Home. Sweet. Home.

For those of you who follow Facebook. I won't belabor the subject - but just in case you hadn't heard, the surgery's completed, all went well, and I am at home. Hooray! Gotta say, the care at Easton Memorial is extraordinary - the nurses are kind and compassionate and funny - the anesthesiologist IS funny - and my surgeon is an absolute PEACH. Can't say enough good things about her!

My daughters have posted "lovely" pre-op pictures of me on Facebook looking radiantly happy. The Happy is chemical - light dose of Versed on board. Then for the surgery, they gave me "Michael Jackson Juice," that Propo-whatever-it-is - and the next thing I knew, I was waking up and HUMMING! Whew! I haven't had anything like that stuff in almost 40 years, and felt like I was waking up from a major drinking escapade. Wasn't sickening, but not particularly pleasant, either.

A couple of dear friends made food deliveries while we were gone today - so dinner was scrumptious. Son Skip has gone on his way - can't remember where he said he was overnighting. The girls have good-nighted and kissed me and are off to bed. I'm pillow-propped in my own comfy bed, and the cat is sound asleep beside me.

My only soreness, and not un-bearable, is where the lymph nodes were removed - and if I remember correctly, everything was clear in that dept., and I think someone said that means no radiation. Very wonderfulness!

I am still "floating" on your love, prayers, and caring - and I am so-oooo grateful. I could 'feel' you all with me today, and I knew, going in, that everything would be fine. Even my apprehension magically disappeared.

Thank you, Thank you. Thank you from the bottom, middle and top of my heart.

Good night, dear people and God bless you all.

The Night Before...

By this time tomorrow night, if all goes according to plan, I should be nestled all snug in my own bed with all the surgery behind me. And from what I've been told, I shouldn't be in too much pain - nothing Tylenol can't handle.

Tonight I am surrounded by loves - all three of them - my children. As expected, my daughters are here - and surprise of surprises, my son is, too, much to everyone's delight. Can't remember the last time I had all three children to myself. It's a very comforting feeling.

Have to be at the hospital a little earlier than planned - because I learned today that my booby has to be injected with radioactive stuff to track the path of the carcinoma. When I found out that the plan called for an injection without any numbing stuff, I said unh, unh! NOT gonna do that! The Lidocaine shots for my biopsy were enough to put me through the roof, and I refuse to have another needle stuck in there while I'm awake and feeling. So-oooo, we go in early so that I can sign consent forms and talk to doctors while I'm still conscious. I'm told the anesthesiologist has a great sense of humor - which I'm looking forward to - and then he'll give me the Versed, euphemistically called "conscious sedation." Conscious, hell! It's a lovely sleep.

The lady in the hospital registration office told me the surgery is scheduled to take one hour and 40 minutes. I asked if someone stands over the surgeon with a stopwatch - and if we go overtime, do they just throw me out on the lawn? Or maybe finish the surgery out in the hallway? And if we get finished early, do I get a discount? She was laughing so hard, she nearly dropped the phone!

And now it's time for bed - the waiting is almost over, thank God. I'm going to take my last shower for awhile - a "port" will be installed in my chest, so there will be no swimming or showers until after the port comes out.

I'm going to take everyone's loving messages and prayers and hold them close - and pray God will see all of us through this. I'll get back to the keyboard as soon as humanly possible. Good night and God bless.

4 - 3 - 2 - 1


Four days to go and counting....and the pieces are all beginning to come together. First and foremost, the final figures have come in from my biopsy - and I am what the call in the medical "biz," a "triple-negative." In people-speak, this means I have a greater chance of cancer recurrence than if I weren't a triple-negative  - and it also means I won't be able to duck out of either chemo or radiation. Oh, joy!

But there IS a caveat to all of this in that they really won't have all the hard evidence until surgery is completed, and pathology can be done on the entire mass and my sentinel lymph nodes. That is what will tell the WHOLE story.

So in the meantime, I've been making a bazillion phone calls to other survivors - and have lined up appointments with various doctors. I'll see the cardiologist on Monday, just for an update and an EKG. (Chemo carries the possibility of causing congestive heart failure.) At least we'll be prepared with a baseline.

I've saved my second-opinion option for the oncologists. One a female doc, and the other a male - both specialists in breast cancer - just to be sure everybody's on the same page. And once the dosages for chemo are agreed-upon, we'll be off to the races, so to speak.

