Shout Out

An important method of coping during the worst of times for me was to embrace the positive.

I don't want that to sound overly simple. If you are hearing birds chirping or seeing Pollyanna's bright smile, let me mute the tone a shade. When I was pushing a walker painfully down my hallway, when I couldn't lift Little H and certainly couldn't run and play with him, when I was lying in the bathtub bleeding through the night, when I was cleaning bags of dangling puss from my surgical drains... there was no positive. Or certainly not that I could see. 


But there was always a next morning. That's when I would get up again, lift my eyes to a God I hoped would sustain me, push back my shoulders, and ask myself what I was going to do that day.

When I was coping with Spondylitis alone, this was more difficult. I simply put a whole lot of hope in fixing the problem, in being cured of the debilitation ripping through my normal. When cancer joined the ugly picture, I had much more help with attempting to cope, heal, and find joy in the present. Organizations and opportunities arose to offer aid.

I found - and continue to find - myself embracing all manner of positive opportunities. Be it retreats or classes, lectures or conferences, photo shoots or outlandish seize-the-day-activities, I appreciate taking part. It's important to me to bring benefit into the picture where I can - to be able to look up on occasion and say, If I didn't have cancer, I wouldn't be here right now - and that's a good thing.

There are so many foundations, organizations, groups, and people out there extending bits of peace and joy to those in trying times. People make a difference, of course in our individual relationships, and also in our organized efforts. So this one goes out to you, the nonprofits that profit so many of us.

Here are the cancer support organizations that have been of exceptional benefit to me:

Cancer Support Community - for all people with or supporting someone with cancer

Foundation for Living Beauty - for women with cancer

First Descents - for young people with cancer

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Love Foundation

This Thanksgiving, I had the honor of being selected to share my story at The Dr. Susan Love Research Foundation “Week of Thankfulness” blog.

Same story. Retold anew. Because, yes, I have a lot to be thankful for.

 

Check it out at:

Pink Out: 5 Ways to Show Support for the Cause

Need I tell you that October is breast cancer awareness month? This might be inspiring. Or it might make you want to throw something at the next pink ribbon you see.

Breast cancer awareness has taken off in the last couple of decades, hugely in part to the efforts of the Susan G. Komen Foundation. Today, we see pink ribbons on everything from our yogurt to NFL player’s uniforms.

A lead breast cancer researcher in the Los Angeles area once explained to me that the funds and attention are behind breast cancer research because, unlike other cancers, it widely spans age-groups and outcomes. So, in short, all kinds of research can be conducted within the breast cancer field. The key to curing all cancers will probably first come from a breast cancer cure.

This makes me feel better. At least there is good reason for all the attention.

After doing a guest post at TheMomIWantToBe.com on ways to show support this month, I was inspired to compile a Top 5. If you too want to show your support for breast cancer awareness and the quest for a cure, the below are this survivor’s top suggestions:

1.) Join Army of Women

You can actually participate in studies to help eradicate the disease. All types of women, with/without cancer, all parts of the country can join and be a part of the research.

2.) Go 1-on-1 with Your Support

There are millions of women with breast cancer. Chances are you will know someone who is diagnosed at some point. As you should toward anyone undergoing a tragedy, have enough compassion to go out of your way to help them meet their everyday demands during an overwhelming time. And expect nothing in return.

3.) Give

Research takes money. Give to a reputable organization you can trust. Definitely check them out first; there are a lot of marketing gimmicks out there that actually give so little of your spending dollars to breast cancer research that they are not worth your time or money.

For example, if you’re buying Yoplait yogurt (which, before public outcry, was made with dairy stimulated by the hormone rBGH) and mailing in your lids so that 1 cent per lid will be donated (and paying 46 cents for a stamp), perhaps your efforts would be better directed elsewhere.

Really, countless causes and organizations are vying for our attention, support, sympathy, and of course, money. Within breast cancer research or breast cancer awareness alone, there are thousands upon thousands of organizations claiming their utility. Like everything in life, we have a responsibility to sift through the information available to us and make smart choices.

Here’s a helpful article on vetting nonprofits in general: Make Sure Your Donation Counts.


4.) Promote awareness

I want to say we all know there is such a thing as breast cancer. But reminders why you should be checking yourself, getting recommended mammograms, and seeing a doctor if you feel something unusual never seem to be unproductive.

