A couple firsts...

 

 

We have been away for a few days. A couple highlights...

 





Little girl experienced her first snow...

I celebrated my first cancerversary...

And Jack just hung out looking cute...

 

22 Weeks and Cancer: Breast Cancer is not the "easy" cancer...

22 Weeks and Cancer: Breast Cancer is not the "easy" cancer...: As the 4th was World Cancer Day and many cancer awareness campaigns are being done this month, a few ummm, interesting, ads have shown up.....

Breast Cancer is not the "easy" cancer...

As the 4th was World Cancer Day and many cancer awareness campaigns are being done this month, a few ummm, interesting, ads have shown up...like this one from Pancreatic Cancer Action...

 

 

 

Well, hip hip hooray!! I didn't even know that I won the cancer competition when I was diagnosed, at 37, with Stage 3C cancer, while pregnant!! How silly I was to be concerned, because we all know that everyone with breast cancer lives! It's like having a cold!! Hooray for me!! Phew, I had no idea that I can relax now, without a care in the world for what might happen to me, because I GOT THE EASY CANCER!!

 

Excuse me for a minute but WHAT THE FUCK?? I wish I had breast cancer?? I understand, believe me I do, that pancreatic cancer is no joke and has a very high mortality rate. I completely get that. But maybe you'd like to talk to some of the girls in my facebook group, who are in their 40s and fighting stage 4 breast cancer. Maybe you should talk to the 32 year old mom of two littles that I went to the August retreat with, who is fighting stage 4. Maybe you should talk to me after my 4 rounds of chemo while pregnant and my resultant mastectomy and my 12 rounds of chemo after that and my 33 doses of radiation after that and my constant numbness and pain and tightness that I deal with every single day. Maybe you should talk to me after I dealt with the plastic surgeon who basically insinuated that I was probably going to have a recurrence any day now and really shouldn't bother to look into reconstruction right yet because really, I may not be here long enough to enjoy it.

 

How about I wish there was no cancer? How about no more deaths of any type of cancer? This is not some sick kind of competition, this is something that everyone should be in together. Because with crap like this, we all lose.

 

 



My 39th year...

 

"Oh, Earth, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize you... Does anyone ever realize life while they live it...every, every minute? No, saints and poets maybe, they do some." - Wilder

 

I can guarantee to you that my husband...and Jack...and A-R if she could talk...and the rest of my family and friends would tell you that I am no saint. My high school creative writing teacher, Mrs. Roth, would tell you that I'm no poet. But with all respect to Mr. Wilder, although not a poetic addition (see, I know what's not poetic), I would add "and people who have or have faced life threatening illnesses or situations".

 

 

Google Images

 



 

This crazy beautiful precious life is just funny. Life truly ain't nothing but a funny funny riddle. You spend your youth voraciously coveting additional candles, longing to be older, waiting for the day that your life will "begin!!" "When I'm older I will..." starts innumerable sentences. Somewhere in your 20's, you start feeling time accelerate - not only chronologically, but also across your face, parts of your body, your hair (in my case for sure, I've been going grey since my early 20s). What only years ago was a source of pride - "I'll be 16 six months before you!!" - becomes "Ha Ha, you'll always be six months older than me!" Your 30s come and eventually parts of you start creaking and cracking and you realize holy crap, somehow I've ended up precipitously close to middle age. The music you grew up with starts to be played on "retro" weekends and classic rock stations and the band members are receiving their AARP membership applications. You find yourself going to your 20 year high school reunion, which you can't really understand because you are certain that, even though you have been married for 11 years and have two children, you KNOW you only left college about 5 years ago. But if you are healthy, all of these thoughts are accompanied by the tiny voice in the back of your mind going "but I still have soooo many years ahead, no big deal." And then something comes and smacks you in the face so hard that a punch would feel like a cotton ball, turns your world so upside down that vertigo seems like a gentle ride on a small carousel, that everything you previously knew for certain, everything you knew to be true about this world, is intrinsically forever changed.

