The Cancer Story

Relay for Life: Madison, WI

I wrote the following to a friend a few years ago when I was going in for my annual oncology check-up. He asked:
“What kinds of results are you expecting? (As in, is it a binary yes/no thing, or more fuzzy than that?)”

Here’s my response:

I think it’s more of a “growth/no growth” thing.
I’m not really worried about it. The annual check-up is just a reminder of what happened, it’s not a time of much anxiety for me though. I have one of the best ob/gyn oncologists in the country…and one of the best ob/gyns, too. They play golf together & are good friends. Because of that & the way I was treated, I have never felt like a number. I’ve always felt that both doctors have a genuine concern for my health. I think my oncologist likes when I come in because my case is easy & very positive. He told me when it happened that the cancer I had was very slow growing, which is why I don’t have to worry about chemo…it won’t work. He said if anything does come back, I would just have surgery again. But he also said he’s very optimistic that it won’t. The source is gone (the ovaries) and he
used laser on as much of the inner abdominal surface as he could to kill anything that didn’t belong.

Here’s the cancer story:
I knew I didn’t want to give birth to any more kids. (I don’t have a
problem with adoption, just didn’t want to bring another kid into the
world myself.) So I went in to get a tubal ligation. In the process, I
had an abnormal PAP. The Dr did tests and couldn’t find the cause, but said he’d look around when he went to do the tubal. He kept telling me “You know this is permanent, right?” (I thought that was funny later, because a tubal is a lot less permanent that getting everything taken out.) So during the surgery, he found two growths; one on the ovary & the other on the abdominal wall. He called my oncologist into the surgery room and he was able to assess it right away, so he knew what we were dealing with.
My Dr called the next day to tell me & had already set up an appointment for me with the oncologist. This was in June/July. I had the surgery end of Aug/early Sep. It all went really well. I went for check-ups a lot, and now just go once a year to the ob/gyn & once a year to get a CT scan & see the oncologist. The only long term impact on my body is that I have to take estrogen replacement, and get a lot of calcium and, well, the orgasms aren’t quite the same.

Here’s some of the good that came out of it:
*My mom & I became very close. We’ve had ups & downs, but she was really there for me during the whole thing.
She drove 1 1/2 hours up for my appointments and came to see me every day I was in the hospital. She took Andy for a week while I was in the hospital. She was just completely supportive. It gave her a chance to make up for times that she wasn’t there for me in the past & let me feel her love me through her actions.
*Andy & I got closer. He took care of me the first week I came home & wouldn’t leave the house. Finally, at the end of the week, I told him he HAD to go play with a friend. That I’d be OK. I tried not to use the cancer word around him because I know it’s so loaded, but he eventually heard it & I just explained to him that I had bad cells in me that needed to come out. He was actually sort of relieved about the whole thing because he didn’t want me to have another kid & when he realized that I couldn’t, he was more ok with things.
*It was one of the steps in the process that brought my dad & I together.
*I’m a statistical plus on the side of people surviving cancer & moving on with life…and we need more numbers on this side.
*I also take better care of my body.

The only time I really broke down:
I had been handling things pretty well & just going from appointment to appointment and doing what I was told & taking it all in stride. BUT the day before my surgery, I had a phone call from the oncologist office. I had had a chest exam to make sure that my heart & lungs were ok for the surgery. The nurse was calling to say the x-ray showed my heart to be abnormal. I lost it. I thought, 2 months ago I was fine. Now I have cancer AND my heart is fucked up??? So I had to go to the cardiology center to get all this work done. As I sat there, all the people were really old and everything just hit me. I couldn’t believe something could be wrong with my heart, but it made the cancer seem really insignificant.
That was what I needed out of that experience…to be reminded that things could be worse. It turns out that after extensive tests that day, my heart is very healthy.

My favorite moment:
The day I was to be discharged and we were waiting for the Dr to sign off, my mom had brought Andy up to see me. The nurse said it would be a few hours and I told my mom she could leave, but she said she wanted to stick around. So, Andy curled up next to me on the bed, under my arm, and my mom was sitting right next to me in a chair and Andy & I slept for a couple of hours and my mom just sat there with us. I’m not sure why that moment is so significant to me, but typing it makes me tear up. When I woke up, I just felt this overwhelming love of mother to child: my mom to me and me to Andy.

