Chapters 5 - 10

April 18, 2007 – Chapter Five

Well I did it! I'm still recovering, but I finished my expansions on Monday night (THANK GOD) and completed my first session of chemo this morning......it's official...I'm a cancer patient. I finally let the hospital staff give me my pamphlets "Life with Chemotherapy" and "Eating Right when diagnosed with Cancer" (before now I refused them on the premise that until I had my first round of chemo I was not officially in the "cancer camp". Plus I'm still kind of irritated about the whole "Eating Right" thing because I WAS eating right and my cells STILL decided to mutiny, rotten little buggers..... Reading back over that last sentence it is clear that a certain individual who will remain anonymous could benefit from a bit of therapy about the whole ordeal.
Ironically enough I was just approached this morning by the cancer coordinator to see if I might want to come to the support group......Hmmmmmmmmm......Now those of you who know me best should respond out loud......so the response can be heard round the world. That would be: "Ummmmmmm.....No thank you....... Not really a support group kind of gal...." Don't get me wrong.....I will probably get there, but seem to be a
little slower than the rest of the pack in terms of acceptance. I'm sure I'm the talk of the break room this morning "Lord, did you see that one, she's a real piece of work". Any hoo - on to better things....
I had on a plain pair of black pumps this morning but decided that chemo called for something that was a little more feisty so wore my metallic silver ones with a black bow.....I yelped out loud when I walked by them at Nordstrom and wore them out of the store...at the moment they reside in my heart as the "stars of the show" and are officially designated as my "chemo pumps" a bit like Wonder Womans cape I suppose, with these on I am practically invincible!
Hate to admit it gang but feel a little more under the weather as the hours roll by so will head out to the lake for what once was a run but now is a SAD,SAD little slow trot. Fresh air will do me good....... Today I was grateful for company while receiving the rat poison intraveneously and am still grateful for Saturday evening when my house was filled with the sounds of children, thanks very much to all of you who were able to attend........
I was wondering the other day..... if every day we are attempting to be the kind of people we would like our children to be......what would happen if we were all told we didn't have as much time as we thought we did...... would we all try a little harder to be that person today....... just wondering.....
love to all you and thanks for letting me write you every week....it's become therapy.
j

Julie closing her eyes and riding the wave as chemo nurse Deb Davis looks on.

