Gettin’ back to nature

Posted: August 27, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 14 Comments

Marie’s gratitude challenge is spreading like wildfire. Several of my friends in the blog-o-sphere have taken up the challenge and are writing about nature. The other Nancy is focusing on trees, Jan is reminiscing about her koi pond, AnneMarie is watching butterflies, and Martine discovered a gorgeous flower while out for a walk. I’m jumping on that bandwagon. It would have been too easy and too predictable to use the first day of school as my gratitude du jour, so instead I spent a few minutes in my backyard after delivering my kids to their respective schools. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Earth laughs in flowers,” and there’s a lot of laughter in my backyard.

We’ve done a bit of landscaping since we moved into this house in May 2004. The corner garden pictured beyond my favorite girl and our favorite chocolate lab was the beginning of our efforts to fill our little patch of earth with all things green. A banana tree, a fan palm, and a few crepe myrtles went into the ground with hopes of fast growth. They were the anchors of what we hoped would turn into a lush backyard paradise.

A very rare snowstorm on our first Christmas in our new house gave me a good reason to snap a pic of our backyard. That corner garden is still working on becoming a lush screen from the houses behind us, and a pitiful patio table & chair set looks pretty lonely in that barren backyard. 

Two years later, when we decided to put in a pool, the corner garden had grown quite a bit and was getting some competition form a tulip tree on the right, a trio of oleanders on the left, and the stars of the show — 3 Italian cypress that carried the weight of really filling out the backyard. It’s looking decidedly less bare, but still a long way from the tropical haven I envisioned. 

A quick glimpse of that tulip tree during pool-building shows a little more growth, but there’s still a whole lotta fence showing through. I tried to mitigate the expanse of fence with a few old plates. Back in the day, I thought they looked cute hanging there. 

Today, I know better, and I’ve expanded on my quirky display. 

I love how the ray of sunlight snuck into this photo today. I’m not a great photographer and am too impatient to use anything other than my iPhone camera, and when I snapped these pics of my backyard this morning, I knew the light wasn’t going to be great. Little did I know, the light might not be great, but the sunbeams are!

Here comes the sun! 

The plumeria under the plate wall makes me smile, especially now that it’s blooming. It’s a fickle plant that craves more attention and TLC than I give it, but apparently it’s stubborn like me and decided to bloom anyway, despite its lack of care. Next to the plumeria is the ginger that grows under my bedroom window. Both of these plants scream “tropical” to me. Who needs to go to a resort when I have all this in my own backyard?

And that little corner garden? It’s all grown up now!

 

Torrents

Posted: April 12, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: cancer fatigue | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 24 Comments

Cancer steals so much. All the time. Every day. This I know for sure.

A couple of days ago I smacked my head upon this truth and watched helplessly as my dear friend experienced this for himself. His dad died from cancer a decade ago. Ten years, yet the grief was as raw as can be, the loss as crushing as it was a decade ago.

His dad was a handy guy who could fix anything. He made a good living — and supported four kids — with his hands. My friend learned from his dad and is handy too. Although his livelihood isn’t manual, he can fix anything, like his dad. He just doesn’t always believe it until it’s done.

My friend was fixing the spring on our gate (one of the many things he’s helped with around our house). The spring on the outside of the gate had lost some of its tension, and the screws holding it in place had wriggled loose after seven years of use. How many hundreds of times has that gate banged shut as my busy little family comes and goes? When we were building our pool, the gate and the fence came down, to be replaced by temporary, orange plastic fencing (seen behind the slabs of flagstone) that couldn’t contain my dogs. My then 7-year-old chased the escaped dogs across a very busy street, unaccompanied, but that’s a story for another day.
In the process of repairing the spring on the gate, my friend broke his screwdriver. The one that he inherited from his dad. No big deal, it’s part of a set and he has several others the same size. But he was upset–really upset–because along with the screwdriver, he felt like he lost a piece of his dad.

