Paranoia or Perceptive?

When I was diagnosed with cancer, it was hard not to be angry at myself. I had symptoms that I ignored for months. And once I found out what I had, I couldn’t believe that I had let it all go on for that long.

I think a promise that all we cancer survivors make, is that we will never do that again. Ever. So now, every little ache or pain is analyzed and googled, and crossed-referenced with symptoms of lymphoma or even other types of cancers.

For the last few weeks I have had a pain in my arm that I’m 99% sure is from pulling a heavy backpack from the back seat of my car into the front seat, yet I’ve checked to see if arm pain can be a cancer symptom. FYI, it is probably not.

So this week’s ailment is a lump in my right armpit. It could be a swollen lymphnode caused by a bacterial or viral infection. It might be an infected hair follicle. Or an even sillier answer is that it could be a pimple under the skin. But it could also be the dreaded cancer. My subconscious tells me to wait it out – that it will probably disappear a few days from now. But the last time I trusted myself; I had cancer for months and didn’t do anything about it.

So today, I broke down and called for an appointment with the oncologist. I will see him tomorrow. And I hope he laughs at me for my silliness and bills me an outrageous amount for the unnecessary visit. I don’t want him to tell me that I’ve been very perceptive and smart. Those are the last words I want to hear. Isn’t that a rarity?

So here is hoping that he laughs in my face.

Just a brief update - it was a "clogged sweat gland."  Woohoo!  Never thought I would toast a clogged sweat gland, but that is exactly what we did!  I told the Doctor that I felt silly and paranoid, and she said not to feel silly, that I earned the right to be paranoid when I was told I had cancer.

Breaking Dawn

Life can change immensely over the course of a year. 

On this day last year I found out I had cancer.  I was in shock.  I felt hopeless.  I was terrified of the future.  I couldn’t imagine how I would get through the next hour, let alone a day or a week.  It was one of the worst days of my life.

On this day, I am cancer free.  I feel full of hope.  Full of gratitude.  I try to embrace each hour.  Each day.  Each week.  Every day I am here is a great day.  Ok, let’s not be crazy.  I have bad days.  But I appreciate that a bad day is still a life-filled day.

It is officially time to put this whole cancer thing in the past.  It’s time to move forward.  For now, I’m going to stop this blog.  It’s become a place of focusing on the negative aspects of my recovery, and I need to focus on the positive.  I need to focus on living.  Should I need it, I know where to come.  It will always be here for me.  I will leave it online as a place of information for those just starting their journey.  But I don’t need it anymore.  I may occasionally write a “still cancer free!” post after my regular check-ups, but that will be the extent of it.

I also find it appropriate to end it at a time of year when it’s tradition to share gratitude and thanks.  My cup overflows with gratitude to each of you who have been with me through this journey.  You will never know the strength you gave me.  You are the reason I got through this.  You are the reason people say I’m strong.  Thank you for laughing at my dark humor, and for knowing when I needed a note or an E-mail or cookies. 

 “Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.  It turns what we have into enough, and more.  It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.  It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.  Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.”  ~Melody Beattie

Not So Special

It was two days before Thanksgiving of last year that my life was forever changed.  I was given the cancer diagnosis that kicked off six months of grueling treatment.  It was the initial diagnosis that came with almost no detail and I remember spending the long Thanksgiving weekend wondering if it would be my last Thanksgiving.

I have been feeling emotional the last few days, and I’m trying to understand why.  I think part of it is that I can put a year of fighting cancer behind me.  I can move forward into a new phase.  I also think this type of anniversary is bringing the whole experience to the forefront of my mind.

Lastly, I think a little bit of the emotion also may be the difficulty of assimilating back into normal.  When you have cancer, you become “special”.  Everyone gives you a break because you’re going through something awful.  People lower their expectations of you.  And that is a good thing because just getting out of bed can be an accomplishment when you are going through cancer treatment. 

