Happy Birthday to Me

Today is my birthday.  Well, mine and The King's, but I'm still around to celebrate it and he's not, so I'm claiming this date all for myself.  :)

I may have seen The Life of Brian too many times during my college years.
 I blame it on no cable and no reception - what other choice did we have,
but to watch the only movie in our possession until we knew it by heart??

I have had a fabulous year, although it might not seem like it to anyone on the outside looking in.  When faced with cancer, I knew I had to choose the glass half full scenario, so many little things have brought me great joy over the past few months.  This is not normally my perspective, but positive thinking and good health go hand in hand, so I adapted.

Which is why I am going to ask a favor and assume that you will help me out.

Over the past year, Gilda's Club of Nashville has been a huge part of my life as a cancer survivor.  If you don't know Gilda Radner, she was a Saturday Night Live comedienne who was struck down in the prime of her life with ovarian cancer - the silent killer.  Before she died, she started the first Gilda's Club in New York or LA (sorry, my memory on this detail seems to be failing me right now) so that people dealing with cancer - either as a patient or as a family member or friend - could come together and create a supportive network and pool their experiences.

"Elephant Walk," made in the ticker tape style.  I love this little mini quilt.

Initially, I joined Gilda's Club for the weekly quilting group.  I don't talk about quilting too much here because I can't seem to commit to writing about it on a regular basis, but it was one of the few activities that I could continue no matter what 2011/2012 threw at me.  What I didn't expect was the openness and sharing of the other members, and how important their experiences could be for me.  Some of the information those ladies have shared has helped me to make better treatment decisions, and for that, I am so grateful.

My activities at Gilda's also include a guided imagery class.  Before I started attending, I had already downloaded some meditations from Amazon and iTunes, but they couldn't prepare me for the meditative experience when a real live instructor is in the room.  I am continually amazed at how relaxed I am each week at the end of this class.  In my heart of hearts, I know that guided imagery enhanced my ability to remain calm in the face of a life-threatening illness, and that it also helped my body to respond positively to the chemo and Herceptin.  If you ever get a chance to attend a guided imagery class, I encourage you to do so.  Being centered isn't just a phrase for me anymore, and I wish I could explain how spectacular the experience can be, but it's something you have to find out for yourself.

"NavStar." This mini was definitely a learning experience in so many ways.

All of this has been free for me - I haven't paid anything for my membership at Gilda's.  Snacks and drinks are always there for members.  The sewing machines, thread, cutting mats and rotary cutters are all provided in my quilting group.  They have a ton of other activities, such as yoga, tai chi, support groups for different types of cancers, cooking classes and so on.  And it is all free.  Anyone who has ever been touched by cancer can join.

Charley Harper rocks, and I had a blast making this for my oncologist.

Here's where the favor comes in.

Gilda's Club of Nashville has several fund raisers all year long, but their biggest is the Country Music Half Marathon.  St. Jude's organizes it (the fee paid to participate is St. Jude's fundraiser), and Gilda's Club asks for volunteers to walk or run the half-marathon.  This time last year I wasn't able to join in, but I decided then that if I was able, I would walk the half-marathon this year. Just last January, I was trying to last for 20 laps around the U-shaped parking lot of the condos behind ours.  This year I plan to walk 13.1 miles and raise $750 in the process.  Has it really only been a year??

I am asking for your help.  Will you sponsor me?  You can see my profile at FirstGiving, so please donate - and while there, be sure to admire my pink hair.  :)  It's gone now, but I miss it and may go pink again in future.  I haven't decided, but I may do t-shirts or perhaps something quilty? for my donors.  I am not shy asking you to donate, so please don't be shy about telling me your preferences.

"Beauty and the Beholder."
This piece is all about me, and I want to do another like it.