His rational brain knows that the screwdriver isn’t indicative of his dad’s presence or absence. His intellect knows that having the screwdriver doesn’t mean that he still has his dad, or that by not having the screwdriver he no longer has a hold on his dad’s memory. But his irrational side mourned the screwdriver. His emotional brain felt that he’d lost another part of his dad. As the wise poet Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Sorrow makes us all children again – destroys all differences of intellect.  The wisest know nothing.”

I’m very familiar with the destroying of intellect in times of grief, and I know just how my friend feels. After my mom died, I hung on to all kinds of her stuff: cookbooks, costume jewelry, unfinished embroidery projects, even her ratty old college sweatshirt. My dad has the more personal items — her glasses, her wedding ring, her driver’s license. I desperately wanted a piece of her, any piece, to remain, so I clung to her things in hopes of finding pieces of her.

Guess what? It doesn’t work. The desperation, the clinging, the hoping against hope are all for naught. Once the person you loved with your whole heart is gone, snatched away too soon by illness, there is no holding on to them. I’ve learned this slowly and painfully in the almost seven years that my mom has been dead. Her stuff is just that — stuff. It’s not her. She’s gone and that’s the brutal finality of experiencing the death of a loved one.

I’ve written before about how grief sneaks up on us, and can buckle our knees out of nowhere, even after years have passed. I know that this is what happened to my friend the other day: he was going about his business, engaged in a simple task that took little effort and yet would yield great satisfaction when done. The sun was shining, the workday was done, and a cold beer accompanied him as he unscrewed the rusty, spent screws from my gate. But once the screwdriver broke, so did the dam that most days holds back the torrent of sadness that is life without his dad. How many times has he said he wished his dad were here to help him with a DIY project, or to admire his handiwork upon a project’s completion? Too many times to count. And in the midst of an ordinary task being done on an ordinary day, the torrent rushed through.

“It’s so curious: one can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief.  But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.”  ~Colette

BC claims a two-fer

Posted: February 7, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, cancer fatigue | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

The icy grip of death got a two-fer yesterday. The world lost not one but two beautiful souls and because of this vicoious disease known as breast cancer, two important voices in the blog-o-sphere are forever silenced. Rachel Moro Cheetham, better known as Rach from the Cancer Culture Chronicles, and Susan Niebur of toddlerplanet both died yesterday. Rachel was the one who enlightened me to the appalling statistics that exist in the financials of the Susan G. Komen “For the Cure” organization [emphasis mine]. Rach is gone, but her tell-all pie chart will live on. Susan was an astrophysicist with NASA and mom to a 4- and 6-year-old boy who fought inflammatory breast cancer in her spare time. She compiled a list of science-related links, for kids and adults, on her blog full of science, parenting, and “the joy of life after cancer” that will no doubt become part of her legacy.

Rachel and Susan are beautiful examples of the pioneers in BC blogging. They blazed a trail and lit the way for newbies like me. They challenged and questioned and refused to wrap themselves in pink ribbons. They inspired me. By setting such a stalwart example, they encouraged me to do the same.

I’m not alone in my admiration for and my grief over these two women. A few blurbs from the BC world about them:

“Pretending that the pain isn’t here would be a disservice to the raw honesty of their voices.”

“I am stepping up to be a fearless & rebel friend. We need to keep their voices strong & heard by many.”

“If I could dim the lights on my blog, I would. We all took a big hit today.”

“I feel more resolve to stir the hornet’s nest.”

“CRAP CRAP CRAP.”

“Talk about hopes, dreams, plans, fears–then get out and live the life in front of you.”

“We will mourn and we will be sad and then we will become a FORCE that will not be turned back.”

Powerful words that befit powerful women.