April 24, 2007 -----Chapter Six

Hmmm….. where to begin this week?
It’s weird but I think I discovered that I was sick this week…. Or maybe “Cancer” just feels more real when you’re lying in a fetal position and praying to get off the Merry Go Round. Lord. I hated those stupid things when I was a kid. We had one out at camp when I was little, it was our only “real” piece of playground equipment. It’s not what your thinking, certainly nothing fancy like horses and music, just bright orange and blue metal but my cousins used to put the little kids in the middle and tell us to hold on and they would spin us until we were so sick we were crying. I haven’t thought about that in a long time but that sickening feeling came crashing back to me this week. And I thought for the first time since all of this began that maybe I really am sick. Six months seems manageable when the world seems steady but when you’re viewing it from the middle of the Merry Go Round it seems simply unbearable.
The good news is that today is a good day and yesterday was a good day and Sunday was a good day. From where I am standing today, with (darling) heels firmly planted on the ground, I can do this. And I am hopeful that the path becomes less hazy and firmer around the edges, that the most trying of the side effects become predictable and then maybe manageable. I always knew that I was the kind of person that liked to know exactly what was ahead of them but that has never been more clear to me than it is right now.
I don’t sleep anymore, at least not the way I used to and so I find myself traveling from room to room in the quietest hours of the night until the light starts to come through the windows and then I nap until my little people find me ….. There are two things that strike me as interesting this week as I watch the sleeping world from my window…… the first is that we have bats. Did you guys know we have bats in KtN? I mean LOTS of bats. The next time you find yourself staring out a window at three a.m. count the bats. Seriously. Gross little buggers. Rats with wings…..Anyhoo – I digress. The second thought that keeps coming to this little insomniac is that I wonder what we become when we can no longer be the things that we think define us. What are we then? I would prefer it if an answer came with that thought but it hasn’t yet…..maybe soon.
I was in the tub on Saturday afternoon and I was struggling….. Campbell found me and was SOOOOO excited to tell me a story…..she was clutching what I hoped she didn’t think was a four leaf clover (because it only had three) and I was worried during her animated tale that when she got to the finish line she would look at her prize and find that it wasn’t what she thought at all and I feared her disappointment. But here’s her punch line: “And soooooo from the swings I saw this and I picked it for you because it is like the Father, Son and Holy Ghost” (Thank God for Catholic Preschool) as she pointed to each of it’s three leaves and then she said: “Mom, you can wish on it and God is like magic.” I can’t really tell you of another time where I was more sure of the presence of God in my life but the comfort that so many of you have been praying for in my honor found me, there in the tub on a sunny Saturday afternoon.
Reading back over my therapy for the week makes me wonder how those of you who read it will think of it and me. I toyed with the idea of staying “upbeat” throughout all of these but then realized I need the therapy and it’s not that for me if it’s not real. More than that I believe that I am supposed to be teaching my babies something through this and if they ever read back over these I would like them to know that in life pain is real but so is grace and courage and humor. This morning I was just so stinking grateful to be able to do the things that a mom does: breakfast, homework, combing hair, trimming finger nails, mending clothes……
Last rambling thought for the week is something that I think about every time I run around Ward Lake…..I wish I was the kind of person who wasn’t afraid to dance in the woods…you know like when you were little and something moved you and you couldn’t help but dance….. I don’t know when that left me but it did. I picture the end of my life (when I’m 80) and how I plan to have few regrets but I know that would be one of them…..it’s funny how it strikes me at the same place every trip around….. you know the bend in the road just before you can see the parking lot….when it’s just you and the Lake, the creek and the cedars and some spectacular song comes on the ipod….I find myself wishing that some one was there so I could dance with them and then I wish that I had the courage to dance anyway……..…maybe someday.