It's funny, I think about my life one year ago, and it's amazing how far I've come.  Last birthday, I'd finished chemo the week before and had a shiny new noggin (well, not so new exactly, but newly shiny, lol) to show for it.  I was getting ready to go visit my sister and other family members because I missed Christmas and Thanksgiving due to the infection risk.  I took that in stride because I knew that chemo and a compromised immune system then meant that I would very likely be around to celebrate the holidays with my peeps this year.  It all worked out well.  :)

Anyone who lives in the Nashville area, come on out and support us if you have the chance.  From what I have read, there is live music all along the marathon route, so it should be a lot of fun for everyone.  Or, if you are so inclined, join us as a member of Gilda's Gang - you don't have to be a member to be a fundraiser.  And if you can't support in either of those ways, maybe you could just do me the favor and share this post with others.  Any way you can help me, I appreciate it.

If you are unable to donate (and believe me, I understand - if I'm lucky, I'll be able to go back to work full time in another year or so), I still thank you from the bottom of my heart.  The support I have had from the online community has been phenomenal and I can't thank everyone enough - the cards, packages, and well-wishes/prayers have lifted me up throughout this past year.  All that support, as a matter of fact, is the reason that I'm pushing myself to do this.

Pass It On

Ever play that game as a child? No?  No big deal, because that's not what this post is about.

This year, there have been so many blessings for me throughout my cancer journey.  Cards, gifts, emails, good vibes and prayers all came my way, and many of them were from people like you, dear reader.  People I have never met in person but who I have met online.

While I've been blessed, I've also had a lot of not-so-quality time here at home.  Time where I didn't feel like I could handle a job, but time where I needed something to do.

Remember the post about the string quilt?  It was so successful that I decided that I really wanted to join in with other charity events when they came my way.

Enter Sarah Craig, a fellow breast cancer survivor from the same area.  She hosts an event each year called the Hands2Help project, and quilters like me have the perfect opportunity to make something for a good cause.  This year, there were two options, and you can read about them here if you like.  If you are a quilter (or know someone who is), then you can always join in and offer up your own donation.  I made a quilt for the second option, Happy Chemo.  I've done my time in that chair, and I know what it's all about.  Here's to hoping that someone else can have a better chemo day because they can cuddle up under my quilt.

I have to say a big thanks to Sarah, because without her, I never would have known about this opportunity for me to make a quilt for someone else, and this baby might have stayed in my UFO pile for another year.  Yes, that's right, I made this quilt top last year when I first decided to start quilting, but I didn't need it, and didn't really know what to do with it.

Until now.
And that makes me happy.

Pattern was created by Elizabeth Hartman of Oh, Fransson!  You can see here free tutorial here.  Happy quilting!  :)

Oh what a relief it is

When I was in the fourth grade, the art teacher in our elementary school decided to put together a special extended art class for those of us that showed a real interest.  Since I went to public school, we had "specials" every day -- art, PE, music, and library, but this was an extra class, and that meant if you were picked for this, you missed actual regular class work.

Now, mind you, I didn't really like the art teacher because he was weird, he had a funny nasally accent (he was from the north), and his butt crack always showed.  But it just so happened that this extra art class met during math time on Fridays, and I was very interested in getting out of working on multiplication whenever possible.  So I worked hard on the mobiles in our regular art time, hoping to get noticed.  I also asked the other kids how they got picked, and found out they drew pictures and left them in their tote tray.

By mimicking their actions, soon my hope was realized, and on Fridays, I found myself working on an independent art project instead of multiplication problems, which I had already mastered.

Now here's where my tale gets interesting, transforming from a lesson in how to get out of an undesirable task by pursuing something at least moderately more engaging.  I actually felt inspired to try a few new things.  I felt safe in that extra art class, because these projects, instead of being judged as meeting the objectives of the assigned exercise, were critiqued.  This was my first real experience with constructive feedback in the classroom.  I didn't have to worry about a grade at all, but could instead focus on how to improve my creations.

Besides, did you notice where I mentioned that we were working on mobiles during regular art time?  We did that for weeks, and I found it to be wearisome and tedious.  Finally, art time became open-ended, and the possibilities seemed endless.

