head, shoulders, knees, & toes….

Tingling toes, frozen fingers, blurry head and shoulder so sore. I seem to relate my ailments to the little diddy I sing to my kid everyday. He grabs my toes when I start the song which makes me smile, and has my toes trying to overcome the numbness. Neuropathy sucks. But most of these chemo, cancer side effects suck. My hands, though, are just killing me, and it really has made me mindful of those suffering with arthritis or the like.

This little diddy has me thinking about my body in general. I am 37 years old and worry that this cancer bout has/will age me by ten years at least. I was always fit, happy with my body, never really struggled with self-esteem in this department even when I have had issues fitting into my skinny jeans. The vanity of this upsets me, because as I have said, my longevity means so much more, yet I am just not quite ready to feel almost fifty at my age. I thought I had a few more bikini years in me, even post baby. Okay okay, I know what I sound like and so what. (Even after my scar post, I guess we get to have ups & downs.) I have worked hard at keeping trim, keeping my outer side pleasant to hopefully match my inner side, so I feel I get to worry a little bit about what the hell I will look like when I am done being a cancer patient. The Gods willing…

I have questions about this head, shoulders, knees, and toes:

Will my spine be okay, or will I be hunched over when I age? Can I ever get a pedicure again?! Will my liver ever stop pushing my other organs around like a bully at the playground? Will my eyelashes return to their full glory? Isn’t it enough to be lopsided, one boob and all? And the one boob, what shall I do, can I ever get reconstruction? And, I am super worried about my bones. How will they weather this storm? Will my posture be compromised, can I ever practice yoga again? Or Kung Fu, will I be able to keep kicking cancer away with Shaolin? Or will I be limited in my activities? Will my heart be weakened, can I kick a soccer ball around when my kid gets old enough? What will be my post cancer me?

Perhaps I should just focus on having a post cancer me, head, shoulder, knees, toes and all.

Good Luck Navy Bean….

Navelbine really. I have a new chemo drug that I began this past Monday. It’s widely referred to as navy bean so says the nurses, and it just really does sound like navy bean! The side effects thus far have been pretty mellow, much more tame than my taxed, stripped & fucked cocktail. The protocol will be Navelbine, Herceptin, & Zometa. I get one week a month off! Lucky me.

I have been in a quiet space with this change because quite honestly I am nervous; I need this to work really well. After seven straight months of working the “say-no-to-cancer” angle and fighting the good fight, I had gotten a bit weary. Much of it was due to Tykerb hell, Taxol allergy, and shear exhaustion. My positivity was getting lost a bit, and the latest scans did not show shrinkage, no growth but no shrinkage. It is/was time to move to a different treatment and that is scary.

I have a good feeling about navy bean, because I feel pretty decent and that is what I need to keep my positivity up, which I firmly believe assists in this process. I am determined to win this little war inside my body, but after seven months of slow changes I am wanting a push. I am wanting the battles to gain ground and have my liver feel normal, my bones less creaky.

My doc won’t give me an end date to chemo jail but I am wishing and meditating to be finished by August. I, honestly, think this is an unrealistic goal considering how advanced this shit is, but hey what about this thing called cancer is realistic? Half the people I communicate with in this cancer community seem to be people this theoretically shouldn’t be happening to….but the ‘shoulds & whys’ don’t apply when life is on the line. We all live, breathe, and walk certain lines, some of us luckier than others, some of us more determined than others, some with love and life and death all mixed within. So when meditating on completion of my stint in chemo jail, I allow myself some wishful thinking, instead of why me’s, how about why not me? I get to best this beast into remission right, all by the end of this summer, right? Good luck navy beans, we have a race to win.

My champions.

From the early stages of my diagnosis, pregnancy, and life craziness, I have been so utterly mindful of the amazing people in my life. However, the last seven months have been even more astounding to me. The capacity of friends, family, strangers even, to step up and simply be beautiful, has been breathtaking. (There have been a few weirdos, but really the energy put towards them is useless), I will spare that description and focus on the lovelies.

Friendship: I’ll start here and write a different post on family…

To name them all here would take pages of descriptions, but I want to honor and write about their beauty so maybe I will, within a general scope, though you all know who you are! Let me see where this takes me, as it has been difficult to put into words how truly blessed I am with love, positivity, general assistance, worry, laughter, wit, and those that carry the anger and sorrow for me. It’s a burden that I can’t bare and my friends take it on, and disguise it, and then completely astound me with their love. I need more words to express the love I feel when my friends cradle me….even when I’m cranky and weary, or can’t focus on what the hell they say…they keep it real and let me be. That is a gift.