Love to all of you….j

May 1, 2007 ---- Chapter Seven


Moments……not days….but moments. That’s what I keep thinking this week. I am capable of having some spectacular moments and in the same day/hour some pretty terrible ones. So my thought now is to just concentrate on really appreciating them when they’re good and hanging on and riding the wave when they’re bad. I am most grateful when I am within reach of someone I love because during the very worst moments, the hand of a loved one seems to steady an otherwise reeling universe.
I am continuing to adjust to all of the weird side effects and find the more minor ones are the most irritating. Though I have to say I am shocked by how often I find myself in tears now, both at the sadness and the beauty around me. I have to admit I think I was a little too hard on the “criers” in my midst before now. I keep reminding myself of what Erma Bombeck wrote if she had her life to live over: “I would have cried and laughed less while watching television and more while watching life.” I suppose if Erma can do it I can do it but Lord, if I keep this up I feel like I should have something printed on my forhead so strangers are not caught unaware…..until then the rest of you will just have to excuse me.
I woke up on Sunday and Trevor was midway through a sentence about his feelings when it dawned on me that I felt good, so good that the thought of internet shopping actually sounded appealing. I practically knocked him over in my race for the computer and within minutes my friend Betsey had dispatched one of her magic elves to put together a package with my name on it. Yep, 1940’s inspired Navy Battenberg Lace. Oh, Yes. She did. Thank God for Betsey.
Besides being inspired to get out of bed by beautiful dresses and contemplating how many times I may vomit, cry, or sneeze in a day I have also been spending time this week thinking about my little buddy Emily. She was a girl in one of Shawn’s classes that was desperately in need of some love. Had we not already had a homeless man living in our basement at the time I probably would have lobbied hard for her to come and live with us, that and the fact that she demonstrated affection for my son by kicking him mercilessly. Anyhoo – my love for Emily was instant because she was capable of so much and needed so much and because she loved me. Not at all because of any deep characteristics that matter, but because I wore sparkly bracelets and pretty shoes and was therefore worthy of her passionate hugs and kisses. It was early in the school year and most activities taken for granted by the normal Kindergartener were completely foreign to her. She was working with the teacher one day and was learning to put a puzzle together for the very first time. When she finally figured it out and found her first matching piece she jumped up knocking her chair over and yelled: “Holy Shit! I did it!”
What I loved about that moment and the reason it is still with me is that she had not yet learned to temper her reaction to her own magnificence and I have always admired that about little Emily.
I think about that a lot now. About how we go through our lives without letting ourselves feel the spectacular moments in their entirety and I wonder why that is. I wish I had spent one moment prior to surgery looking down at my body in the shower and thinking: “Holy Shit! It’s flawless.” Please don’t get me wrong here, “Girls Gone Wild” was not knocking down my door for a view of my chest or any other portion of my body for that matter. But it strikes me now as sad that I didn’t marvel at the perfection before it was taken. Much more importantly than that though, is how I did not realize that with the surgery/reconstruction my chest would become an uninhabitable place for little people to come and lay their head. I did not realize how much it mattered to me that my lap and my chest were a comfort to the littlest people in my life that matter the most. Worse than the wreckage on my chest is the sadness and disappointment that comes with that.
What I am coming to appreciate about life though is all of our abilities to adapt. Campbell has stopped trying to place her head where it used to fit the best and has now discovered a place in my neck, just behind my ear. She can lay her head there and breathe in and out, I still smell like her mommy and I can still tell her I’m here. Though it’s not the same….. I’m not the same….. It’s still me. So this week, I am inspired by the comfort that a beautiful hand can bring, by all of our abilities to adapt, and by little Emily…..who challenges me to find the next excuse to throw my head back and say: “Holy Shit! That was amazing…… Thank God for that moment…... That one spectacular moment.”

