Luck

How do you tell the difference between good luck and bad luck?  Sometimes I feel extremely unlucky, and other times I feel lucky.  Obviously, getting cancer is a stroke of extreme bad luck.  However, I got a treatable cancer (so they tell me; I try to believe them).  It was found before it had metastasized, so that is pretty lucky.  It is not pancreatic, or lung, or ovarian, or liver, or kidney, etc. etc., all harder to treat than the breast cancer I have.  I acquired my cancer after the HER2 marker was discovered and also a targeted therapy for it.  That is pretty lucky.  I would have been out of luck on that score a dozen years ago.  I have been pretty lucky with relatively (it's all relative) mild side effects, and I haven't had to delay any treatments due to complications.  My husband and children are healthy.  Believe me, I am filled with gratitude for this simple fact.

And yet...  I still feel pretty unlucky.  Like when I went out to dinner with girlfriends, observing all of their excellent and intact hair, listening to the chat about normal things in people's normal lives, trying to participate when nothing feels normal.  Then again, I just love my girlfriends, and there I was, out for Thai food, so it's also lucky, right?  I realize over and over that people have done what I am doing and much worse, with aplomb and good attitudes, and I do try to maintain a good attitude much of the time, but having crossed over into this world of cancer, it is not easy.

Many will point out that viewing oneself as either lucky or unlucky is a choice.  For some, depending
on temperament, one or the other would be the default mode.  I am reluctant to admit, but will, that unlucky is probably the default mode, and I have to make a conscious shift to feeling lucky, which is why I constantly list out the reasons for my good luck with this whole thing.  Not to use my Jewishness as an excuse, but the Jews have not been the luckiest group, and I am pretty sure that fear and uncertainty, and worry, have come down through my completely unadulterated, un-mixed Russian Jewish line.  My nature is admittedly not a glass-half-full one, a lemonade-from-lemons

temperament.  I wish it was, but I know myself and I am what I am.  So I need to force the issue of what might be the good luck in my situation (see above list of lucky points, of which there are many).

Strange, the chemo is done, and I should be relieved, and thrilled, and excited to start feeling better.  I am all those things, but there is simultaneously the scary fact of no more poison.  Whatever the poisons have accomplished on my behalf is done.  I know for others and myself, who have gone through chemo treatments, there is definitely a desire/dread relationship with the poisons.  I could not wait for each three weeks to come and go, so I could have another dose, while knowing how badly I'd feel as a result.

It is amazing how tired a person can be.  I have been too tired to reach over for my glass of ginger ale and drink it.  I have been too tired while standing in the shower to turn it off and get out.  Luckily, that part lasts only three or four days.  And I will continue to look for the good luck wherever I can see it.

Last chemo

Well, I've had my 6th and last chemo treatment (I hope).  Anyone who has had chemo knows though, that the last chemo will not be done for two weeks or so, when I start to feel better.  So, more accurately, I have started my last chemo treatment.  As you might know, then I will have surgery and likely radiation.

Then, the return to whatever normal I can muster.  I read the blog of another woman also finishing chemo the same day as me.  I have to share what her doctor told her, when asked how she will know she is cancer free.  Essentially, the answer was, we'll know the cancer did not come back when you die of something else at age 96.  I found this to be succinct and pretty real, and will not soon forget it.

I will be curious to see what my normal is like.  And a new life of coping more concretely with the unknown than even a worrier like me coped with in the first place.  

Anyway, onward: one more visit with the plastic surgeon, one mri to get final measurements for the surgeon, surgery and recovery, and the pathology report that will tell whether radiation will be forthcoming or foregone.  Day by day.

All good

Dr. Garreau was thrilled with my progress.  Though the scans do not tell her whether there is any cancer left, they do tell her that whatever is there, scar tissue, dead tissue, or cancer, is much smaller. She believes the surgery will go very well, and has only positive predictions about everything.  Surgery is scheduled for January 22nd, and the pathology results from it will tell us if there is to be radiation.

All that said, I cannot shake the anxiety of the whole thing.  I guess that is not surprising, since I do have cancer and all.  So, I will just continue to try to breathe deeply, be in really good shape going into surgery, and wait.  I liked that Dr. Garreau said that chemo is the worst part, much worse than surgery, so I'm glad I will have it behind me very soon.