One of my friends who went through the exact same procedure as mine exactly one year ago (with the same doctors) gave me great encouragement. She said she never suffered a flicker of nausea, and despite being very tired and having a "funny" taste in her mouth, things couldn't have gone more smoothly. She and everyone else have predicted that I will lose my hair, but that's no big deal as far as I'm concerned.

I've been shopping on-line for various hats, scarves and hair pieces. I'd really prefer not to go the wig route, because everyone says they're hot and itchy. I've located a company that makes hair pieces that can be affixed to the insides of hats - and I kind of like that idea. Just put on your hat, and you have hair. Voila!

Also on the advice of a friend currently treating for far more serious cancer than I, I've located an acupuncturist, which many people are using as an addition to healing these days. Although I've never used it before, I AM a believer - and so many of my trusted friends absolutely swear by it.

And so it goes...ooh-blah-dee, ooh-blah-dah. I still don't know how I feel. I am trying very hard to be positive and pro-active. I see no point in becoming a huddled mass of terror and fear - and I'm working very hard on staying in the here and now.  I certainly can't roll the calendar backward, and it's absolutely impossible to leap into the future. The hardest part is thinking about anything ELSE. It's amazing how one word - cancer - can absolutely dominate your life, your thinking, your planning.

I've purposely put myself into a self-imposed quarantine for now - at least until I get through surgery. This damnable flu bug is epidemic around here right now, so I am making every effort to stay out of crowds, supermarkets, even church. I wear gloves when I'm out anywhere - and I pull my neck scarf sort of up over my mouth - and I've got little bottles of Purell stashed in every corner of my life.

And I write - purely for therapy. It feels good to get all these thoughts out of my jumbled brain and onto a page. If it helps anyone, I'll be grateful - but I'm really doing this for me.

I've had lovely messages and promises of prayers from so many people - and for now, I'm just letting myself float on this cushion of love and concern. It's a nice feeling. Makes me feel braver than I think I am.

On that note, it's time for bed, perchance to dream, and tomorrow will be another day.

Good-night, all - and may God's angels watch over all of us.