A beginning description of what my champions accomplish is diffiult to gather. I have had friends fly in from the east coast to assist with childcare while my hubby travels for work, no questions asked, if I needed help…they arrived. Along with the help, it is so heartwarming to see my closest girlfriends bond with my son, share their love, time, energy to keep me grounded. Locally, my hubby’s dear friend from high school and my lovely girlfriend helps one day a week with so much love and so much tenderness and such beautiful mothering skills; she is truly a woman to learn from. My friends and our neighbors have rallied together to devise their availability schedule and consistently check in to ask of our needs, packages arrive at the door, and help with a moments notice is never questioned when things get shuffled and shaky. Sometimes, we arrive home to a gardening crew taking care of our yard, with blossoming flowers and fresh farm eggs on the doorstep. The bonds I have formed here have exploded. My close girlfriends have always been true champions, but lately I see it so deeply. In the beginning, it was difficult to admit how hard it is for me to care for my son alone, but these friends have made it seamless. It truly takes a village, and I have one.

Afar, I receive text messages, notes, gifts, love, and even a stopover visit from a girlfriend who lives in Geneva, and by way of a conference in SF, she jetted up to Seattle to be with me for a few hours. Such a needed visit, how many astonishing women surround me! I love the funny gifts I get in the mail, like the Ghandi pen from a close friend who has had her own mountains to climb. Distant and past friends from Facebook, or heard through grapevine friends, have reached out in amazing proportions with love, inspirations, music, and simple thoughts for wellness. Prayers are abound from all religions and spirituality. My husband’s high school friend, whom I had never met, had reached out to me with offers of free massages and childcare help. My busy yoga instructor made me a lovely meditation cd, and our favorite restaurant people always offer to make us food.

My chemo visitors also take the cake and never disappoint. I have received three prayer quilts by the talent of my friend’s mothers…they brighten the chemo room. Make-up lessons, errands, laughs, cries, wisdom, chauffeurs, and bag carriers…I am never without love or assistance. If I need alone time, we dim the lights and sleep together, escaping reality, watching buffy, eating gummy bears, or if I need distractions we play scrabble, and make up funny chemo drug names and sometimes actually talk about cancer.

Our employers, my former employer have also been extraordinarily supportive, generous, and caring.

Our family has been extended tenfold…

In the beginning, this independent woman was hard pressed to accept help from even my hubby, let alone friends, neighbors, acquaintances… Now I understand the value in receiving such heartfelt gifts. It gives those around us a place to put their love without demanding my energy, it also is simply true friendship, and how can one deny such a blessing.

The map of my life is paved with scars, among other musings

This is me. Scarred on my knee, my heart, my belly, my right breast; scars of wanderings, scars of birthing, scars of illness, scars of which my life has created. I am scarred, but I am not solely my scars; they are roads on my inner map, my exterior markings. The word begins to sound so strange when repeated. We are all wounded somehow, sometimes we see the scars, sometimes we do not.

My right breast is gone, my sweaters cave in, as the energy to disguise this wound is nil. There is a thin red line where once lived a breast. And so what of it….I am over the scar tissue. I’m over being scarred by this bitchy whore of a cancer. Take my breast and give me my health. But that didn’t happen as all had thought. They took it, my bosom was halved…they weren’t all that big to begin with, but nicely sized for my body. I wonder how it looked on the stainless steel table all detached and emptied of my soul.

Generally, as apart of womanhood, we believe these beings define us, as they attract, they heave, they feed, they often comfort and Venus stands before us, armless with her breasts beautiful and exposed. They symbolize the core and beauty of a woman in many an art form. What I have learned by way of cancer, of life with astounding women to learn from, is that this is not the case. While our bodies can define us if we allow the world to tell us so, these breasts do not speak to the power of the woman. The core of a woman is her strength, her bravery in life, motherhood, sisterhood, friendships. The core of a woman is the depth of her compassion and love. Beauty is beyond the boob. Strength is within the scars we bear along the path to womanhood.

I was inspired to write about scars from two fellow bloggers. Bill gave me a unique perspective from the male view of the body in his post: http://bwthoughts.wordpress.com/2012/02/25/i-think-i-can/

And by the photos in I have breast cancer’s blog

Thank you for the inspiration to give my perspective.