I don’t see myself as a cancer survivor or anything that dramatic. It’s just something I’ve gone through. But it was one of the significant events in my life. We all have them and they just shape who we are.

*********
16-Jul-2008 Update:
Last year at about this time, I had my 5-year check-up. The results were good and I was given the blessing to proceed without coming back. I still take Estradiol 0.5mg/day (when I remember) but otherwise don’t have much of a physical effect from the experience.
I’m very fortunate. I know that.

I’m posting this now in memory of Wanda Jo, who wasn’t as fortunate, and for DH. Thanks for sharing and elegantly expressing some of the deeper feelings I also had experienced.

Heading west

Paul

It’s a pilgrimage to my mecca. The annual trip to Colorado.

I go for the mountains and old friends and music.
But mostly, I go for Jill (the cake) and Paul (the icing).

I would like to pay an homage to each, but only have 2 hours to pack and clean before heading out. We pick our friends because they reflect something within ourselves.

Jill reflects the best of what I would like to see in myself, while still being real enough to accept a flaw here or there. Sometimes I don’t feel that I know her at all after all of these years…I’ll learn some fact or preference and be completely surprised…but in a deeper sense we are very connected and just understand each other. Maybe this is it: We both have (different) ideals of who we would like to be and what we want to represent, but we both know and accept that we fall short of that in our humanity and accept that in ourselves and each other. There’s even a beauty in it. I don’t know: I just admire and love her and am so thankful she stills puts up with my imperfections and constant chiseling to catch peeks into and through her outer shell

Paul helps me see the geeky, sincere, intelligent parts buried deep within myself. And he reminds me of how much I love to discover things about life and the excitement that breaks through when I discover a new person, place or idea. At the same time, I get nudged to accept and embrace my little social faux pas when bursting with the newness. Paul gets excited…no, he gets giddy…and I let his joy ooze into my pores. His marriage represents the possibility in what seems so impossible on the outside and keeping doors open that may seem closed. Paul says that he’s “been jonesing’ for the dayna”.
Your hug is on its way, Paul!

(And then there’s Janene who’s living in a teepee with a cell phone and computer. And Matt, Jill’s husband and father of her bun-in-the-oven, who wakes me up with Rocky Mountain High and cooks us all egg burritos for breakfast, is really the best host I have ever met and has almost as much energy as Jill. And Duck, who is going to Festival with us. And Sarah and Chris and Marcus, former co-workers who also moved west and settled. And I won’t even start on all of Matt & Jill’s friends I have met over the years.)

I haven’t even gotten to the mountains and the music. Maybe I’ll cover those when I get back. IF I come back….there’s a nanny position opening up in Golden in a few months. ;o)

just wondering

when will i learn to
~take a deep breath
~listen
~slow down
~pause
~pay attention
~be myself
~question
when I’m nervous or excited?

especially when I’m nervous or excited

and before i fall on my face and wonder “what happened?“

Tony-isms

That’s Tony on the left.
Jason dressed up as him for
Halloween.

My Kentucy friend, Tony, has a splendid way of presenting similies at some pretty unique moments.  I decided to take note and post them here.  I should add that I’m going to take the editorial liberty of making this G-rated.  His words are a bit more….direct.  Oh yeah, and imagine the heavy Kentucky drawl as you read them.

For starters:

“He’s as messed up as a soup sandwich.”

“He’s so stupid he wouldn’t have sense to pour piss out of a boot if the directions were written on the bottom.”

When told he would have to wait becasue of someone else:
“Well, I’m just suckin’ on the back teat, ain’t I?”
(Apparently, the runt always gets the leftover back teat on the sow.  Had to have this one explained to me.)

“Love like a star-fillled night with a meteor shower coming down…”

“I’ll be outta here so fast people will be looking at the reflection of where I used to be.”

I want to introduce you to a friend

Spring wears a sundress or short-shorts before the weather says she can.
She smiles and winks at Winter as he slowly shuffles to the door.
Spring hugs…and if shes not, she finds herself glancing around for a set of familiar arms that wouldn’t mind just one more embrace.

