525,600 Minutes...

I love having an epiphany, don't you?

It dawned on me this past weekend that it had been 1 year since my journey with cancer began.

One year. Wow.

Now, technically, I wasn't diagnosed until April 5th, but the surgery which triggered all of the events was on February 25, 2011. A surgery and day that made all the difference.

So, a year? How do you measure a year? If you were the cast of RENT, you would do it in song.
525,600 Minutes

If you're me, strictly referring to the cancer journey:

• 4 Surgeries
• 8 Chemo treatments
• 30 Radiation treatments
• Too many blood draws & doctors appointments to count

What I also find interesting about my year, is that I had this epiphany while traveling to a conference for young women who had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Exactly a year later.

Whoa.

The best number was the smallest:

• 1 more birthday for everyone I love.

Survivor's guilt - Merchandising edition

Had my 3-month check up this week - All Clear!! Woo hoo!!!!!

I've been lucky enough to go shopping lately, something I haven't been able to do in a while. And by shopping I mean, shopping for ME! Clothes for ME! As you Moms out there know, that's something that doesn't happen to often.

Yesterday I'm at one of my favorite haunts, Old Navy, and come across a shirt on the sale rack. It says:
HOPE
FIGHT
CURE

Then has a little Komen for the Cure ribbon on the bottom. And its not pink. So I throw it on the pile because of course, it's for BREAST CANCER!! Like, how can I NOT have this???

As I'm in the fitting room looking at the shirt I start to have mixed feelings -
I SHOULD buy the shirt, its for a good cause.
I DON'T want the shirt, cause it's not a great design (pretty boring!).
I SHOULD buy the shirt because of what I went through.
I DON'T want the shirt because of what I went through, and I have about 5 others that make the point for me already.

I put the shirt on the NOT buying pile. And the guilt goes on the Marjie pile. Ugh.

I want to do everything I can to support the cause, and support others, without being a walking billboard. Maybe the best way to fight this disease is to show it how we go back to being normal. We show others in the fight that normal will come back. Their hair will grow again. The laughter will return. And someday, in the not too distant future, they will go a full day without remembering that they had cancer.

Of course I'm still waiting for that day, but it's coming. I know it.

Feelin' Good

Howdy! It's been awhile!

I am truly feeling good. Though I been off of chemo for almost 4 months now, I am now feeling like my 'old self' - which is great! I have found myself working on projects that were completely ignored or done half-assed over the past 9 months. I have even cleaned out & reorganized closets!

And in all my regained energy, I have decided to take on a new endeavor - selling Avon. My mom is retiring from her Avon business and I will pick up where she left off. And since we are closing the BBC at the end of this week, Avon is my new 2nd job.

The end of the BBC is very bittersweet for me. Our shop has been a source of great pride for my mom & I. We love our customers & making new friends, but we have also been tethered to that building for almost 9 years. It will be quite strange for us to have Saturdays off. Mom & Dad are very much looking forward to being able to go to Colorado & visit grand babies! I'm looking forward to being able to say "yes!" when a friend asks me to do something on a weekend.

As we just celebrated Christmas and are now looking forward to a New Year, I hope you don't mind indulging me while I get kinda sentimental.

2011 was a hell of a year.  Period.  And while I am grateful for the experiences & lessons learned, I am more grateful to kiss 2011 goodbye.

2011 taught me many things:
* I am one tough chick.
* I look great bald.
* Help is never far away if you are humble enough to ask.
* Love and faith are the biggest healers there are.
* It's okay to cry - a lot.
* Prayer works.
* God truly works in mysterious ways.

I hesitate to make resolutions, because they seem to set a person up for failure. Instead, I wish for good health for my kids, my parents, myself, my extended family & all my friends. Good health is priceless. I wish to be of assistance to those who are going through health struggles of their own. I feel that I will be guided to those who need me.

Thank you is not enough to everyone who helped me, prayed for me, sent me cards & goodies, cooked for me, watched my kids or came over to visit me. I'm sure there are hundreds of other kindnesses that I failed to mention, but I am grateful for each and every one of them. I hope to be able to pay them all forward tenfold.