Love to all of you……. J



May 4 2007 – Chapter Eight

My boss who is a cancer survivor sent me a note this week that said: “Nothing plain again… ever.” It made me smile because those of you who know me best know that I didn’t really need any excuse to justify the “nothing plain” department. Watch out….. my wardrobe is already dangerously close to being that of a transvestite. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…. Thank God I didn’t wait for a special occasion to put on a pretty pair of shoes and Thank God I didn’t wait until I was old to start wearing spectacular dresses.
My boyfriend died this spring. I loved him, very much. We were down at Swedish at the same time. While I was going through my tests he was dying in a building across the campus. His service is today and I just can’t stop thinking about him. In my line of work I attend a lot of memorial services. They have taught me to never say something about someone at a service that I have not already said to them while they were here. It makes me sad when one of my residents passes their days without visitors at all and then when they die the room is overflowing with people who come to tell a story about how their lives were impacted in a positive way by this person, it just always makes me wish the resident could hear the same story over a cup of coffee and a hug. When I first met Eric I marveled at the friendship between he and Trevor and the way his family was so good to us. Then one afternoon eleven years ago Eric’s Grandpa, Kenny, came into my office, introduced himself and said that he needed a little help getting some health care services for a friend. From those first moments in my office I understood instantly where Eric had learned some of his finer qualities with regards to friendship. Kenny was a gentleman always…..and a friend above all else. Though I am relieved to say that I told him this over coffee many times, I didn’t realize until after he was gone that the world simply looks different without Kenny Eichner in it and I wish he were here so I could tell him that.
Wednesday was a chemo day and it wasn’t pretty…..in the evening I woke from a nap and found that I couldn’t roll over on either side because a little person had come in and tucked all of her favorite babies in around me while I slept. Each with their own individual blankies tucked under their little arms. On my chest was a necklace with beads that spelled C-A-M-P-B-E-L-L…..just in case I had any doubt about who my visitor had been. From the very depths of feeling crappy I laughed out loud and was so grateful about our choices to have children when we did. I could get through this without them but I can’t imagine how different the experience would be. Shawn came up later to deliver some juice and without my asking he tried to open it for me so I would not have to struggle. It instantly made me think about how I’ve been questioning who I am when I’m not able to be the things I used to be. It has left me feeling slightly naked and vulnerable…..wondering if the people around me will love me anyway….. but I’ve been working it like a puzzle in my brain and pieces of it were starting to fit together and then Wednesday night as I lay there surrounded by dollies with my opened bottle of juice it just made sense. Maybe along with the successes of being capable, life is also about failing, faltering, and needing help…… so that we give the people who love us an opportunity to be successful in caring for us too…....possibly by my moments of being unable to care for them or for myself I am teaching them how to be the caregiver. Maybe I’m still being a mom, teaching my babies something, but just in a different way.
I completed this community wide fitness event this week. It wasn’t particularly difficult – 52 miles of running, 208 miles of biking and 4 miles of swimming – as it was over the course of six weeks which sounds like a lot of time but when I subtracted all of the days that I would be “unfit” due to recovery, expansions, and chemo it was actually a stretch for me to be able to do it and I had to really push myself. Honestly, they were hard earned miles. Sometimes in the driving rain around the lake the energy would just not come to me and swimming the first 25 yards made me realize I would be swimming the next 7175 yards with limited range of motion and the thought was overwhelming. Please don’t get me wrong….. an athlete or a Nike commercial I am not. But it was difficult for me and sometimes I was afraid of what my own body could no longer do…..when that happened I thought about what I tell my kids on their first day of school (brace yourselves, neurotic is an understatement so you’ll just have to get over trying to diagnose my mental short comings) .
“Okay…..first, let me just say that you are clearly the most adorable child on the premises, also I want you to know that you have more than other children and therefore more is expected of you. Whatever gifts have been given to you by God or your mommy and daddy come with an expectation that you will use them to help other kids that may not have the same gift as you. Additionally, if anyone is mean to you I expect you to tell me who they are so I can hunt them down. You know your mommy is just crackers enough to do it and the last thing I want to say before I tell you how much I love you is this: If any one kicks you today I want you to kick them back.”
I understand completely, both at the time I deliver it and now that I am almost completely off of my rocker and that no sane person should ever take parenting advice from me. But it is me and it is what I tell my children before I send them out in the world. The reason it kept coming to me this week was because on my hardest days, when I was on the stationary bike with a garbage can next to me or trying to steady myself on the trail I would think about how cancer had just leveled a good hard kick and I would picture myself on my knees and then I would think about what I tell my babies on their first day of school and I would picture their mommy kicking cancer right back.
What inspires me today? A helicopter and a flag, the F-word (when used sparingly I believe it’s effective), dollies and juice, and the thought that even if I left this world today I would have produced two little people who have the ability to care for a loved one and who when faced with the blows that life may have to offer would have the strength to kick life right back.

Love to all of you……..j

Kenny Eichner’s 4th of July Parade fly by

May 10, 2007 – Chapter 9

Do you know what I think the cure for chemo is? Cake. Yep. It may not be the cure for cancer but I do think that cake is the cure for chemo. On Saturday I felt so good I baked a cake. One of those ridiculously complicated affairs that involves a whole months worth of offspring for a chicken (6 eggs) and four cups of milk I won’t even put in print how much fat was added to that sucker. Two things that I think are relevant about that…. The first is that I don’t think a house feels like someone’s home unless there is the smell of a cake baking…..seriously soothing. You should try it. The second important element to this little scenario is the cake itself. So Saturday I felt so good I baked a cake and on Sunday I felt so good (thanks to Stacy and Monica – I’ll get to that later) that I ate the cake. Yes, I ate the cake. And let me tell you …… those of you who know me best know that there is not a shred of grace in this body, however, that is never more apparent than when I eat cake. By the third bite I actually picture myself in heaven yes, surrounded by little pink cakes with big frosting flowers. You know, the kind that a normal person scrapes off of their cake. I am secretly wishing they would scrape them onto my plate. Anyway – so on the third bite I’m in heaven and by the fourth I start to worry that this feeling is going to end so I start to eat my cake in a defensive position so as to ward off anyone who is potentially coveting my cake. Yep, that sums up the weekend. Ode To A Cake – and I stand by my statement that cake is the cure for chemo.