Wearing your support for the cause is an easy way to do this. Plus, on a personal level, there is something really moving about someone making a statement on your behalf with a shirt, a bracelet, whatever it is that says, “I love this person enough to wear this pink thing, thinking of them.”


5.) Walk

Komen and Revlon and whoever else is doing walks these days are great. I like that people physically push themselves and therein are taking a measure to be healthier themselves. I like that money is raised. I like that hurting people have a constructive place to go and DO something in the name of their hurt (e.g., “I walk in honor of…”).


 

I feel a little like a minority being asked a question in which the answer is supposed to represent an entire race’s views. But I think most would agree these are some basic, constructive suggestions.
 

Happy October. Here's to finding the cure.

A Story Shared

This week, telling a piece of my story for our local magazine:

Stepping into Reality through Little Shoes

On a warm summer afternoon, my brother and his family arrive to spend the day at the beach with us. With them they bring just about everything their daughter has outgrown in the three years of her life, delivering us several large plastic boxes of pink. 

Passed down baby items and clothes have become a perk of being the youngest in a large family. My brothers have gone ahead of me and had 2, 3, and 4 children, respectively, making Little H the youngest in a brood of 10 grandchildren for my parents. Our daughter will be the 11th and final of their generation.  

After a day of summer fun, we return home to our family room that looks like about 200 gallons of sherbet melted across it. As soon as the beach sand from the day is washed down the shower drain, the pizza sauce from dinner wiped from the dining room table, and H's tired, sun-kissed head on the pillow, I am upstairs opening those boxes of miniature couture.

I want to see all the tiny ruffles, ribbons, and bows. I unfold and refold one pint-sized shirt, pant and dress after another. I'm so used to big-wheeled vehicles, sports balls and four legged-critters, I keep smiling at the delicate flowers, butterflies, and hearts. I hold them up and feel happy, marveling at both the sudden flood of pink that is soon to wash over our household and the extreme but fleeting delicacy of a newborn.

I open a small box filled with shoes and slippers in various sizes and rummage through the scuffed patent leather and velcro bows. I lift a tiny pair of sandals out and stare at them. I keep running my fingers over the soles that will one day soon hold my baby's soft feet. MY daughter; I have a little girl. She exists. Her feet will be real and she will slide them into butterfly sandals, pink Converse, and rhinestone flip-flops. She is real. I keep touching those tiny shoes in a frozen state of reality.

I spent the first half of this pregnancy afraid of losing her; the second half is tipping toward a fear that she will lose me.

Almost daily now, I battle varying degrees of fear that I will not live to raise my children. In the same way that I am now not prone to imagine the future in general with any sort of clarity or certainty, I have been hesitant to imagine raising a daughter with any sort of detail or unabashed enthusiasm. I don't want to anticipate joy that may not be mine to experience.

She will have long hair, probably with lots of curls. Will I be there to brush it and braid it for her? She will take dance lessons and wear tutus at some point. Will I be there to watch her twirl and plie? She'll want to go shopping and have sleep-overs; will I be the one she cries dramatically to when her friends leave her out? Will she be good at sports? Will she inherit my family’s musical ineptitude or her father’s keen ear? Will I ever know? Can I dare to even imagine being there to help her pick out her wedding dress? 

All of those things in my life would have been lacking had I not had a loving mother to share them with. I hurt to realize the possibility I may create lack in her life. ...As I do that my sweet baby boy may grow into a young man I may not experience ...As I do that my dear husband, the only man I've ever loved, might need to move on to loving someone else someday. How does anyone ever accept these heartbreaking possibilities?

So tonight I sit with the tiny shoes. The reality of my daughter creeps through my guard as I dare to imagine her little feet slipping into those feminine soles. She does exist. So much after that may be uncertain, but she is real.

Words I Need to Hear

Bobby doesn't realize I need him to tell me this. And sometimes, I need him to tell me over and over.

 I tell him.

He writes it down for me.

Clipped Wings

A Christmas where I couldn’t quite lighten my heavy heart came and went. I tried not to let my family see the pervasiveness of my sorrow, but this is clearly shaping into a season of darkness. Hope and gratitude are slipping out of my tired fingertips.

With the passing of the holidays, we return back to our quiet house with bags to unpack and a fridge that needs filling. My medical appointments resume and welcome us right back into the fold that is our lives.