What to say

Well, since I last wrote of my paltry problems, like whether to run when it is raining, and how tired I felt, twenty families lost a child, and seven more famillies lost loved ones, in really the most senseless way I can possibly imagine.  I have two friends that have lost a child, in very different ways, but the bottom line in there is nothing worse than that, not breast cancer, or chemotherapy, or being bald, or even worrying about my own possible death.

My wonderful cousin, who I've mentioned here before, lives with her husband about seven miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School.  They have lived in Newtown for a long time. I am sure that like all of us, they did not imagine their town would ever be spoken of on a list that includes Columbine, Aurora, Virginia Tech...  It is a pretty New England town like the one in which I grew up, and now it is shrouded in shock and grief and sadness, and it will never be the same.

I am not going to write a diatribe about gun control, which I believe should have happened long ago.  To what end does someone own an assault weapon?  Our humanity, and the U.S.'s assumed status as a first world country is questionable to me, when we allow the potential for something like this to happen.  I am just going to say, as cliche and useless as it sounds, that my heart is with the parents and families whose children and loved ones are dead, and with a small town that will have to move through this somehow.

As far as my situation, just as a quick health update, this week I have felt better than I have felt in a long time.  I think that means I am at about 50% of my normal capacity, but I am not sure, as my normal self was here a long three months ago and it's hard to remember.  Tuesday I will have a routine visit with Dr. Raish.  Wednesday I will have a CT scan and and appointment with Dr. Garreau in Portland.  As routine as all that is supposed to be, the scan definitely causes some anxiety, and one way or another I will be happy when it is done and reported.  I think.  I hope.  Anyway, I will also visit the plastic surgeon in early January to finalize plans for my new rack.  And that is about all.

Running in the rain, and a pathetic advance

I will try not to be corny when talking about the rain.  You know, all that stuff about the many words Eskimos have for snow, and all that.  Here on the Oregon coast, we do need many words for rain, as there are many, many different kinds.  I have run in all of them.  Today, since there is no name for it, it was doing that medium-hard drizzle thing that seems hopefully drizzle-like when you step out in it, but quicky soaks you, your shoes, your fancy dog if she is unlucky enough to be with you (I have learned to leave her home - she really does not like it, so she was not out there with me today).  It has since morphed out of "drizzle" and into a perfectly honest, very hard RAIN, with a little more wind thrown in.  There should also be consideration given to temperature.  There is a vast difference between 50s (totally comfortable) and 40s (with rain, very cold).

This morning I made the strategic error of being in front of two episodes of Homeland while it was actually very lightly drizzling, which is not very wet at all.  Then, it started pouring.  I decided to wait out the pour and hope for a less wet interlude, during which I killed another 40 minutes watching Modern Family (yes, people, some days are like this).  After realizing I was not to be gifted with a little dry break, I got dressed, ate some chicken salad for fortitude, and headed out.

As is unfailingly, always the case, it sounds worse on the roof and windows than it actually feels.  If you live in a place like this, like to run, and hate treadmills, you too will be dressing in appropriate gear and heading out the door.  I have to say, now more than ever, it makes me happy to do this.  There is something incredibly cleansing in it.  I wear a liner beanie I got years ago and never used until now, underneath my trusty Portland Marathon ball cap, and wait for the sensation of a prickly, sweaty head.  Every time I go, manage it, get through it (today I crossed a line, people, and talked to myself out loud), I am better than I was before I went, physically, mentally, emotionally.

As every wet winter begins here, without fail, I am heard repeatedly to say, "Why the fuck do we continue to live here?  Isn't it time to get out?  Live somewhere normal? With sun, and snow?"  Ask anyone in this house, it is a chorus on repeat.  I try to watch my mouth.  It doesn't always work.  The chorus is exacerbated by strong winds, which I have extra bad feelings about.  But maybe this challenge of getting myself out in it, when it is neither pleasant nor easy, is one reason we are still here.  It is helping me be stronger, and requires a certain determination that frankly, you just can't exerience in a place with pleasant weather.