Okay, so in reality it is cake, and the fact that I have two extremely diligent little angels in my life, Stacy and Monica Schulz. Stacy is my doctor. Thank God. And Monica, his beautiful bride is my nurse. Thank God. Some of you have requested more specific information about my diagnosis/status. I’ve been so busy journaling about my ridiculous emotions that I guess I haven’t updated most of you on the specifics. So here it is in a nutshell for those of you who find this crap interesting: My oncologist has given me a diagnosis of: extensive, high grade, ductal carcinoma in situ. Some of it was contained in the tumor, some of it wasn’t, none of it was in my lymph nodes. I am grateful I chose a double mastectomy. My plastic surgeon views me as partially reconstructed (temporary expanders are stuck there until I’m done with chemo and real implants will go in) my cancer surgeon views me as cancer free, my oncologist views me as a work in progress, and to Stacy I am a full time job. My oncologist reminds me that the cancer I have/had is high grade and that in cases like mine, my age is working against me. The people who die from breast cancer tend to be younger as the more aggressive forms of breast cancer tend to be found in younger patients. I like to think that I had a fabulous little angel that helped me find my breast cancer early so that thankfully this will just be a bump in a long road for me. In terms of treatment I am currently receiving a daily oral dose of chemo (Cytoxan) and weekly oral dose of chemo (Methotrexate) and weekly (Wednesdays) I-V chemo called 5-FU (nasty, nasty little drug). I have completed four of twenty five weeks of treatment. I have experienced most if not all of the predicted side effects from the drugs: Nausea, Vomiting, Metallic tastes, Sensitivity To Light, Head Aches, Sore Throat, Fatigue, Insomnia, Menopause (and all that it implies), Chemo-brain, and most recently some changes with my heart. I keep joking with Stacy that my oncologist gets the easy job……she prescribes the stuff that is most effective in damn near killing me and then Stacy has the hard job of trying to put me back together. Because they are such amazing practictioner’s they have worked with me on every symptom and through another flurry of added medications we are able to stay on top of most of the symptoms, enough so that I am currently having many more good moments than bad.. Thank God for Stacy and Monica.

The other popular question for me is about my hair. At the moment I still have it. My oncologist explained that the drugs I’m on are old, they are the same drugs prescribed for cancer patients 30 years ago but the method of administering it is new. It’s called dose dense chemotherapy which is why I am on it every day…..the thought is that it keeps a specified level of the drugs in my system at all times which helps to avoid the highs and lows, which is why I may not lose all of my hair. It hasn’t started falling out yet though I try to prepare myself for waking up and finding it on my pillow. Don’t get me wrong…..my attitude throughout all of this has been pretty darn good and I consider myself to be a trooper. But if I wake up one day and find my hair still on my pillow I can safely say that I would consider that to be a “BAD” day and you can be assured that on that day only the F-word will do. Anyhoo – for now I wake every day and am just thankful its still there. I am not allowed to use blow dryers, chemicals, brushes, and curling irons any more though and I have to say that I miss those little tools…..a lot. So reading that, you may be picturing me with sad, limp, flat hair. Like everything else in my life my hair is simply not behaving rationally. The less you do to my head the more unruly it is. I wake up looking like an African Bush Woman and it’s only after the application of MANY products and the use of many high voltage tools that I walk out of my bathroom looking slightly coiffed, without the use of them “unruly” is the only way to say it…..but to any of the little Hair Fairy Godmother’s in the universe “I AM NOT COMPLAINING! UNRULY THOUGH IT MAY BE, I AM HAPPY TO HAVE IT ATTACHED TO MY SCALP.”