The Happiest of New Year's to you,
Marjie

You love me, you really love me! Right?

So, here I am at home on a Wednesday afternoon. To what do I owe this pleasure?? 

I won the lottery!!  Puking kid. 

Welcome to reality folks.

After doing personal bookwork, because I DIDN'T win the lottery and still have to think about money, I decided to hit up my usual cyber-haunts: Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Poker on Miniclip. You know what I decided after visiting these sites???  I'm friggin' popular!!

Okay, not really.

The internet & social media have done a fan-tab-ulous job of bloating our self-worth. 
We have 'friends' on Facebook!
Your friends 'like' your posts!
We have 'followers' on Pinterest or Twitter!
We can +1 ourselves on Google...(whatever the flip that means)

The coolest one is the 'followers.'   Think about it, it's like you have your own tribe or gang; people 'following' your every move. Awesome!

It is soooo awesome, that I tricked all of you friends & followers into reading about my pukey, feverish kid!  (insert evil laugh here.)

There's no moral to today's post. I'm just bored and I suck at poker. Good thing it's online funny-money poker, because seriously, I have NOT won the lottery. Yet.


BTW - Feeling great after my treatments were completed on Nov. 7th! Woot! Woot!!

Spring & Opportunities

Can you feel it? Fall...my favorite time of year.

It's cool, not cold. Nature's colors are striking. The smell of wood smoke and fall baking fills the air.

And that's all great, but right now I'm ready for spring...my personal spring.

Yes, ready for the re-birth of my body from the horrible cancer treatments of the last 6 months. My hair has finally pushed through the scalp and I have about a 1/4" of fuzz up there. My fingernails are slowly, slowly growing out, hiding the signs of chemo. My scars are becoming more invisible by the day. And soon, the redness of radiation burns will be a distant memory.

Women have problems with body image to start with, so the effects of cancer treatments are especially cruel to the fairer sex. We are conditioned to have good hair, smooth skin, flawless nails. All of that goes out the window. You really get to where you hate to look in the mirror. You get used to it, but you still hate it.

Yes, folks, my spring is coming.

Don't get me wrong, it wasn't all bad. I've also come to appreciate some of side effects. I saved a ton of money on razors & shampoo this summer. I packed for a weekend get-away and only had to take a back-pack. When's the last time you packed that lightly? No hairbrush, no razor, no curling iron, no hair dryer. I could eat whatever I wanted this summer, doctor's orders. I caught up on my sleep - good drugs!

And most importantly, I've taken time to count my blessings.

Sure, I cursed, ranted, raved, cried & screamed. Sometimes it was all too much for one person to handle. But then I remembered it wasn't just me. God was with me. My family was with me. My friends were with me.

Maybe the cancer was my opportunity to see the blessings in my life? I think this scene sums it up pretty well.

Life is full of opportunities.

Lab rats, mice & guinea pigs, Oh My!

Happy Hump Day!!!!!!  

That was the message from my radiation oncologist today...I am half-way through my 30 treatments!! Today was #16. Other than the daily drive, this is a walk in the park! I am starting to turn pink and by the end of it I will have the most effed up looking 'sunburn' you will ever see! Not that you'll see it though. :)

I have 99.9% decided to go on a clinical trial for a drug that has shown promise in reducing the recurrence rate of breast cancer, hence the title of today's blog. This is a decision I have really struggled with over the past couple of weeks. The good thing is that it is an established drug, so doctors already know the side-effects. The bad thing is that it is a double-blind study, which means neither I nor my doctor will know whether I will be receiving the drug or the placebo.

About the drug, it is called Metformin. It is used in patients with Type 2 diabetes to lower insulin levels. Doctors in Britain noticed that diabetes patients who had had breast cancer & had taken Metformin for diabetes had an almost 56% less chance of recurrence than other diabetics. Scientists are finding a link between the amount of insulin your body produces and the chance that you may develop breast cancer, apparently breast cancer cells 'feed' on insulin, so lowering the insulin may help lower the risk of recurrence.