Christmas 2014

      It's December 28, 2014, and the beginning of 2015 is just around the corner. Is it just because I'm old, or is time REALLY flying by more quickly?
      This past year took me to at least 9 funerals - old, old friends of long standing, two cousins, (one entirely too young), and more sadness than I can ever remember. My feisty late mother-in-law's voice rings in my ears: "Damned little good I can see about growing old!" A winter in Florida was not to be for last year, nor will it be for this coming year. It's as if Key West has been re-discovered, and rentals have gone through the roof - obscenely!
       And it's probably just as well this time. Just six days before Christmas I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Well, Merry Christmas to me! I'd had this "bump" for most of the summer that came on one afternoon as if I'd been bitten by something. I ripped my clothes off and looked - no bug or tick that I could find, but there was this red bump that itched like fire. I'd just had mammography the month before, which came back clear - and I took myself off to my local doctor to have him examine this "bite," or whatever it was, that just lingered and lingered. He sent me off to the ultra-sound dept. of the local hospital, and the report that came back was essentially that it was nothing to worry about. It resembled cellulitis, more than anything else. (I wondered at the time how one develops cellulitis in breast tissue - but I'm not a doctor, so I sort of dismissed it.) Back to the doctor in the early fall for a general check-up, and I told him my "bump" was still there. He gave it another look and said I was to go back for another ultra-sound - and results might as well have been a carbon copy of the last ones. Then my doctor said he wanted me to see a breast surgeon, just for good measure.  And I did, the week before Christmas. She'd already seen my films and read the radiologists' reports - but when she looked at the bump, she pronounced it "odd," and not what she expected - and just to be on the safe side, she said she was going to do a "punch-out" biopsy - and I'd have results in 48 hours. Except that I didn't. Forty-eight hours came and went, and no report. I called her office, and one of her assistants checked and said the results were "pending," but she'd call me before lunchtime the next day. Lunchtime came and went - nothing - and I called the office, only to get that damnable recording: "Our offices are now closed. We will be back in the office at 9 a.m. Monday morning." There were also some additional directions to call the hospital and have the doctor paged, if this were an emergency. So I called the hospital, only to be bawled out by the receptionist: "We can't do THAT," said she. "We're not allowed to page the doctors during the day. We can only page them at night." I told her I was just following the directions on the doctor's answering machine. "Oh, well," she condescended. "I'll see what I can do."
      "Like hell," I thought to myself - and called the office of my local doctor. His nurse was able to hook into the pathology report, and she said that results were still "pending." So I stirred things up a little and asked the nurse to ask my doctor if he could get through to someone to give me some answers. I'm thinking that maybe, "No news is good news," and  hung up the phone. Within the next 10 minutes, the breast surgeon was on the phone to tell me, "No news is NO news." What she could tell me, however, was that I have ductillary carcinoma - Stage 1, Grade 2 - but she was still waiting for prognosticators and protein inhibitors, and she made an appointment to see  me in the morning of the next Tuesday, just three days away.
          With my sister-in-law as my extra pair of listening ears, we trekked to the breast surgeon's office to learn everything there was to know about breast cancer. I was happy to learn that I qualify for a lumpectomy - and the jury is still out on whether it'll be just chemo, just radiation, or a combination of the two. (We're awaiting Herceptin results, whatever the heck that is.) And the surgery will be same-day, under a local - she'll also take three sentinel lymph nodes (no drain these days) - and if the insurance company will let her, she'll also install a port, which makes the chemo process SO much easier. (And if the port turns out not to be necessary, she'll just take it out.) I've managed to talk her into some Versed for the numbing process - that's the same stuff they give you when you go for colonoscopy - because the needles in my breast hurt like all hell - and I'm not brave enough to just grit my teeth. Surgery is scheduled for January 15th.
           There are many other pieces of treatment to be put together when we find out how aggressive treatment will have to be. I'm on the hunt for an oncologist that specializes  in breast cancer treatment - and it will be he or she who sets the dosages and the "protocol."
           How do I feel? Apprehensive, not terrified. My girls will be with me on the day of surgery - and then it's the old one-day-at-a-time approach. I'm likely to lose my hair, and accompanying sickness will be determined by the toxic chemicals. I have several friends and a couple of family members who have gone through this - and the offers of borrowed wigs have been rolling in.
           And, yes, it's at times like these that I miss the warmth of my husband's arms and his encouraging spirit. But I do feel certain he's watching over me, and he's "with" me in the spiritual sense.
          I've bade good-bye to any fantasies of being a tropical dancer - and the word is out that I won't be nursing any babies. (Of course, I haven't nursed a baby since 1970.) I'm counting on a lot of humor to get me through and the strength of a power greater than I, whom I choose to call God.
          So, it's, "Left foot, right foot, breathe - and, "This, too, shall pass." And by this time next year, I should have my hair back and start to feel half-way human.
         I'm just praying 2015 will pass as quickly as 2014 did!
         

April 21, 2014

Okay! Okay! I Hear You!

If I don't get something committed to the page soon, my daughter is going to be apoplectic.

It's not that I haven't wanted to write - it's that I haven't been able to organize my thoughts into something comprehensible. But here goes...

It's spring again, after the longest, greyest, most dismal winter I can remember. I never made it back to Florida, primarily because Key West was totally booked for the winter. (Unless I wanted a 6-bedroom rental for $5,000 a week!)

So I sat, and watched snowfall after snowfall after snowfall - and commiserated with friends who were feeling exactly the same way I was.  And I sort of "suffered" with two friends who lost  their husbands, and a cousin who lost a husband, and another cousin who lost a son. And that was pretty much the tenor of the entire winter - one sad event after another. The pall was lifted periodically by  song - our chorale performed two of the most glorious Christmas concerts I've ever been part of.

And there were visits, weather permitting, with the twins, now 17 months old, who are energy personified, and learning to talk. (And my daughter's tales of their daily "adventures" are enough to have me rolling on the floor with laughter.)

The daffodils are phasing out now, and we're on the vanguard of summer. And sad to say, it all has rather a hollow ring to it. I can't shake this feeling of empty purposelessness. Oh, sure, the intellectual side of me can reason through the void - but the emotional side of me has yet to heal. I've done some more on-line dating, to absolutely no avail - I've volunteered for various things that amount to "busy work" - and I'm more determined than ever to get back to Florida for the winter to come - BUT - my heart still aches, and the worries and fears that come hand-in-hand with widowhood and advancing age refuse to abate.