When I created this little blog, it was initially to keep those closest to me informed of the steps and stages in my cancer “journey.” The plot thickened, however, and that “journey” became more perilous. A mysterious post-mastectomy infection, a month’s worth of hospitalizations that spanned the summer and three different hospitals in my great city, multiple surgeries to contain the scope of the infection’s destruction, two infectious disease teams, countless bags of antibiotics–both in the hospital and at home, and 267 days of oral abx gave me a lot on which to report.

Then came the harrowing process known as reconstruction. Thanks to the infection, nothing was simple, and what should be the final stage of the BC “journey” was anything but. Two revisions later, there’s still work to be done, and I’ve got many miles to go before I sleep. This little blog went from “Hey y’all, here’s what’s happening” to “y’all aren’t gonna believe this,” and in the process, this little blog morphed from a news bulletin to some serious therapy for its author and creator. Without the outlet that is publishing my most pressing thoughts, I could possibly be staring through the peephole of a padded cell instead of pounding out my latest missive on my iPad in the comforts of home.

I knew when I started this little blog that I would learn from my fellow BC bloggers, but I didn’t know I’d learn so much about this vicious disease that, for a time, took over my life and that has forever changed my life. As I put myself out there in the blogosphere and in the twitterverse, I found more and more blogs written by women like me–everyday gals from all walks of life in all corners of the globe confronting a nasty beast while also maintaining a career, running a household, and/or raising children. I’ve gotten to “know” some incredible women whose writings have educated, humbled, enlightened, and entertained me. Somewhere along the way, in between the updates and follow-ups that become the fabric of a cancer patient’s life, we became friends. United in our commonality of being members of a club we never wanted to join, we bond over blogs. We hold our breath as our blog friends report the news of the ever-ominous follow-up scans, willing it to be NED (no evidence of disease) news. We wake to the words on the screen written by fellow foot soldiers in this wrenching war. We cheer aloud in front of glowing computer screens late at night when there’s news of a final radiation session, and get teary-eyed  as we envision our blog friend ringing the bell in the infusion suite to signify the completion of chemo. We nod our heads in tacit understanding of the trials & tribulations that are a cancerchick’s life. We lean on each other and support each other, hopefully in equal measure.

In the throes of my cancer “battle,” I had a hard time reading the blogs of the cancerchicks who were battling MBC, the acronym for metastatic breast cancer. I shied away from those blogs because they were living the life that scared me the most. See, in my naivete, I wanted to believe that a cancer diagnosis at age 40 was the worst thing I’d ever endure (even thought I knew that facing the death of sweet mama was a million times harder). I wanted to believe that my cancer was the good kind, the easy kind, the kind that would never come back, even though in my heart of hearts I fear that it’s only a matter of time. In the beginning, I read the BC blogs from the outside, looking in, but before long, I became one of them. Like Rachel preaching the deception of SGK and dreaming of escaping from it all in a red karmann ghia, and like Susan arguing with her oncologist and imploring him to discharge her from the hospital after too many days away from her precious kiddos, I became one of them. They led by example and encouraged me to widen my sphere of influence. They were like rock stars in the blogging world — I looked up to them. Like getting an autograph from an admired celeb, a comment from them on one of my posts on my little blog was a thrilling keepsake. That their comments are no more fills me with great sadness. Thinking about those they leave behind — Rachel’s scruffy little dog, Susan’s sweet little boys — sears my heart.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Do not go where path may lead, go instead where there is no path & leave a trail”  Rachel and Susan, you have my heartfelt thanks for leaving a trail.

I live now

Posted: May 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: breast cancer, cancer fatigue | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , | 11 Comments

“With the past I have nothing to do; nor with the future. I live now.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I live now.

Yes indeed.

I’m digging that quote. Today, as most days, I woke up and stole a few minutes before hitting the ground running. I like to check my email first thing in the morning, and see what’s what before I start my day. I have several cancerbabes in blogland whose musings I follow. I don’t know any of these women personally, but we share a commonality that is cancer, and that tends to make friends from strangers faster than anything, including hard liquor.