I meet with one doctor and discuss the recommendation that I have my ovaries removed. I reluctantly dismiss lingering hope for a future pregnancy and plan an oophorectomy (surgery to remove my ovaries) for the coming months. I meet with another doctor and have blood drawn from my ankle, because once again, my damaged veins will not spring forth for the prodding nurses. I revert back to my safety chant, “one, two, three” to help me through the failed attempts. 

I ask the Oncologist my odds for survival, in a grasping attempt for as much information as I can attain. After a long speech about the meaninglessness of odds, he tells me the numbers. I can’t stop hearing them: 80/20. 

The survival rate, the chance I will still be alive and cancer free in ten years, is estimated at 80%. Conversely, statistics indicate there is roughly a 20% chance this will not be over for me. Aggressive treatment and preventive measures aside, there remains a 20% chance breast cancer will show up somewhere else in my body over the next decade. 

I am trying to understand that I might die soon, and that I have to live with that.

Meanwhile, my friends’ lives are moving on. They have gone on to have second and third children. They are having baby showers and buying houses, changing jobs and taking trips. The contrast between life carrying on normally for them and my sphere of challenges is a painful reminder of what might have been. 

I long to be one of them again, to associate mortality with old age, to live without prevalent fear or pain, to be able to take things for granted. 

Instead, I find myself skittering around like a wounded bird. I can’t lift off the ground and empathy weighs heavy on my back, as though I’m suddenly in-tune with any suffering around me. The sadness of the world is too much to ache for.

I walked across the lobby of a medical building today behind a little girl wearing what was clearly a wig. She couldn’t have been but five or six, walking lightly toward the infusion suite and holding the hand of what must have been her daddy. How does any man deserve the pain that father must endure watching his baby go through chemotherapy? 

…How do I hold it together when I lose new friend after new friend from my support group?  …How do I continue to understand God as loving and gracious amidst trying to teach myself that the allowance of suffering is necessary on earth?

I’m just a little bird, fluttering around on the ground. It’s okay if I leave this life, I attempt to convince myself. Because I’m not sure how else to cope with 80/20 yet. 

Confronting Lies About Cancer

Thank you for your well-intentioned theories on how I could have avoided cancer or how I can treat it alternatively. But, let's get a few things straight.

 


 Lie # 1: A Strong Immune System Destroys Cancer


Even the healthiest of immune systems does not recognize cancer. In their complexity, cancer cells have learned to disguise themselves as normal, healthy cells. Cells infected with viruses or bacteria send out danger signals, which inturn sets the immune system in action. But cancer cells manage to escape attack by a normally-functioning immune system and grow and multiply without triggering an immune response.
 
It is a problem of undetection.


 
 Lie # 2: Cancer is Caused and/or Cured by Dietary and Nutritional Habits


A balanced diet is recommended as a way of reducing cancer risk (and being healthy in general.)

Certainly, obesity is a major risk factor. A balanced, nutritious diet, healthy weight, engagment in regular physical activity, and avoiding alcoholic drinks are known preventatives. Reportedly, up to 1/3 of all cancers can be avoided by such measures.

That being said, cancer is a genetic disease resulting from a variety of mutations and alterations -either acquired over time due to environmental exposures and behaviors (such as diet) or inherited. Dietary habits and lifestyle choices contribute to the development of many cancers, but are not the sole cause or preventative measure.

There is no evidence that certain foods alter the environment of an existing cancer, at the cellular level, and cause it to either die or grow.

Further, supplements have not been found to correct genetic alterations. People should meet their nutritional needs through their food choices. While supplements may help mediate vitamin deficiencies, taking doses above what the body can use provides no known added health benefit.

The World Cancer Research Fund - American Institute for Cancer Research report Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: A Global Perspective, published in November 2007, offers the following recommendations for cancer prevention and for good health in general:

1. Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight.
2. Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day.
3. Avoid sugary drinks. Limit consumption of energy-dense foods (particularly processed foods high in added sugar, or low in fiber, or high in fat).
4. Eat more of a variety of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes such as beans.
5. Limit consumption of red meats and avoid processed meats (such as lunch meat and hot dogs).
6. If consumed at all, limit alcoholic drinks to 2 for men and 1 for women a day.
7. Limit consumption of salty foods and foods processed with salt.

Lie # 3: Cancer is a Disease of Mind, Body, and Spirit


Again, cancer is a disease caused by genetic alterations. These alterations can occur through our own behaviors (cigarette smoking, obesity, sunburns...) or, they can simply be inhereted.