But then life goes back to normal.  And the expectations are raised and you are not so special.  And working a 60 hour work week isn’t enough to even feel like you accomplished something normal, let alone special.  And it’s hard to make that adjustment mentally.    

I feel a bit broken still and I’m still mentally healing.  But after a year, no one wants to hear about it anymore.  And this is not an awful thing.  It’s just human nature.  Life goes on.  And so I smile and I stop talking about it, and I try to move forward too.  And slowly but surely, the smile is becoming more genuine.  And some days I go nearly all day without thinking about cancer. 

I have much to do, so I must stop this monologue.  There is a refrigerator to clean, and a house to get ready for Thanksgiving.  But I will try to move forward with a spirit of gratitude and joy.  Because those are the things that make us all feel special.

Hair Progression

I have tons rattling around in my head that I need to post.  My mind is blown by the fact that I was diagnosed with cancer this month a year ago.  It's hard to believe and it's been a little difficult to comprehend all I've been through.  I'll save these thoughts for some big mega post in a week or two.  In the meantime, I'll show you what I do when I'm on conference calls that won't end!  I photograph my hair!





In early June I thought it would NEVER grow.

A few weeks showed quite a bit of growth!

At this point I was only wearing the wig about half the time.  It was July and HOT.

Here I felt like the little squirrely best friend from Fright Night.  Seriously bad hair in August.

Getting better in September, but still not enough to really style.

November - It has more curl than it did before!  I wish the front were as nice as the back.

November - Sad sad bangs...

Annoyingly Happy

I am becoming that annoying person that people love to hate. 

I am that person who comes storming into work each morning, over-caffeinated and far too cheerful.  If you start to complain about your day, I am likely to say “Well, at least you are alive, employed, and have health insurance.  It could be so much worse.”  If you start to tell me your problems, I might zone out a bit because in my head I’m thinking “Really?  These are problems?”

Don’t get me wrong.  I have bad days, and I have bad moments and occasionally I throw a pity party for myself.  But I can usually snap myself out of it by reading the posts of other cancer survivors/fighters or by going back and ready my own writing and remember how I longed to just have normal stressful days. 

It annoys me when I see people just fester and spend an entire day angry about things that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.  Life really is too short.  I was listening to the radio the other day to a snippet of a commencement speech given by Steve Jobs and he said:

“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice.  And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

And I’ll be honest, I may have said this all sounded like a bunch of pompous bull prior to this whole cancer thing.  But those words resonated with me in a way that is difficult to express.  And what he says about being unhappy too many days in a row – so very true.  We all have obligations that have to happen and being employed isn’t optional for most of us.  But if you are miserable at work everyday, then you are probably in the wrong line of work.  I am fortunate that I have a career that I enjoy and manages to nourish me both intellectually and creatively.

And even if you are in a job that you have to do solely to pay the bills, what is the harm in trying to make the best out of it?  There is nothing wrong with making the best of a bad situation.  As Abraham Lincoln once said “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” 

So me?  I’m going to be annoyingly happy.

Save the Assholes

Let me start by saying that I am all about cancer awareness.  Early detection is frequently the difference between life and death.  I am 100% certain of this.  This post is not intended to discourage anyone from cancer detection.  I am just sharing my own personal perspective. 

October is breast cancer awareness month.  How do I know this?  How could I NOT know this?  Between the blitz of radio ads, billboards, walks, runs, workshops, T-shirts, ribbons, and bumper stickers it would be impossible not to know about breast cancer awareness.  I grabbed an egg out of the refrigerator the other day, and even it was stamped with a pink breast cancer ribbon.

As someone who works in marketing I completely understand why breast cancer gets all the awareness.  Between a great spokesperson (Susan Komen), pink ribbons, and a whole society of people that wants to save the tatas it is an easy sell. 

