Progress Report 2-1

This is a hard entry to post. I really wanted to tell everyone that the routine scan is clean and I am still in remission but alas that is not the case. It seems that my body was not able to fend for itself on its own once the heavy artillery was stopped. A few sleeper cells woke up and initiated a new battle. You know those 30 thousand troops the president requested; they are not going to Afghanistan. They are joining me in a new attack and defense strategy. Randy was very hopeful and confident. He is playing Chess with the cancer and introducing a different drug to disorient them and keep them guessing. So today on my routine 3 month appointment I continue the journey for it seems there is more to experience. Now I can hear some “oh no” and sad sighs and even see a couple of tears and truly I can’t help but feel like I failed everyone around me especially my family as I keep taking them on this emotional rollercoaster. But I have to remind you all that the view from the inside is very different from the view from the outside and it is really not as bad as you may see it. After a couple of days of disappointment and frustration I picked myself up and brought “me” back to the present moment at hand. Right now I am feeling well and am busy with life, I have never ending remodeling projects to complete, a wedding to plan, golf courses to play, and mostly I am loved, and I was not about to let a scan and a diagnosis change my track. I admit I am angry at this disease, an emotion I avoid for its negative effects but I think this is an exception. It is a positive anger for those who really know me know that I am usually a very nice person until someone rubs me the wrong way. Ask my contractors and they will tell you; “don’t get on her bad side”. So I am issuing a warning to those pesky cells – I am more stubborn then you think and get out of my way. The nurses were so sweet today, all of them a bit disappointed to see me come back for more than a port flush but I told them that if I have to do this again then there were no other place I would rather be. Jill; the nurse that usually runs my vitals was at lunch and a new nurse I have never seen before took care of me. That was actually a moment of insecurity and I felt like telling her: “who are you and what did you do with Jill...” but she won me over when she painlessly stuck my figure. Jill later caught up with me and reassured me by telling me about her mom who has had cancer twice and is still living to be 85. Inside the suite, Andee the nurse looks at me and asks me how I am feeling. Well I tell her I feel just fine and still think that they are treating someone else. I feel like an imposter. How I feel and my diagnosis are totally incompatible. The treatment is very short and I am out in an hour. This treatment promises to be easier then the last one with less side effects including improbable hair loss; which is a blessing truly so right there I have something to be grateful for. I drank about half a lake to wash it down and stepped up my nutrition buying enough vegetables and whole foods to feed an “army” which is more than a figurative statement considering those 30 thousand troops heading my way. Then back to Jim to help me keep my immune system up and curb any side effects. I added to the arsenal Tai Chi and twice a week Yoga at the Wellness Community Center, something I know my friends Jane and Debby R. will be very proud of. It is a wonderful place that offers so much to cancer patients, survivors and their care takers absolutely free, or as Debby says it is not really free, you pay a pretty high price for admission and she is right. But it is a place of healing and that you cannot put a price on.
Much love