And I am SO reluctant to sound like "Mrs. Gloom-and-Doom." Sounds too much like self-pity,  and I have no patience with self-pity in myself or others. So I will try to keep forging ahead, one day at a time - and hope that my spirits will lift along with the temperatures.

Milestone #3

Three years ago this moment his body had been removed from the house. It wasn't un-expected, but it had all happened so swiftly. The love of my life had passed peacefully into eternity, and I was left with an empty space where all of his vitality had been.

The past three years have been sort of a vacuum. I've gone through the motions of some kind of existence - it's all been pretty blurry - and the only constant has been a persistent ache, as if part of my soul were missing.

It has only been recently that I've felt the unbearable weight of loss begin to ease - and 'me' is returning to me. It's been slow, marked by many pitfalls, but I can feel it happening.

The hardest thing to deal with is hearing the longing in my children's voices.  Even though they're all grown up and have children of their own, there is a certain tone that resounds whenever they talk about their dad. I hurt for them. I want to comfort them. Add to that the birth of twin grandsons who will never know the warmth of the love of their wonderful grandfather, and there are times when the poignancy of loss wrings my heart once again.

But we trudge along - and the days become months, then years, and the memories become more precious as we try to hang onto what was. His legacy lives on in so many ways, and the reminders surround me. I thank God that this lovely man made me the mother of his amazing children. I thank God that I can sit in this house, every inch of which he touched, and so much of which he built. I thank God that there is sort of a reverence when people speak of him. I thank God that my husband gave all of us the gift of his love and devotion, his energy, his wisdom, his intensity. I thank God that we have the example of this man's life and his values to cherish. I thank God that he taught us all the beauty and power of the wind and sails. His spirit is in the breezes that blow us along the water.

I thank God that I have so much to be grateful for.  From my perspective, it's been an incredibly short journey, but I wouldn't have missed an inch of it.

Milestones or Mileposts (You choose)

      Okay, okay. I give in. Daughter and friends keep bugging me to write - and I keep waiting for inspiration.

     And it suddenly just hit me: today's date. The third of the month. Exactly two years and nine months to the date. And I wonder why I am obsessing about this. I've always cautioned bereaved friends to honor the birthdates of deceased loved ones, not death dates. And here I am, ignoring my own advice. I don't really understand why.

      I think the main reason is that I have thus far failed to "take shape," as it were. I've yet to find a purpose - or a new identity - or some sort of goal. I'm stuck out here in Never-Never-Land, with no real identity of my own. Oh, sure - I have identity, per se, but it's a leftover from the days when I  was defined by marriage and "wife-ism." And that was a 24/7 constant. Now I'm a now-and-then grandmother - and a singer in the chorale - and my identity is as "Chuck Parry's widow."

      I'm not a "clubber." Women's clubs, garden clubs, book clubs, country clubs hold no appeal for me. And it's always been thus - that's just my personality. And I've run the gamut of church groups, community organizations, political groups. It's the old "been there-done that."

     I've thought of volunteering at the animal shelter - but I'm such a sap when it comes to pets, I'm afraid I'll become that "weird old widow who has 40 dogs and 60 cats." I've thought of volunteering at the library - too quiet - and I like to talk and be talked to. No to volunteering at the hospital - too depressing and reminiscent of what I've already been through.

      Travel holds my interest - but there is one major drawback: the dog. He's 15 years old now, still grieving the loss of his beloved master - so I have to go somewhere where dogs are welcome, or leave him behind with friends. And if anything should happen to him while I'm away, I'd never, ever forgive myself.

      I have one ray of hope - and that is a winter return to Key West. I did that for 3 months winter before last, developed some wonderful friendships and a life of my own - and certainly enjoyed the weather. Nothing like sunshine to chase the blues away - and Key West holds no memories for me as half of a couple. I can take the dog with me - and there is SO MUCH going on in that town all the time. No excuses for feeling bored and/or lonely. I'm hoping to luck-out and find a place to stay that doesn't cost $800 a night.

     My other hope is that our 9-month-old twins will cut some teeth and learn to walk before I go away. Those are milestones I really, really don't want to miss. They are at such a cute age, and every new skill or accomplishment is positively endearing.

     Another milepost is the clock, which has now passed the midnight mark, and it's time for this weird old widow to go to bed, perchance to dream lovely dreams of a time when life was filled with love and hope. And maybe tomorrow will bring a happier day and a new milepost to discover.