But sometimes I think we as a society are so focused on saving the tatas that we forget about the folks that are fighting the less glamorous cancer fight.  Let’s talk about the men and women with rectal cancer that not only have to fight cancer, but have to be ashamed to talk about it.  Try going to your doctor to talk about those issues.  No one is giving them a pink ribbon or stamping an egg about awareness. 

Or the folks with tonsil cancer – one of the most painful cancers to experience.  Tonsil cancer patients undergo one of the most painful treatments imaginable and it goes on for months.  And it’s usually diagnosed from a sore throat that just won’t go away.

Most people don’t even realize my cancer, lymphoma, is a blood cancer.  And it’s often diagnosed from a set of symptoms (commonly referred to as “B symptoms”) that seem bizarre – itching, weight-loss, night sweats, and low grade fever.  I didn’t really have any of those, but you’d be surprised as the number of people who do and it takes months and months for them to figure out what they have because there is no real awareness.  Cancer symptoms can be obvious – a lump in your breast or on your prostate.  But they can also be much more subtle – stool changes, frequent urination, tiredness, a wart or a mole, white spots on the tongue, coughing, anemia, headaches, and weight loss.  It could be a single symptom or a combination. 

I am not writing this to scare you into trying to learn all the symptoms of all the types of cancers.  That is a ridiculous notion to anyone who hasn’t been through a cancer diagnosis or had a loved one with cancer.  But I am writing this to encourage you to listen to your body and see a professional if you are feeling “off”.  If it ends up being nothing, you’ve lost nothing more than a couple of hours of work and a few bucks.  You are not so important that your workplace cannot function without you for two hours.  But if it is something, you may have gained a lifetime due to early detection.

So yes, save the tatas. But how about we try to save everything else too?

Full-Speed Ahead

I can’t believe how long it has been since my last post.  I have been so very busy that it has been difficult to find the time to stop and reflect. 

Cancer is becoming more of a memory.  And as time passes, the details become blurred and it is slowly becoming this thing that happened a while back.  I thought the day would never come in which it wasn’t constantly consuming my thoughts, but time is a wonderful remedy.  There just might be life after cancer.

I haven’t been great with the treadmill this week, but I have been pretty active so I feel good.   For example, last weekend we finished painting the kitchen.  The kitchen I started to paint years ago that remained half-painted all through my cancer days.  It was one of those things that made me feel like my life was on pause.

This fall is sort of surreal.  I am doing all the things we do each fall.  Except now I know that last year at this time I had cancer.  Yesterday we went to Ocktoberfest, and as I was walking around I was remembering that last year I felt so tired.  And I felt wonderful this time, which gave me more confidence that maybe the nightmare really is over.  It is hard to describe, but I feel like my “cancer ghost” haunts each experience.  But it is important for me to remember how far I’ve come so the ghost can stay for now.

Last week was very busy at work, and this week is more of the same.  I have a gauntlet of travel the first part of the week that includes a one day trip to DC (fly in and out same day) and a trip to Raleigh for two days.  But for so long I felt “grounded” that it is sort of exciting to get out and see people and really jump in with both feet.

Lingering side effects are almost completely gone.  Probably the one that drives me the craziest is that when I’m really tired I really struggle for words.  It’s not that I can’t gather my thoughts; it’s that I can’t find the right words to express them.  And this totally frustrates me because being able to speak intelligently on-the-spot is an important part of my job.  I just need to be cognizant and try to get appropriate amounts of sleep. 

Today was a fabulous day of emerald mining with Ust Gunder, Tom Tom, and the hubbie.  We had a great time, but I think every inch of my body is exhausted so I’ve got a serious night of relaxing planned.

Two last thoughts – rest in peace to Steve Jobs who lost his battle to cancer.  Cancer sucks.  I am sad that we will never know what ideas were still in that head of his because of this stupid disease.  Also, I am very sad that my dog niece Val also passed away this week.  I have great memories of watching her and Zoe romp when they were young dogs.  I know that she is somewhere doing that now and feeling no pain.  Much love to Rosalie who is missing her fur-baby.