How personality or stress levels influence genetic alteration is largely unknown. Of course we should all strive to be happy and living lives pervasive with love and peacefulness - because that is undeniably a better way to live. There is no evidence, however, that such a life will prevent or cure cancer. 



Lie #4: There are Easier Ways to Cure Cancer


Yes, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are all vastly unnatural and all have drastic and unpleasent side effects. But these are currently the only approved treatments in use because they are the only treatments that produce results in conclusive numbers.

No matter how much lemon water I drink, how few animal products I consume, or how much yoga I relax into, I'm pretty confident I would still have a growing tumor, if not for the surgery I underwent. And I might still have stray cancer cells in my chest wall, if not for the radiation I underwent, or in my blood or bones, if not for the chemotherapy.

I would have prefered to skip all of that and just had a coffee enima or a whole lot of alkaline water. But my preference to prolong my life is paramount.

~    ~    ~

I did not cause my cancer. I inhereted a gene mutuation (BRCA I). Implications to the contrary are hurtful and inaccurate.

I can not cure my cancer by myself. I can (and certainly do) take measures to be as healthy as possible, physically and mentally, but at the end of the day, they are only that: measures toward an aim that is, above all, out of my control.


 
 

Much of the information used in this article was gathered from Johns Hopkins site,
 Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Make-up and Play-dough

A week later I’m lying in bed on another cool, dark morning. This time, the sound of little feet sprinting across the carpet awakens me. I open my eyes to find my 2-year old son, Little H, standing inches from my face.

“Are you having a nice day Mommy?” he happily inquires.

I can’t say that I have much to go off of, but yes, I am having a nice day.

My little charge and I are off to the Cancer Support Community for a program by The American Cancer Society. I am bringing him along, with high hopes, because I don’t know anyone in the area I can call for two hours of babysitting on a Monday morning. I have packed a very large bag of trucks, markers, snacks, and play dough to help keep him busy.           

We arrive a little early and walk down to the beach. I’m imagining a pleasant stint among the seagulls and the waves. Little H, on the other hand, is consumed by an attraction to the purple play dough he spotted in the busy-bag. He is not responding well to my rational argument on the advantages of waiting until we’re done at the beach. I hand it to him. 

I enjoy the bright sunshine and the crashing waves. I watch two scuba divers coming out of the water and dozens of seagulls trotting across the sand. My child enjoys standing there and squeezing his small wad of play dough - and doesn’t even drop it in the sand.

“The Look Good… Feel Better” seminar we’re here for this morning provides women undergoing cancer treatment with a bag full of donated cosmetics and detailed instruction on how best to use them to combat appearance-related side effects.

Five other ladies and I are seated at a long table covered in boxes of cosmetic goodies, mirrors, and instruction booklets. Little H is a perfect child during the two hours of discussion and demonstration. He’s quiet and content, playing with empty make-up boxes and that wad of play dough, eating his crackers and pushing his trucks across the carpet.

Little H was right, today is a good day.
 

  

 

 

Rise and Shine

It’s 10 AM and I am still in bed. 

It’s a preschool morning and I’m awash in satisfaction that Little H’s tuition check is money well-spent. On Tuesday and Thursday mornings I spend a lot of time in bed, luxuriating in the quiet and relaxation simply because I can.

I understand this is a very unique spell in my adult life, where I don’t have work consuming my time and, on these mornings, also don’t have a child to look after. It feels akin to taking a sick-day - when you actually are sick - but also enjoying the quiet and restful time of recuperation.

Sort of like this. But yet so not. 

I am grateful to have these days during this tumultuous period of treatment. Completely removing the obligation of work (thank you medical leave of absence) is an important aid in my physical endurance, but even more so, my emotional state. I need to shed as much as possible during a period of overwhelming stress. I need silver linings, such as a couple of months off of work, to help me cope.

So, without work and without my little guy, I simply sit in bed this morning.

Today is lovely bed-weather; it’s cool and gloomy. Bobby pulled our big, puffy down comforter out of storage a couple of weeks ago, but he has it carefully folded to spread across his side of the bed only. Thanks to the monthly injections of Lupron I now receive in order to shut down my hormone production (and avoid a repeat of my bleeding episode,) I’ve been thrown into immediate and severe menopausal symptoms. I have hot flashes so frequently that I can barely keep covers on at night, let alone goose down.


Like this. But sans the make-up.