 



People who hide their ages, are ashamed of them...I just want to shake them and say "Why can't you see? Why can't you see how very very lucky you are? Those years are family you got to love and sunsets you experienced and places you traveled and children who were able to know you." But I understand. It's truly not something that you can ever comprehend until you live it and I get that. And I mean that - I have been on both sides now - even if you have taken care of someone who has passed, even if you have lost people around you, even if you have lost a piece of your heart when they left. I have lost many people in my life. I have lost people at a young age (both them and me), I have taken care of people that I have lost, I have taken care of someone who at one time held my heart, I have lost chunks of my heart, a rather large chunk of my heart- but I didn't fully understand - I didn't fully ingest, absorb, taste, consume the complete and utter fragility of this life until I got sick. I can see the theoretical thestrals. I wish to God I couldn't, I wish I thought the carriage was still invisibly guided, but I can see them.

 

So this is what a birthday means now.

 



 It means that I had another year to practice at this crazy dance called marriage. It means that maybe to these two beings I will actually be a tangible mother, not a vague memory or scent conjured only by pictures or stories. It means I had another year to try and realize any, some, bits and pieces of my dreams and goals. It means that I have had another chance to continue in this powerful play, to contribute another verse.

 

It means that if someone says, "Oh, you'll always be older than me" I will smile and say, "Yep, isn't that great!?" It means if someone says, "Don't worry, you'll be there one day", that I will gleefully say "Yes, I will, and I can't wait!".
 

Never again will I lament the opportunities, the blessings that the passing of this time has given me. Never again will I fail to celebrate another candle, another 365 days, another 525,600 minutes.

Never again will I spend and waste time as if I had a million years.

I am 39 years old today.

The thin line between writing about what you know and what you think you know...

Ooooh, this blogging world...thine are but a tricky mistress...

 

A former co-worked posted a link on facebook today that a friend of her's had written. It was about vaccines - very anti-vaccine talking about the medical problems that her son had faced and alleging that it was all related to vaccines. I'm not going to repost it here and I'm not here to debate about vaccines...I happen to have no problem with them, my children are fully vaccinated, and that's my business. I'm not here to debate the medical validity of certain claims or whether people's beliefs are right or wrong. This lady certainly had the right to compose her post, recite her story, talk about what she believes caused all of this, etc. If that was where the story ended, then I wouldn't be writing right now. But her final sentence (and title of the post for that matter) is basically where the whole thing goes haywire - to paraphrase her, she contends that all children who have been vaccinated are injured, that all children who have been vaccinated have some sort of illness - ADHD, asthma, spectrum disorder, allergies, etc etc. - that are a direct result of vaccinations, even if their parents don't want to admit it.

 

OOOOOKKKAAAAYYYYY.

 

I won't even go into the complete and utter fallacy and, what I perceive is delusion, of this statement. What I will say is that's where you lost me. Write about what you, personally, know, not what you think you know. I write about my experience, my cancer, my family. If I hear something from a friend, then I will write about that also, disclosing that it is the opinion of someone else. I enjoy reading other's blogs and their personal experiences, even, and sometimes especially, if they contradict my own opinions or experiences. How on earth can we hope to be convicted in our own beliefs if we do not try to understand the opposite viewpoint? What I do not enjoy is someone presuming to tell me what is going on in my body, in my family, in my personal world.  

 

When you start writing about what you *think* you know, that's when credibility flies out of the window faster than pants off of Anthony Weiner in front of a phone. You turn into the people who troll cancer sites extolling the virtues of hemp oil as the cure-all - you turn into Todd Akin talking about a woman's body closing down production during a rape -  you turn into someone who closely resembles a fanatic.



And January flies on...

So sorry, I have been in the midst of a New Year cleaning dervish. I get these urges ever so often and I have to go with them, because if I didn't then my semi-hoarder-like tendencies would have us dealing with a 100% useless garage vs. the almost 50% useable one that I am currently working towards. Between that and the never-ending family issues (I am currently dealing with the impending preparation and sale of my grandparents house, amongst other things that I will address in the future) and the holidays and the plague that seems to have hit every single person I know, I have been a bit busy. But I press on and will check in a bit more in depth shortly!

2013

I think this picture kind of sums up this year. I cannot believe that much of the first six months of this year I was still in active treatment, chemo and radiation. Events that filled almost every day, that my daily life revolved around, that consumed so many minutes to give me so much more time - dates, times, actions, results, appointments - now seem so far away. While this nasty nasty beast still unfortunately inhabits a too-large place in my mind, it has been evicted from the front room. Now it resides in more of a hall closet. It will eventually move to the backyard and then the next block, town, county, state and country, maybe eventually planet, but for now, this is progress.