At least, until I had my first breakthrough idea for an awesome drawing.

If you remember the 1970s, then you may recall the old Alka-Seltzer commercials where you saw two tablets dropped into a glass of water, which immediately started fizzing.

The jingle, "plop, plop, fizz, fizz.  Oh, what a relief it is!" was such a great slogan that I couldn't resist using it as inspiration.  Unfortunately, what I thought to be extremely clever and original didn't quite meet the high standards of that weird art teacher.

I had, for months, been working on drawing bunnies.  Not lifelike, realistic portraits, but something more like a bunny costume worn by a person.  Think Donnie Darko, minus the wrecked side of the face, and you'll have a close approximation of what my bunny looked like.

Now imagine a bunny in profile, sitting.

On a toilet.

Add in the slogan made famous by Alka-Seltzer, and you've got a picture that is not only a Beezus original, but funny to boot.

A fair approximation of my fourth grade artwork.  Yes, it looks childish, but isn't it clever?

Unfortunately for me, however, the art teacher went through our tote trays after class, and he must have thought bunnies pooing to be an inappropriate subject for his special, hand-picked budding artists.  The next Friday that we met, he pulled me aside and told me as much.  I was crushed and shamed, thinking I'd done something wrong, when I thought I had created a really cool work of inspired art.

To add insult to injury, my mother also had a talk with me about my drawing on the ride home from school that afternoon.  She taught at the same elementary school, and at some point, the art teacher had told her what I'd done.  I cringed to think they'd been talking about me behind my back, and that I'd done something at school to disappoint my mother.  I had always been a good student, excelling in my work, and doing so while behaving impeccably in the classroom.  It was a serious blow to my creative ego.

Today I can look back on that moment and I can appreciate how amused they must have been when he showed my mother my fine handiwork, but stepping on such a tender, shy artist's attempt such as mine at that time left a permanent mark.  I don't remember anything else I did in that art class, or if I ever went back.

Why am I talking about this now?

I guess this silly little story could be a cautionary tale about the attempts we adults make to press children's artistic ways into a prescribed mold of rules (both spoken and unspoken) about what art is, or what it should be.

Or I could be trying to amuse you for just a bit, which is perhaps even more important in the sometimes sad, depressing world we live in today.

But my true intention is to work through some of my own creative issues, because there have been very few occasions since this episode in the fourth grade where I wasn't afraid to create, for fear of my creation being judged by the standards of those around me.  Yes, I dabble in lots of creative activities, but seldom do I attempt to try something novel, or out of the box.  I admire so many people for what they create, but more importantly, for their courage to follow their creative muse, and I've decided to give myself permission to try new artistic endeavors, even if I fail to attain my own goals.

I hope you can do the same.

Man, how I wish I had that drawing today so I could hang it up and use it as a reminder to follow my own path.  Maybe I'll recreate it from the image I carry in my mind's eye.

ETA:  I felt my inner imp come to life after writing this post, so I went over to Zazzle and made my own shirt with ye olde Bunny on the john.  I just can't help myself sometimes.  The link is here if you want to see it for yourself.  Blame it on the bloggess.

Okay, I Have to Share

While I have never really posted about anything sewing or quilting related here, most of you know that this is a hobby of mine, and it's one that has helped me get through so many things over the past couple of years.  For that reason, I have to share something that gives me hope.

Shortly after I found out that I have had cancer, Val from PinkPlease! blogged a small request.  She wanted to put together a quilt for the Heroes Foundation to help raise money for the cancer cause.  Would readers like to help by sending her one or two blocks each?

I like to think that this is something I would have done even if I hadn't recently joined the cancer club myself, because I'd been thinking of trying foundation paper piecing anyway, and hey, it was for a worthy cause.  I read her guidelines for the style of block that she wanted and whipped a couple of them up.

I have to say, as Val got more and more of the blocks in the mail, I saw the beauty that is sometimes created by the online community.