Poor Bobby has taken to sleeping in socks and fleece to compensate for my keeping the heater in the so-cold-it-might-as-well-be-off setting. I lie next to his burrowed body in a t-shirt, maybe a sheet, and awaken over and over again in a drenching heat that sweeps over me in an instant. I swear I can feel the individual sweat droplets rising out of my scalp. The cotton turban hats I sleep in (think Persian man’s Dastar meets 1950’s housewife) come on and off at least a half dozen times in one night. I’ve actually developed a system for how I push them off so that I can find them in the dark to pull back onto a scalp that grows cold quickly when the hot flash subsides.

This is not exactly how I envisioned my 20’s unfolding.

But… at least they’re still unfolding. And, well, I didn't have to go to work today, and I'm still in bed at 10 AM. That is worthy of appreciation.

Susan G. and Me

 

Thank you Komen L.A. for the honor of a feature in your e-magazine. 

Department of Oncology. Blah.

Living in the dormitories my freshman year of college, I spent a whole lot of time around 18 to 20-something year olds. Older adults were also a regular part of my sphere of contact. But children were rare. The sight or sound of a child on campus would make for an unexpected, welcome surprise.

Taking my son, Little H, to my Oncologist’s office is a bit like that. He’s an anomaly, a tiny body of life and health running (sometimes loudly) through a space that is uniform with sickness and old age. Eyes naturally rest upon him, the liveliest thing in sight. 

My oncologist’s suite is a particularly dark place, as places associated with pure awful tend to be. Tiny exam rooms curve around the front section, doctor’s and nurses’ stations form a bank of computers in the center, and a crowded row of chemo infusion chairs lines the back wall, forming one busy and bland circle of (primarily unpleasant) activity.

When I’m here without Little H, which is usually, I often feel the circle of gazes fall on me. My relative-youth draws attention among a population that is heavily skewed to an over-60 crowd. As I absorb stares, I imagine the brains of my compatriots taking-in my presence in this place and my bald head as confirmation that, yes, I am one of them. I too have befallen the tragedy of an interrupted life. I too am here to push back death.

But there is no tragedy in Little H; he is just life. 

In the small suite of ugliness, I want to share him with these patients and doctors. But at the same time, I want to shield him from the place.

He, of course, is oblivious to the weight of his surroundings. He lies with his face in the waiting room carpet and pushes his trucks around. He sets his half-eaten pear on the waiting room chair and then picks it back up to continue eating. He uses the pen from my purse to draw on the paper sheeting they put over the exam table. He rests his head right on the yellowing pillow of the table, just to the side of the protective cover. He serves me imaginary cheeseburgers and strawberry ice cream off the stainless steel over-the-bed-table. He touches every knob, screw, and jar in the place. 

He keeps my attention on him, just where it should be.

These people in here probably are not awakened from their nightmares and hot flashes by a little voice singing, “The Wheels on the Bus.” They likely are not in a stage of life where a small person is relying on them, every waking day. They may not have such a constant reminder that life is fast and beautiful.

Sometimes I share him with them, even if just for a moment as we move through this place.

So, So True

I'm afraid I don't know where to credit this, as I haven't found the original source. But it's too hilariously true to not share.

My Pal Soy Patty

Time for breast MRI number two, the indicator of how effective my treatment thus far has been. (In other words, is the chemo shrinking the tumor?)

The Radiologist is the same one I had for my first MRI a couple months ago. We remember each other. She’s about my age, maybe a few years older. She wears her hair tied back like I used to, she makes a lot of eye contact, and she bows a little when she says goodbye. I wonder if she remembers me more by my face or by the cancerous images she views on her screen. Anyway, I like her.

Today she has me in her office to start the IV, through which she’ll insert dye contrast during the last scans. Thankfully, the needle goes in easy enough and we’re left chatting for a few minutes before the machine is available. 

She’s looking over my charts and commenting on my height to weight ratio. “I’m 130 pounds too! Actually, 135; I just gained 10 pounds,” she tells me. “But I have nooooo muscle. I’m just like a big, thick soy patty, or something.” 

I laugh at her analogy.  She continues to describe her lack of exercise and comments enviously on my toned legs. I’m a little stupefied at the irony of her coveting anything at all about my body or health at the moment.

Cancer doesn’t follow clean rules about who will get it and when. It will defy conventions on prior health, age, gender, or even family history. It’s not predictable or understandable. There are things we can and should do to bring our risk factors down, but even so, cancer, like most other diseases, can creep up on anyone, at any time. So, while I may be a lean fish next to my soy patty pal here, I’m still the one with a needle in my arm and cancer in my chest.