The other day I drove up Bryant Street to go to work and was silently proud of the new hedge (that took three years worth of begging to get the funding for). We took out the wretched old bushes and planted beautiful maples and lined it with daffodils and tulips which are just about to bloom. I did it for my mother as she loves the residents at KPH more than I do and she is passionate about maple trees. Anyway, past the hedge and in a completely separate area of the grounds stood one daffodil and one tulip, side by side with none of their other brothers and sisters around them. They looked adorable together and I smiled thinking they looked like two friends that had run away. I walked into the office and told my staff about my observation and threatened anyone with death who even thought about picking those two misbehaving flowers. As with everything else I say they rolled their eyes and ignored me.
So Monday, my daughter was talking to the blueberries in her bowl. The trick to taking care of Campbell and retaining your sanity is that you must tune her out most of the time. She simply doesn’t stop talking. When I finally tuned back in this morning I found Campbell midway through an animated dialogue between herself and the blueberries: “So listen Lilly, I had to eat your brother Bob. The thing is: I told him to stop chasing you and he wouldn’t listen. So I ate him.” I jokingly said: “Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?” She responded without skipping a beat. “No, I don’t. I think if he wasn’t going to listen to me I should eat him.” I looked at Shawn who loves his sister dearly but also knows enough to tune her out most of time…he shrugged his shoulders, raised his eyebrow and said: “She sounds just like you mom.”
I was afraid to ask if he meant she was like me because of her spectacular imagination or because she is willing to kill anyone that won’t listen to her. Poor, poor, little blueberry Bob.
Today I am inspired by my best friend who sits with me during chemo and loves me despite my many imperfections…..by my son who tells me he’s proud of me……and by a tulip and a daffodil that were brave enough to venture out and grow somewhere completely new…….

Love to all of you…..j


May 15th 2007 – Chapter Ten

Guess what? It’s porch swing season! Though October and the sideways rain and spectacular storms it produces is actually my favorite time of year in Ketchikan, porch swing season is a close second. Over the weekend I stood at the window with my hot chocolate in hand and noted that for once I was not chilled, that it wasn’t pouring buckets, and my porch swing looked lonely and inviting. So there I was with my mug, my blanket, my good old friend Mr. Porch Swing, and my thoughts. For some reason everything just seems more clear and less complicated while thought of on that seat………some of my most memorable conversations have taken place with friends, a blanket and naked toes swinging in the air………Porch swing season is here and I’m relieved and looking forward to conversations over coffee in the morning, gin in the evening (wishful thinking at the moment), and the feeling of rain on my feet.
Coping Mechanisms… When it comes to chemo I am becoming an expert on coping mechanisms. Let’s see: There is the blankie and pillow I now keep in my car to combat the occasional blinding fatigue. There is the way I schedule my days according to my best and worst. Dressing in layers to accommodate the way my body cannot seem to handle regulating temperature. Magazines instead of books because I can’t concentrate long enough to read a paragraph of complex thought. The worst is having to ask someone standing next to me to help me because my hands are shaking too badly to be able to put my daughters hair into her ballet bun. All of it comes with a healthy dose of humility. However, honestly, it’s the chemo-brain that requires the most mechanisms with which to cope. There is the special place I now put my toothbrush so I don’t have to stand over the sink and try to recall which one is mine. There is the method of receiving information now at work…so that others are aware and able to remind me of what I said I would do (like meeting with the Lt. Governor on Saturday – someone call and remind me or better yet, if you see me in the grocery store at 11:00 a.m remind me that I’m supposed to be somewhere else.) I now have to put the clothes I wore during the week on a special hook so that I don’t wear the same thing the next day – honestly, I could stand there all day and yet as hard as I try to scrunch up my eyes and THINK DAMN IT – I cannot recall the day before.
Women don’t give themselves enough credit with the whole multi-tasking thing. I look at it like a tree, one with lots of complicated branches. We wake up and think about the major stuff: kids, house, husband, schedule, and then we think of all the things on the periphery like: exercise, groceries, birthdays, gardening, fund raisers, friends, school supplies, activities etc. For me, what was once a tree with lots of branches, now feels like a stump. I wake up and think: “How do I get through this day? Just me. Yep, just me trying to get through this one day.” That would be me: The Stump. For now it lasts mostly just Wed., Thurs, and Fridays but even so it’s just so amazing to experience my brain in all the new ways it simply cannot function. I suppose in the grand scheme of things there is no better way for me to learn what it is exactly that my residents with dementia are going through every single day. My temporary inability to recall detail though completely frustrating is supposed to be short lived. So what the hell do I have to complain about? The next time I’m having tea with my favorite 90 year old and she tells me how much she misses her mind I think I will be able to look her in the eye and tell her that I understand, because on a much different level, now I do.
A man at the airport last week told me that when he went through chemo he felt like he couldn’t think his way out of a paper bag. He said: “It will scare you because you will think that it won’t end but I promise when you are done with chemo your mind will come back to you.” All I could think while he was speaking was: “Good Lord! It never dawned on me that this could be permanent. Now I have something new to scare the pants off of me.”
That thought does really scare me, that the mind I took for granted somehow will be damaged permanently, or that the toxic waste I put in my body will have lasting effects. And I get scared that I won’t be able to force myself to walk across the parking lot of the hospital and face the treatment 20 more times. My hands start to shake involuntarily now when I go through those doors. Worse than all of that though is the fear that if I died my kids would someday forget me.
So, there they are in broad daylight: My Fears……ugly little buggers aren’t they. So far, when those horrible thoughts work their way in my head I have been able to shake them. Usually it’s because one of you sends me a card, email, flowers, or calls or comes by for a visit. But when the thought of leaving my kids hits me it’s not your run of the mill “Crap, did I leave the iron on” kind of fear, it’s the “Bone chilling, stop what you’re doing and sit your ass down” kind of fear. I’ve lost people I dearly loved before, so I know that over time they do start to fade…and even the things you loved most about them, the sound of their laughter or the feel of their hand in yours becomes distant and then difficult to recall. Luckily, so far, in the worst moments I can reach for one of my kiddos or watch them through a window and it is so clear to me then that even if they couldn’t recall my smile or my smell or the way I hold them, that so much of the way they act or look is me, and I think I would still be there with them even when they couldn’t recall the details. Some of their details are my details and somehow that makes it all better, doesn’t it?