And now, you can see it, too.  The finished quilt is up for auction now, and closes tomorrow night, Saturday, at 8:30pm.  The current bid at this moment is $400, so I'm already excited by how much we've raised!  Our quilt is item #270, and you should be able to view it here.

Don't Stop Me Now

Where to start -- with the news you've all been waiting for or a description of my surgical journey that brought me the news?  Perhaps a bare-bones account of where I've been and how I'm doing.

Surgery was just a little over two weeks ago, and it has definitely been a couple of weeks of ups and downs since then.  I do not like being helpless.  I do not do well when relying on others for what I need.  I thought I had gotten a lot better about this since I got cancer, and maybe I have, but that doesn't mean that I'd reached a level of acceptance when it came to the basics, such as being able to dress myself.

I stayed in the hospital one night.  I did really well both before and after surgery.  The meds helped I'm sure, but I also reached a level of accepting what was to be that I never thought possible when it came to me with medical stuff.

I'm squeamish.  I don't like the ick factor, and I especially don't like it when it relates to my own person.

But I wasn't nervous about surgery at all, and I think that helped tremendously.  The hospital TV programming sucked.  Since we don't have a television and we only watch shows on demand, I was sort of looking forward to the mindlessness of turning on the boob tube and letting it suck me in.  But the channels were very limited, so I mostly watched the clock (conveniently located on the wall directly opposite me) and thinking.  Not a bad way to pass the time, but not what I had expected.

I also didn't expect to have a roommate.  Don't get me wrong, she was decent enough if a little strange.  But I had sort of been thinking I'd have a private room, since my father-in-law had surgery at Vandy a few years ago and he had a room all to himself afterward.  But life goes on and it's not like I was actually using the bathroom or anything since I had a catheter, so it all worked out in the end.

Sean has taken awesome care of me, fixing foods that I like and that I could easily eat by myself.  Helping me in the shower.  Walking me from the bed to the couch and back to the bed again.  Sleeping on the couch so he wouldn't disturb me.  He's a great guy.

I've been going on walks most days since that first week passed.  Our condo is located in a building that is directly in front of a set of three other condo buildings that are laid out around a circular parking lot with a big grassy patch in the middle for all the pet owners.  Sean and I have been walking around that, usually making four or five circuits.  The weather has cooperated most days, and when it hasn't, he's driven me to the local mall.

My surgeon had someone call me last week to give me the pathology results after they did their slice and dice routine and looked at my cells under the microscope.  She actually had a couple of people call, once as soon as the report came in, and a second time after they all sat around and had their pathology conference.  From what I understand, that's a weekly thing for her and her staff.

I got the same news both times, and it was fairly good news.  I had a 1.1cm foci in my right breast and a 2mm foci in one of the 35 lymph nodes they pulled out.  That means that my cancer had shrunk to a third of its original size due to treatment.

Now, here's where things get weird.  I saw my oncologist on Friday.  She told me that the cancer was completely gone from my right breast and that there was only a 2mm foci in the lymph node that had previously been mentioned to me.  My husband and I left confused.  I thought maybe she'd skimmed the report and misread something because part of the report also stated that I had no cancer in my left breast (as was expected).

Then I met with my surgeon again yesterday afternoon for my post-operative follow up exam.  Everything is looking good, by the way, but she then told me that there was no cancer in my right breast.  I mentioned what I'd been told on the phone and she looked over the report again and remembered that the way the report had been written was a bit hinky.  She reiterated that the pathology report declared that there had been a 1.1cm foci in the right breast and a 2mm foci in the one lymph node.

I was satisfied with her explanation and with her assertion that the report would be amended and I'd get a copy of it afterward.  She took the time to type up notes and a message to the pathologist right then so that she could be sure the problem would be addressed.

My surgeon's office called me again this morning.  The report stating that I HAD NO CANCER IN MY RIGHT BREAST at the time of surgery IS CORRECT.  The mention of the 1.1cm tumor was referring to the previous mammogram and ultrasound reports that I had done back in December.  The pathologist just didn't make that clear when he wrote up his own report.