I climb on the table to lie face-down, as I’m directed. There’s a white, bowl-shaped head rest at the top that fills my forehead with painful pressure as soon as I settle into it; it feels like the entire weight of my body is concentrated into the space between my eyebrows. The bowl also confines the flow of air to my face - not an ideal situation for a person suffering from nausea. I’m imagining vomiting into all that white and still having to hold still for the remainder of the tests. 

The prickles of a hot flash descend not long after I’ve been inserted in the MRI tube. I can feel the sweat collecting at each hair follicle remaining on my head – all 12 of them. The flush of heat severely challenges my ability to remain still.

I can do this. This is a small challenge. I’m picturing floating in a cool pool of water… diving below the surface, the calm, the quiet, the water muffling the loud banging and clanging of the MRI machine.

“Here comes the dye,” says Soy Patty through the intercom. A strong chemical odor wafts to my nostrils just as I feel the liquid being pulsed into the vein of my right arm.  My weak stomach is fluttering; I feel so sick I actually laugh. Yes, I really am lying uncomfortably in an MRI machine, with bruised veins, sick from chemotherapy, and having a hot flash. This really is my life.

The imaging only takes about 15 minutes and then I’m rolled out and allowed to stand dizzily on my own two feet. I receive Soy Patty’s small bow and best wishes, get my “toned” but unfortunate self dressed and head out with a bright, red indentation smack between my eyes. 

A Model of Imperfection

When a friend asks if I will participate in a photo shoot for a breast cancer service announcement, and it happens to fall on an afternoon when my husband can be home with Little H, I agree. I’m a little hazy on the facts of what’s going on, but it sounds like a fun way to help out.

A wealthy Texas oil man is funding the project and is present at the shoot. His lovely wife, who screams money from her jeweled ears to her designer-shoe clad toes, accompanies him. Both are very kind.

8 of us “survivor” women are gathered to provide our faces. Actually, make that 7 survivors + me. I think I’m still just “a patient,” not yet having survived the ordeal in its entirety and earning the title. The other women all have their hair – and lives back. They are also 20-40 years my senior, as is common at these events. But they are all now my friends, dear to me for our shared experiences.

As a fairly tall and thin gal, I dabbled in modeling in high school. Well, dabbled ever so lightly, until the day came my agent told me I had to lose weight or I wasn’t going to go anywhere. That would be when I decided where I wasn’t going to go was back to that agency ever again. Who needs anorexia at 15?

Now here I am, some 13 years later, in cheap jeans, very little make-up, (in wild fear of losing lashes, I try to avoid touching my eyes, let alone putting make-up on them), and bald/scarf on my head. I look pretty awful and my body feels terrible as I enjoy the side effects of 2 blooming diseases. But all the same - actually, very little is the same, but you get the idea; I'm taken back to my fleeting modeling days in front of the lights and cameras. Oh wait, I'm afraid there's one more detail worth mentioning: I am totally sweating. I mean, visibly sweating through my thin, light-colored shirt. I don the very stylish, the very classy hoodie for my entire shoot, to hide this.

What can I say? I’ve been reading up on the harmful nature of aluminum in anti-perspirant and have been on a quest to use only the natural stuff. My most recent find masks any unpleasant scent, but certainly does not hinder the act of perspiring itself, or so I notice as the wet rings form around my armpits in the hot, Hollywood studio warehouse. Charming.

At the sickest time in my life, in a hoodie covering sweat rings and lacking head hair, I model for big time Hollywood guys and one big time Texas guy and feel a little bit lovely.
 

                   

 

 

 

If you too would like to sweat - but not smell - I encourage you

to switch from an antiperspirant to a deodorant only.

My favorite is: Crystal Roll-on.

 

Here's a good article to start with

for the rub on antiperspirants in general:

@The Chemical Marketplace 

The 5 Year Rule

  
Poor health, poor finances, infidelity, crime, death, miscarrige, divorce... the pains of this world are many.

As I age and garner maturity, the process of discovering so many different people's struggles deepens my perspective. And certainly, as life has brought me down upon my face, I understand that suffering creates a broad empathy. My hurt seems to extend across the great many difficulties embedded in humanity; I feel and understand the sadness of others so much more than ever before.