One of my cancerbabe friends posted some really, really good news on her blog today, and it was the first thing I read this fine morning. Long story short she’s a 28-year-old dealing with Hodgkin Lymphoma who left her home on the East Coast to spend some time in my lovely H-town at MD Anderson to endure a grueling clinical trial.

Sounds pretty awful, right? As most cancers are, whether big or small, early- or late-stage. Cancer is just plain awful. But my cancerbabe blogger friend had good news to share about her just plain awful cancer: the clinical trial worked and she’s in partial remission.

Hooray & hallelujah!

Another strike against the many-faceted and much-dreaded disease that is cancer.

I read the rest of my emails with a smile on my face, and as I hauled myself out of bed, that smile stayed with me.  I believe in celebrating every little bit of good news that comes our way, especially when dealing with the dreaded C. Nope, I’m not opening champagne at this early hour, before even getting my little darlings out of bed, preparing their breakfasts, making their lunches and seeing them off to school. Thought about it, but resisted. I’ve learned the hard way that bad things happen to good people, and to counteract that hard truth by celebrating all the good things that come along. Sometimes with champagne, but sometimes not.

It’s easy to get caught up in all the bad things about cancer. And believe you me, there are many, many bad things. Watching my sweet, vivacious, and much-beloved mama be eaten alive, literally, by uterine cancer was horrific. Knowing that I would have to live the rest of my life without hearing her big belly laugh, without her all-knowing guidance in raising my own kids was b-a-d bad. Seeing her ravaged body become ever more frail day by day left me wondering how much worse could it possibly get. Because as bad as it is, there’s always more. My BFF Ed tried to tell me that. He knew, from watching his dad die of pancreatic cancer. I didn’t want to believe him, and childishly clung to the idea that it was as bad as it could possibly be. But it wasn’t, and no matter how hard one “fights,” once cancer gains a stronghold, it’s devastating. No matter how much one wants to win the “battle,” there’s no guarantee.

If anyone on this Earth deserved to win her “battle” it was my sweet mama. Her own mama died when she was 13, leaving her to raise her younger sister, who my mama had to work hard to forgive for usurping her “I’m the baby” spot in the family line-up. They lived on a farm and life was hard. She was the only one of her 4 siblings to graduate from college, and she did it in 3 years.Barb's necklace She was president of her sorority, which is how she scored this fetching necklace, and I’m sure she bossed her sorority sisters into next week. Determined to make her mark in the world, she became a teacher, and did it well. She married into a tight-knit Greek family who didn’t necessarily welcome “foreigners,” but she won them over. Every last one of them. Even the stubborn, crotchety old ones. She raised two kids in a most-loving and uber-secure environment. Everything she did, she did it well and with such love & warmth that people were drawn to her. She made this world a better place.

Yet, after a multi-year, multi-stage “battle,” cancer claimed her as its own. Not fair. Not by a long shot. But fairness has nothing to do with winning the “battle” against cancer. So much of it is luck and circumstance. So much of it is out of our control. That’s a tough pill to swallow for a Type A bossypants like me.

And that’s exactly why I live now.

Cancer steals so much from us. Big things: health (duh), time, innocence, body parts, hair, self-esteem, a good night’s sleep, healthy body image, money, freedom, time, faith, security. Small things: major wardrobe issues, range of motion in yoga class, being able to look in a mirror without wincing, missing important events, becoming fearful instead of being carefree.

The past is gone, and no matter how hard you may try, you ain’t gettin it back. You can’t change it. The future? Good luck with that one. My theory is you gotta work hard, bear down, be the person you most want to be, and hope for the best. Hope that you’ll avoid the evil lottery that decides who will be stricken with cancer. Keep on living a good life and doing all the right things (antioxidants, splurges in moderation, wholesome foods, regular check-ups and exercise, blah blah blah) but don’t for one second expect those things to earn you a free pass. Because cancer strikes no matter what.

So I live now.