I still have to go through physical therapy and radiation, I still have to take Herceptin through September, and I still had that 2mm foci in that one lymph node, but the cancer was totally responsive to chemo and Herceptin.

The news doesn't get much better than that, folks, because it means that if any cancer cells had escaped to other locations anywhere in the body, they aren't likely to be able to survive the treatment course that I'm still following.

And for those of you who don't get it, the title is in reference to the band Queen.  Nothing like a bit of feel-good music to help you celebrate.  I'm floating around in ecstasy, so don't stop me now.

Anticip . . . . . . . . ation.

It's been a while since I posted, and I almost feel bad about that.  Except that I've been living life and sometimes the details get away from me.  It seems like I'm in a race against time, with the clock ticking down, and there's only so much I can do at one time.  I think we've all been there, so I'm sure you understand.

I finished chemo at the end of December and have been enjoying many things that I sort of took for granted before I knew I was sick.

Like eating a big salad.

Or fresh fruit.

Not to mention walking my dogs all the way around the block.

Shocking activities, I know, to all you civilized folks out there in the blogosphere, but hey, I get wild every now and again.

I also started drinking TWO Diet Cokes per day, until my ankles swelled up and I had to see the doctor for an unscheduled visit.  No, the two weren't really related, but you know how doctors are -- always telling you to do this or that to be more healthy, and for the most part I listen to mine.  But that means I'm back down to ONE Diet Coke a day.  That would make me sad, but all I have to do is play that game "Remember When" and think about how I was drinking NO Diet Coke AT ALL during the first two weeks after every chemo session.  That reminds me of how far I've come.

Life is definitely looking up.

In my mind, I won't really know if the chemo was worth it until I've lived more than a couple of years from my diagnosis, or better yet, until I've come off the hormone suppression drugs I'll take for five years.  My doctors have a different point of view on this:  after surgery they'll put slices of my various body parts under a microscope and see how small my tumor is to determine how effective the drugs were for me.  If I'm very lucky, no cancer cells will survive and my tumor will be non-existent.

I'm not banking on that, but I am hopeful that they will find none remaining in my lymph nodes.

All this talk of what I'll know in just a short period has me shivering with anticipation of the next big step, surgery.  I'm supposed to go in for both operations a week from today, and I really hope my surgeon's office calls me soon (first thing in the morning would be nice!) to tell me that the date is confirmed so I can quit worrying that it might get delayed.  Hopefully by this time next week, I'll be spending the night in the hospital with drains coming out of holes where my boobs used to be and I'll have three little incisions  steri-stripped across my belly.

Amazing the things I have come to look forward to, but that's where I am in life.  As a friend of mine recently pointed out to me, at least my cancer can be removed.  Hers is inoperable.  So yeah, it sucks to think that I am going to wake up without boobs and ovaries and a bunch of lymph nodes, but my situation could be a lot worse.

It's all about perspective, and I'm trying to stay focused on the long term goals here.  If anybody's got any advice on how to do that, I'd love to hear it.  Most days are easy enough to stay on track, but the occasional bad day throws me off my game, and I could use any tricks or tips anyone else has.

How We Cope

Or maybe I should have titled this, "How I Cope," because that's what I really mean.  You may use the same defense mechanisms as me, but I'll let you speak for yourself, and I'll try to tell my own story here.  And I do mean that -- feel free to share if you have a different way of getting through the tough situations life throws at you.  That's what the comments section is for.  :)

Today was tough for me.

Since my initial conversation with the genetic counselor, I have spent the past weeks preparing myself mentally for surgery.  I am a "squishy" person, and by that, I mean I am not very good at watching medical videos, much less thinking about procedures being performed on me.  I can take a shot, I can watch them insert that one inch needle into my port every three weeks, and I can deal with the tug and pull of having stitches sewn into my flesh after a mole has been removed.

