurse had a hard time starting the IV because I was dehydrated.  Duh. When you can’t have water you tend to dehydrate.
  I did not get taken back for surgery until noon.   On the bright side the surgery was quick, and went “fine” according to the breast surgeon.  I did not barf afterwards (probably because there was nothing to barf up!) and did fine in recovery, except for getting several cases of the hiccups, which lasted over the next two days.  Hiccuping after surgery on your chest is not fun, what with there being an incision and all.  Luckily I was well medicated and mostly just wanted to sleep.  I don’t get why they always try to wake you up after surgery when they’ve just given you the best sleepy drugs ever.  I think we left the hospital around 4:30.  Came home, my mom cooked me a grilled cheese sandwhich and my grandmother folded clothes. 
  I continued to hiccup and sleep through Thursday as well.  I did go to radiation like a good little patient yesterday.  Today I had my post-surgery appointment with the breast surgeon.  She said that the pathology showed that it was SEVEN cancer cells.  Seven.  She is quite certain she would not have hit the right place for biopsy if there had only been seven cells at the time, so she thinks that radiation has been shrinking the nodule for the past two weeks.  She said the margins were clean but the closest margin was 0.1cm.  She said we’d watch the area beneath the new incision to make sure no new nodules appear.  That seemed like good news, but we didn’t leave feeling awesome about it for some reason.  I went to radiation and now I’m on vacation from cancer treatment for the weekend.  
  The side-effects, sadly, are still with me.  I am badly burned under my armpit.  There is an incision about 1 1/2 inches long above my left breast.  I was hoping for symmetry, but it’s actually a little lower than the port incision scar.  I’m tired.  My vision isn’t super-duper.  My head hurts.  And my breasts hurt.  But my kids are here, filling up the house with light and love, and we have fun planned.  And naps.  And I have fresh flowers in my room.  And delicious food in my fridge.