I once heard there’s a 5-year rule to evaluating circumstances, especially those which are tragic. We have to lift ourselves out of the fear and pain of the moment and imagine a future in which we can understand the occurrence, possibly even be thankful for how it has changed our course. If we can take tragedy or calamity and use it as a turning point or a source of meaning, we can perhaps master happiness. 

We don't understand why so many things happen, but perhaps, in looking ahead, we create a more Godly perspective - one of slighly greater understanding.

In the throes of life’s deepest pains, if only we can cast our eyes ahead, believing there will be peace, if not total understanding - and attempting small joys in the meantime.

Support

My mother throws away our kitchen sponge, replacing it with a new one from the cupboard every time she comes – which these days, is quite often. She usually changes out all our towels and starts a load of laundry much too small to be energy-conscious. She is chipper and chatty first thing in the morning, in spite of my being groggy and grumpy for the first half hour of wakefulness for the past 29 years. She gets lost almost every time she drives here, and she spoils my son rotten.

My mother shows up after every round of chemotherapy, surgery, or important appointment, making the 2 hour drive to be with me and to help me meet the demands of my life. She brings coolers of food and prepares 3 meals a day. She wears pink breast cancer bracelets around the clock and tries very hard not to cry in front of me.

She takes care of me, in her own perfect way.

My mother and father in law also wear pink bracelets continuously. I am touched every time I see that bright rubber dangling from their wrists. My husband’s sister rents me an electric reclining chair the day I came home from my mastectomy, and drives the 3 hours to deliver it. My brother and sister in law who live out of state offer to help pay for my ever-mounting medical expenses, in spite of not being especially well-off themselves; they offer to make the 20 hour round-trip drive out to pick up Little H should I need a break; and, in a gesture one doesn’t offer lightly, they consider uprooting their lives and moving to be near us. They have 4 children. My brother is extremely busy working in a prestigious government job and not far enough along in his career to easily be making suggestions about where he should be located. They own a home. They were willing to change everything – for me.

There is so much beauty in the love we show each other. 

As I’m dragging on the floor, literally or figuratively, as I’m crying myself to sleep in a quiet and lonely brokenness, their love and compassion will be a light in my darkness.

A Good Friend in Bad Times

On Tuesday evenings, I spend two hours with my friends at The Cancer Support Community. Other newly-diagnosed women and I sit in a circle of cushy chairs and couches and talk about coping and suffering. We cry a little and we listen a lot.

I didn’t want to join a support group. I wanted to be at home enjoying my family with my limited energy, not going out to listen to other people’s woes when I am already heavy with my own. But thankfully, I was cajoled into trying it out.

The ladies teach me so much about what is to come; I learn from their experiences and advice over the coming year. I do not feel quite so alone.

Tonight we talk about support – the good and the bad that we each receive. From my own experiences and from those of my group, please allow me to share a brief summary of some suggestions for showing support to someone going through a major adversity:

v     Be a friend and be present – What would you want your friends to do for you if you were the one in the trying life situation? Don’t be shy, jump in there and do, say, and be a kind giver. Whatever you do, don’t say or do nothing.

v     With consistency – Call, stop by, send cards with consistency; prove that your concern is not fleeting, but real and available.  And don’t expect much in return amidst their crisis, even if that means unanswered emails or unreturned phone calls. Persist anyway.

v     Bring food –  Provide healthy meals or snacks; fill their freezer; take them out to lunch; bake them cookies. Basic needs become a major stressor when life is hitting you with hard stuff. Food, help cleaning, running errands, etc - any help maintaining the practical is valuable.

v    Listen – You may worry that you don’t know what to say, but actually, you probably are needed more for your ears than your mouth. Let the person vent without feeling like you need to interject your take. Your questions show your concern.

v     Uplift - If someone genuinely inspires you, tell them. Your encouragement can be more helpful than you might think. Offer this gesture to those close and distant alike; you don’t have to know the person well to tell them something positive. Some of the most moving gestures come from complete strangers.

There it is, just be considerate and consistent. Oh, and bring food.

Empty Ultrasound

With my new hormone prescription, I begin a monthly injection of a drug that essentially shuts-down my lady parts, as well as an order for a pelvic ultrasound the following morning. 

Like a normal person, I associate ultrasounds with pregnancy.  

My first pelvic ultrasound took place 6 weeks after I learned I was pregnant with my son; it was a standard check on the viability and health of the pregnancy - and it was one of the most joyous days of my life.