But having my breasts cut off, and my ovaries and tubes sucked out . . . that just seems like I'm giving up huge pieces of me, and maybe for nothing.  I don't know about you, but I'm not all that great at handling a piece of raw meat when I'm preparing it to eat, much less with equating parts of my own person to said piece of meat.  And yet, that's really what I've become.  If you don't believe me, just look around on ye olde webbe at what a mastectomy and lymph node dissection consists of.  Or better yet, look at reconstruction procedure photos if you really want an eyeful.

Not for the faint of heart.  Or at least, not for the squishy people like me.

So today was a lesson in how prepared you think you are to hear more hard truths when really you're not.  I promise I will take the time to go into what my day brought to me, but not in this post.  I have to process all the information that I took in, think about it, roll it around in my mind, make it something that I can wrap my brain and my emotions around, before I can write about it.

This post is about how I have been dealing with all this hateful medical stuff that has to be done just in the hopes that I'll outlive this cancer.  I'm not going to lie to you -- my doctors haven't given me any percentages about how long I'm likely to live based on my treatment plan or what rate of recurrence there is for my staging and my age.  I haven't asked, either, because I don't want to think of myself in terms of statistics, unless they are the kind that give me a 100% chance of survival if I jump through all the hoops presented to me.  But I think we all know that life doesn't come with those guarantees even for the most healthy of us, so I am not going to wait around for someone to whisper sweet nothings in my ear along those lines.

No, instead, I'm going to talk about how I've been managing.  How I've stayed positive (for the most part), in the face of knowing that reality could be so ugly in the end.  How I've made chemo and all the other procedures that have come thus far seem tolerable.

You.

You all have lifted me up, with your words of encouragement and your thoughtfulness.  They mean more to me than any of you will ever know.

I'd like to be able to say my religion has done this for me, how prayer is the thing that has worked, but I can't go there.  I saw something the other day on another woman's post to a forum about breast cancer, and she said that she was surviving because so many people had prayed for her.  I wish I could believe in that, but my mother got a lot of prayers and was worthy of God answering them and allowing her to live.

That didn't happen.

Her death was ugly, drawn out, and horrifying.  I hope that's not the way I go out of this world, all yellow and withered with nails like talons, a shell of my former self.  I most certainly don't want to live in so much pain that I groan constantly despite a drug-induced coma dragging on for weeks throughout the holiday season with everyone standing around my bed waiting for me to die.  I don't want it for myself, and I don't want it for those that I love.

So please forgive me if you are one of the faithful.  I want to be in your camp, I really do, but I hear people make comments about how prayer saved them, and I can't get past the fact that prayer did not save my mother at a time in my life when both I and my sister needed her to live.  I'm sure that many of you will have the answer that God does everything for a reason.  I wish I could believe that, too, but I still see no value in the death of a woman who taught little kids with learning disabilities, and who went to church every time the doors were open.  I still feel her absence in my life, and the scars from our last real conversation are ever-present.

That conversation involved her sitting on my roommate's bed in my dorm room and telling me that she was terminal and would not be around to watch me graduate.

Prayer, if it works, seems to work for only the select few, and if there's one thing I know, I'm not half as worthy as my mother when it comes to belonging to that group.  So to me, prayer doesn't feel like an honest solution for my situation.  It makes no more sense than random DNA picking me to be tumor-prone from birth, and that's why I have to stick with what I know.

My friends and my family care.  You care enough to read what I write here, and you care enough to support me with comments and song links when I'm wallowing in my own self-pity on Facebook.  You care enough to send me quilt blocks even though you have never met me.  You care enough to mail me funny hats, pretty fabric for head scarves, homemade cookies to tempt me to eat.  You care enough to send me cards, some of you every week, some of you every chemo cycle, some of you every once in a blue moon.

You care enough to pray for me when I don't have enough faith to pray for myself.

And that is what keeps me going, even when I have a tough day like today.