 

My baby potty trained, started expounding in paragraphs of conversation, and started preschool this year - my baby baby started walking, running and semi-talking.

 

The next year I am certain will bring greater joys, accomplishments, opportunities. My husband and I, after the past two years, are more intent than ever on setting some serious and much anticipated changes in motion. Life waits for no one. The holidays will be here again in the blink of an eye and we will gather again, eyes sparkling in the bevy of twinkling lights, to celebrate and look back in awe of all that 2014 has provided. 

A Very Blessed Christmas

Just wanted to wish everyone a peaceful and blessed Christmas night.

What day is it??

The end of the year seems to be rushing towards everyone with the wind at its back...between some family issues going on and everyone catching the baby's cold - this house could rival the amount of slime produced by Nickelodeon in the 90's  - I have barely had time to stop and wrap presents. For someone who doesn't "work", my goodness, I can't seem to catch a moment - I haven't even watched Scrooged yet this year and that is decidely not cool!!

 

 

We did however, attend Jack's first Christmas program. I should have realized what a lion's den a small room filled with 80+ "adults" trying to watch the 30ish small children in the front of the room would become. Umm, really, people in the FRONT ROW, you don't need to stand up during the whole thing. Ugh...although I am happy to have a record of it, I truly think times were a little easier when not everyone was stepping in front of everyone else to record little Bobby on their iPad.

 

This was one of the few non-blurry ones taken over the lady's head that was standing in the front row...thanks lady. Merry Christmas - I need to watch some Scrooged now.

We have had some exquisite sunsets lately though. Amazing. 

 

Anyway, just wanted to get a short note in before Christmas. Wishing you all enjoyment in the preparations of the next few days and much luck with parking spaces and check out lines!

 

It's still in OUR hands...

 

It's only December 5th, but I have already heard from many people the annual bah humbugging, the Bill Murray Scrooged (one of my most favorite movies ever btw), the boo on Christmas, the "I hate Christmas because it's ... commercial, fake, Christ-centered, not-Christ-centered-enough, overly happy, depressing, encroaches on Thanksgiving, sparkly, not sparkly enough, " etc., etc., etc.

 

I myself have had, in years past, Christmas seasons where I wasn't exactly tilting my wassail cup with joy so I can't begrudge anyone their feelings, but times change and circumstances change and there's not anything that I wouldn't give out of heart, soul and pocket to be here for the next 20 Christmases with my children. So color me overly romantic about the holiday, and I will gladly concur with my donning of red and green-glitter colored glasses. But one thing that sticks in my craw about some of the complaints is this fact - we are still in charge of our households, and to a certain degree, what enters them. So while complaints about decorations going up before Thanksgiving (personally I LIKE going to the mall and seeing lights all over the place - just seeing them makes an unrestrained smile break out on my face. I unabashedly love twinkle lights, I think they should be used in more household decor) may be justifiable to some, the argument of "Christmas is so commercialized therefore I hate it" doesn't hold water for me...in fact I see it as a blatant cop-out.

 I get that I can't control what Jack hears at school or what he learns from his classmates about gifts and what to ask Santa for at Christmas. But I CAN control what enters my home and how I choose to have my family interact with it. Believe me, I get that Jack is three and the baby is 1 - but that's my point - this is the time for my husband and I to try to instill in them what we believe Christmas to be about, and on a larger scale, what we want our family to be about. I'm not making a judgment here - if a family wants to focus on gift giving at Christmas, more power and the Toys R Us catalog to them. But if you are just going to toss your hands up in the air and say "Oh well, Christmas is screwed because it's all commercialized anyway" then I have to call bullshit on that. I say that's teaching your kids that when you don't like something, when you don't agree with how things are run, then you just sit back and complain about it. When did we all cede control of one of our greatest gifts - our family - to some vague corporate overtaking?  It takes some work, but doesn't all of this crazy parenting fiasco we are entrusted with?  Sit down with your kids and a nativity scene and explain it to them, read books, sing carols, visit people, do some of the 8,000 things you have pinned, establish gift giving rules from early on and be firm - this is your family, not your parents, your in-laws, aunts, uncles or cousins. Let's pull up our big girl holly-covered panties whether it's with an overflowing-make-no-excuses-huge-pile-of-presents or whether it's with a tote bag-full but let's own our choices. Our families are still our responsibility, no one else's, and that includes how we choose to celebrate or not.