It really took a lot of soul searching & prayer to come to this decision. At first I was afraid of how I would react if finding out I was on the placebo & my cancer came back. How would I take that on an emotional & mental level? How would my body react to the drug? It can't be any worse than chemo was, right?

In the end, it was my radiation oncologist that helped the most. Her advice was to "not feel guilty" what ever I chose to do. She was right. I was stressing about it too much. And knowing what kind of cancer I had, I will take any weapon I can put in my arsenal.

Please pray for me to get the drug - not the placebo!!! :)

In other news, Svensk Hyllningsfest came and went - whoosh! My mom's lung infection has reared it's ugly head again, but doesn't seem to be tucking it's tail and running from the antibiotics this time. Pray for her, too. Looks like we will be visiting with some pulmonary specialists soon. Mom's the one who taught me to fight, so I'll be right there with her the whole time, fighting some more.

So with that, everybody take a deep breath, have a moment of Zen, and keep us in your prayers. You are all in mine.

Just Call Me Freckles

Alrighty then! So far so good on the radiation front - 3 treatments down, only 27 more to go!

 As you'll recall in my last post, I was last entrenched in an epic battle for the good of the Republic in the MRI machine. Now I'm stuck in the middle of rush hour in NYC in the middle of radiation.

HHOOOOOOONNNKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

Yeah, that's the lovely sound the radiation machine makes while it is shooting me full of...well, radiation.

I started the week with an appointment for radiation simulation. I know the techs are highly skilled, and it's an important thing to do, and there's a PHYSICIST that develops my treatment plan (yes - Physicist!!) but the whole morning felt like tic-tac-toe for beginners. By the time I left my chest was covered with purple x's & o's, little dots, and what I'm pretty sure was the beginnings of a abstract self-portrait of one of the techs. Add all that to the existing scars, port & overall asymmetrical look of my body right now, and I looked pretty hot!

On Tuesday I went back to make sure all the pictures, x-rays, CT scans & MRI's lined up with all the pretty pictures they drew the day before. Hooray! I passed!

So, I'm up on the Frankenstein reanimation radiation table that moves by remote control (!), right arm over my head, looking at the pictures of Happy Little Trees on the ceiling (Yep, there is a picture of trees on the ceiling), cancer-y area exposed for all to see and UP pops my doctor.

Seriously.

From out of nowhere she appears. Like a twisted game of whack-a-mole. Does she have a super secret series of tunnels under the clinic? Can she just pop up where ever she wants??  Apparently I'd never realized how short she was until I was hovering 5 ft. in the air, cause she has a dedicated stool to stand on so she can talk to patients while they're on the table. Thank goodness she didn't scare me, cause my ass would have fallen that 5 ft. onto a very cold, hard tile floor. Luckily I only got a case of the giggles, which I passed on to Dr. Luder, then to one tech, then the other. Probably took us about 2 minutes to get control of ourselves enough to be serious about the radiation.

Then I got tattoos. What a let down.

I'd been anticipating the whole tattooing thing for months, it's been my mental joke since I don't like needles. "I didn't go out and get drunk then get a tattoo, I just got cancer."

It's definitely not like you see on LA Ink. No Kat Von D, no cool designs, hell...there wasn't even a tattoo gun. WTF??? They dabbed ink on me, then jabbed me with a diabetic testing needle thingy - HARD! Like a prison tattoo, or some old-school tribal junk where they use a sharpened stick & a hammer. And one stick for each blot of ink, that's it.

Basically, I have 7 new freckles. Booo-rrrr-ing.

And now that I have tattoos, they use laser beams to line me up and...HHHHOOOOONNNNKKKKK!!!!!!

Ugh.

Really? That's the sound it has to make? It can't play the first few bars of Beethoven's 5th? or even Yankee Doodle Dandy??

No.

HHHHHOOOONNNNNNKKKKK!!!!!!

At least I have Happy Little Trees to look at.