Dear Lord! Cathartic as that may have been for me to put in print I imagine it’s awfully darn depressing to read. Clearly, I’m not dying… this diagnosis has just made me think too much. Hell, I’ll be 80 and journaling to you people about my most recent hemorrhoidectomy (which I understand from the ladies at KPH is a real bummer) and you guys will be so sick of reading these that you’ll be wishing I had “gone towards the light” when I was in my 30’s and you had your chance to get rid of me.

So here’s a ridiculous one for you…… I actually caught myself bitching about my new breasts this week. Yep, the question is finally answered… No, I will never be happy.
Dave and Trevor have had to listen to Cheri and I whine, bitch, and moan over countless dinners during a 12 year span about our inadequate bodies and all the ways our sad, sad little breasts did not meet our expectations. My temporary tissue expanders are in place now and the surgeons like to expand you bigger than the implants are going to be so they have some maneuverability during future surgeries. I will have the option to be the same size the expanders are or smaller. Honestly, they are completely foreign items on this chest and I don’t quite know what to do with them and the fact that at 32 I finally feel like I reached puberty (which is kind of ironic considering I just went through menopause). Anyhoo, the rest of you have had men introducing themselves to your chests instead of your eyes since you were teenagers but for me it’s all new. So over dinner this week, in a whiny state of mind, I actually said out loud: “So maybe they're too big.” Dave almost spit his dinner out on his plate. And I knew exactly what he was thinking: “She has spent the last 12 years whining about being an A- then a month later she sits at the same table a C+ and of all the stinking nerve, this ingrate is complaining.” Thanks Dave, I so GOT the ABSURDITY of: “What the hell do you want woman? Are you people never happy!”
Though I don’t think it will keep me from complaining in the future I do think it’s an important point. “What exactly will it take to make me happy?” Maybe I’ll just never get there… no matter what shape or size life offers itself. Hmmm… So that statements going to leave a mark. Let’s not think about that too long… Nope..definately don’t want to stay in that neighborhood…moving on.
Someone did ask me this week what I wanted for my birthday and I responded: Nipples. I thought it was funny. They didn’t laugh. I think maybe I scare people.

You know what inspires me this week? What just really makes me feel joy down to my very core… my porch swing, the feeling of rain on my feet, and getting caught dancing in my closet with my very own little girl.

Love to you all……j