We had been trying to get pregnant for several months, approaching a year, and were starting to get consumed with fears and yearning. I was extremely happy when that home pregnancy test was finally positive, but I was also nervous and set my eyes upon the first ultrasound, where they check for the heartbeat, as the real indictor of what was to come. (If a heartbeat develops on schedule, the chances of miscarrying decrease drastically.)

I couldn’t wait to see that tiny little heart pulsing on the monitor and was in a state of pure euphoria when it did. The memories of that joyous day are clear: what my little gummy bear looked like bouncing around in there, what I was wearing, how big Bobby smiled, the flavors of celebratory ice cream we ordered at the ice cream parlor afterward. It was beautiful; it was happiness.

The second such ultrasound of my uterus took place on week 2 of my second round of chemotherapy, under considerably less pleasant circumstances. After 4 days of unnaturally heavy bleeding, I was a deathly anemic cancer patient being checked for fibroids or other abnormalities that might explain my extreme reaction in response to the chemo’s alteration of my hormones.   

My mother and I sat in the waiting room amongst a slew of pregnant women and tried not to be cut by the sadness of my visit in contrast with theirs. This was a demon I had already faced - many times. 

My husband and I had just begun trying for our second child when my health took a dive and began the process of uprooting our life plans. Every medical center I have entered over the last 8 months has had an OB-GYN office within. It’s been cruel. 

I have jealously watched an unhealthy number of adorably pregnant women walk down hallways or enter elevators on the way to their check-ups. “That is why I should be here,” I think. Every time I look up from my little nightmare and upon a round belly, I am tormented with longing. I want to slump down in a ball and scream, “Give me what she has!”

So, as it was, I was far ahead of my mother in coming to terms with that unpleasant contrast on this morning. Nonetheless, nothing prepared me for the torment I was about to endure upon getting the ultrasound.

I entered the little room and climbed onto the table, just as I remembered doing for my previous such visit. The technician, the doctor, and a third woman in scrubs all peered at their computer monitor at my side and discussed what they were seeing in my insides.

My head turned to the opposite direction, where a second monitor was set-up for patient viewing. I was curious to take a peek in there too, maybe attempt to follow their conversation. (Creative measures are necessary in withstanding the dullness of medical appointments.)

When my gaze hit the screen, a stab of sadness sliced into me so completely I stopped breathing. There it was, that same round sack, the inside of my uterus, in black and white, up on the screen. But it was empty. Painfully empty; no gummy bear bouncing around, no tiny pulsing heart. No joy.

I had to look away.

My heart is breaking.

Dying on the Floor In Diapers

Before I can tell the stories of beauty, the stories that are so easy to read and that uplift, I must first continue to trudge through the muck of my tales of descent.
 

Round two of chemo brought on not the cramps of my previous labor-in-the-bank-lobby but torrential menstrual bleeding, and most definitely is a tale in my book of woe.

It starting on a Friday afternoon, like so many health problems do, and lasted until I could get help on Monday. Seventy-two hours of aberrant, disconcerting bleeding plagued the weekend.

The hemorrhaging came so quickly and so profusely, just leaving the bathroom was a challenge. Towels, rags, extra thick pads, my son’s polka-dot diapers, nothing could hold the blood flow for any significant amount of time.

An immediate call on Friday to the oncology nurse (“heavy menstrual bleeding is common with chemo”), an emergency page to my oncologist on Sunday morning (“you can go into the ER today or you can just come into the office tomorrow morning”) and a Sunday afternoon visit to the urgent care (“your hemoglobin results wouldn’t come back for 24 hours, so we can’t do anything today”) were all wholly unhelpful.

I was left to eek through the weekend hours, laying in the empty bathtub and bleeding. Our bathroom was a like a butcher shop, red and stinking of warm metal, as I essentially laid dying on the floor.

By Sunday I was weak and light-headed. I couldn’t make it up our staircase without stopping to rest after every couple of steps. I breathed heavily and moved slowly. I was sheet-white.

But the blood just kept coming.

While it was frightening and utterly strange and miserable, it was also kind of... ordinary. If a normal/rational/healthy person was bleeding out in their bathtub through the weekend, that person would likely get themselves to an Emergency Room with an expectation of at least some degree of help or healing. But that's the thing about being miserable; the miserable snakes in and pushes the normal out, little-by-little, changing how you interpret and understand your world. Neither expectations nor healing felt realistic. 

So I just waited.