Spring loves presents! She dances around gardens-on days that I am stuck inside a windowed, climate-controlled environment-gently unwrapping flower buds and leaf buds and even some bug buds. Sometimes she just breathes and the purple-to-yellow crocuses reach up to the trees to take more of her in.

Yeah, Spring is my beautiful friend. Everyone loves her, ’cause, ya know, she’s nice, too…not stuck-up and stuffy like Summer.
I think its because Spring can see dirt-and accept it as she’s convincing the rest of us to clean it up.

See, in all of her joyous bouncing around, she can be a bit lazy. Not sluggish, like Winter, who can’t even get off the couch, but lazy.
The kind of lazy that drags me to a sunny spot in the middle of my yard and makes me crouch down to investigate the way the sun filters through the crocus petals that she opened up earlier in the morning. Looking from the bottom up, the veins are so delicate and the purple radiates.
It’s lazy like that. It’s “take-time-to-fall-in-love-with-a-flower” lazy.

Did I mention that she can be sassy, also?
Just when I am entranced with another petal-yellow on one side, but touched with lavender on the other-Spring says to me: “Oh, by the way, did you remember that your garage is a disaster and, um, it’s not getting clean by itself?”
What a brat!

As I head back inside, she so graciously says she would love to help, but a flock of geese need a bit of guidance. She says she’ll be back and waiting for me when I’m done scrubbing the shower and the toilet.

How can you not just adore that?

Whole-grain

Since 2005, you can buy “whole-grain white bread“.

Its supposed to be healthy and contain all of the grainy goodness of the rough, chewy, darker breads, but you just won’t be able to see or experience it after the bleaching and sanitizing process.

You just have to believe it has substance because the label says so…

…kind of like Madison.

I bombed the interview…again

The problem happens when I open my mouth.

Not with the first “Hello”, but when I start nervously rambling on…
and on…
and on and start feeling more and more insecure and judged…
so I act insecure and judged…
and AM insecure and judged…
and that’s when I bomb the interview.
Done.
Like a switch flips…
an observable switch and my observable insecurities…
observable and judgeable roots…
judged past and observed fears.

I judge…they observe.

It’s that time again…

…for the Madison Film Festival!

My line-up this year:

Taxi to the Dark Side
The Unforeseen
The Pixar Story
Being Innu
Testing Hope
The Planet
Postcards from Tora Bora (I actually missed this one, but hope to see it soon.)

e-mail exchange

Cary:
I was telling Kim (our new sample entry girl) about how queer I was.
I was like “guess who I saw in concert years ago…..WHAM!”
And she was like “WHAM? Who’s that?”
For God’s sake, where did all the good music go?

me:
Kim: “Gues what, mom? I started this new job and there’s this guy.”
Mom: “Oh, really?” (counting future babies in her head)
Kim: “Yeah, he’s kinda odd.”
Mom: “Oh?” (reducing the number of potential granbabies)
Kim: “So the other day he started telling me how gay he is.”
Mom: “Oh.” (deflated, maybe he’s into artificaial semination…it’s been done)
Kim: “And not only that, he is SOOO proud of seeing some group called ‘WHAM!’ back in the 60’s or 70’s or something like.”
Mom: “So, he’s old AND gay?” (pours a drink, potential granbabies = 0)

Cary:
Why don’t you go listen to some folk music and eat some tree bark?

The Words of a Jamaican Man

she’s not big, she’s “fluffy”

“do they really want all of this?”

“typical male have a relationship…or two”
“it’s an inheritance…we can’t do one woman”

the women:
“they know and try to prevent it…know  the person, know what they do and marry it anyway.”

“if a man here tells you he’s single, he’s lying”
“my inheritance is like a curse.  i don’t bring it home…do for yourself…set up your own place”
“if i cover my trail, it’s ok…attraction is the main part of the game”

if you were told that you would lose your family if you are caught, would you still do it again?  “i have been told that”

on help from outside the island:
“be amongst the people…how can you eat steak and help us? come over and break bread with us”
_________________

guy: “women have the power“
girl: do women have the power? “no“