Now, to the pathetic advance.  The whole time I have been bald, I have been pretty self-conscious, unless I am in my house. I pretty much wear a hat everywhere.  At the pool, I got into this ridiculous routine of transitioning from my hat to the swim cap in private, and then wrapping my head in a towel in the shower and doing the transition in reverse.  Ridiculous.  I don't really mind how I look without hair, it's the concept, and the potential for having to visit the issue with others that keeps my head covered.  Anyway, yesterday I just wanted to feel my head in the air.  I was so sick of having it covered that I sucked it up and did my locker room stuff, fully exposed.  Know I am not a modest person.  I have never felt the need to cover up in the locker room, ever, until now, with my head.  So there I was.  One woman witnessed me, we chatted about the usual stuff (water pressure in the showers, hot water, etc.), and that was it.  My big psychological advance, there you have it.  I probably won't need to uncover myself while running, as by the time the weather is good enough I should have some hair.  I tell you though, fresh air on a bald head feels really, really good.

Jon Here: A funny Hanukkah story. So we do little fun presents every (or) most nights of Hanukkah. After the first night we were aghast that we forgot Mia in the presents... Well I went to the local dollar store and bought her some raw hide chew toys since we have never given her one before. The second night of Hanukkah, I got excited and so did Mia and gave her a mini raw hide bone. She just looked at it like what the heck am I supposed to do with this. We tried throwing it and playing with it, but she just basically looked at us. Then last night, the third night, I gave her a longer different shaped raw hide and she just looked at me incredulously as if to say, Um, we went through this last night, I don’t do raw hide bones!!  Or is it she knows we are not allowed to buy food for us to eat ath the dollar store and she won't eat it either because it is old...  It is so strange because she is such a food hound... Ok, this really has nothing to do with anything, but she is such a character and Mia has been the one really taking care of Laura!

After

I do have some fears about finishing with all this, which I guess is a good sign, that I sense I will finish with it.  Still, my fears make for another Catch-22.  There are a lot of those.  I am afraid I will come out the other side of this and be completely different.  And, I am afraid I will come out the other side of this and be just the same.

I don't know how to picture what would be so completely diffferent about me afterwards, but I fear the potential.  Of course, there are good ways to end up different.  I could find my passion, my life's purpose.  Not to brag too much about my cousin, but post-cancer she has created a fulfilling and purposeful life of being a patient and research advocate for breast cancer.  She is brilliant and well informed, and of use to many, many people, including me.  I could finally have the epiphane of what I want to do with my life, which if it happens will have been a LONG time coming.  I could find myself gainfully employed or focused and on the path back to school, for something I am sure about wanting to know.

I could spend the rest of my life grinding my teeth down to nothing with worry, which I realize is what I am doing now.  I could remain hidden away in my house, removed and permanently different from most of the people who know me, except for the people who have or had cancer, feeling like an alien.  I know I have always been a worrier, but I could end up a pretty different type of worrier than the standard Jewish girl I have always been.  I could be permanently stuck in my foggy chemo brain, unable to really function outside the house, in quick or lively conversations.

Or, I fear I could come out just the same - uncertain of my prospects, sending out resumes for work I don't have the confidence I could do.  I can't think of anything more depressing than coming through all of this only to once again be sitting around with the Daily Astorian help wanted ads.  And yet, I knew when I sold my lovely book shop that gainful, satisfying employment would be hard to come by again, especially after having a job I loved for many years.  Granted, the last years were difficult, and I had stopped being able to love what the business needed to become to survive.  Another Catch-22 was before me.  I loved being a bookseller, but there was no longer a place for the bookseller I wanted to be and had been.

Even before the cancer, I began to realize as my bookselling days became more distant, that I had forced myself to lose a large piece of my identity.  I would see people in the grocery who knew me in the book shop, and eventually over time, some literally stopped recognizing me.  For real.  My bookseller self actually began to disappear.  I had another identity, of which I was very proud.  I was an elected school board director.  That identity closed itself up quickly, by necessity.  At the swim meet Saturday an aquaintance asked if there were to be budget cuts in the upcoming year.  I had no idea whatsoever (though here in Oregon "yes" is a pretty good guess).

So, people say that cancer kind of strips a person bare.  Many people say that there is a very clear line that separates life before diagnosis and life after, and I find that to be true.  As soon as I was diagnosed, I literally had trouble remembering before - the immediate before, two lovely weddings during August, our trip to Maine, and actually the whole year became a blur.  So inevitably, I have to wonder what the distinction will be between who I was before and who I will be after.  I was somewhat of a neurotic, messy person before... The mystery awaits.

The funny thing about all this is that last night I was talking about it with Jon, and for the first time I can remember, he had no answer.  I left him without speech, which if you know him, is darn funny.  He did finally come up with the idea that he thinks my fifties will be powerful years.  I will hold on to that, and hope for the best.