Month: March 2016

03/30/2016

Spring Is In The Air And Gray Is In My Hair.

It’s been a struggle, looking in the mirror every morning wondering who that gray haired woman is that is staring right back at me. She looks, well…OLD.

I mean, I’m no spring chicken according to my driver’s license, but I simply want to look like I FEEL. Younger than my driver’s license, and still a relevant member of my generation in spite of the toxic cancer drugs they pump into me every three weeks. All this gray is nothing more than a bold reminder that I’m forever living with cancer.

So, after much angst and with the approval of my oncologist, I met with a hair color specialist. It didn’t help that she immediately told me that she loved my gray.

But I don’t feel like me, I told her. So she explained that with never ending toxic drugs, my hair has been through a lot.

No shit, Sherlock (I said to myself).

To clarify for those of you who don’t really understand: my hair died with chemo and rather promptly fell off my head, then with a change of chemo drugs some 4 months later, it slowly (very s l o w l y) re-appeared but with a different texture and a whole lot more gray than it’d left with. Apparently while on hiatus, my hair decided to return with more curl and more ‘maturity’.  And I’m just not a fan of being pushed through the aging process faster than what would be the normal progression without cancer in my life.

We chatted for thirty minutes, the specialist and I. I showed her pictures of my hair before it all fell out. It had some white, but it had way more blond. It didn’t make me look older than my driver’s license, and it made me feel like all my friends look: healthy. So, we discussed all the options. Not many of them, really…but as we spoke, it became clear that the best option was really the first option and the most obvious.

I made the appointment and I’m going to have that gray tweeked. Yup, I’m not going to make it go away, because that would be impossible. But I am going to trust in magic, and find me a look that enhances the best of the gray, yet diminishes the worst of it (the salt/pepper drabby ashy colored stuff…which there’s plenty of). Fingers crossed this magic doesn’t elude me. Toes crossed, eyes crossed…dead mango branches swinging from the awnings on a northeasterly rotation while the clock strikes six minutes after midnight. Whatever it takes…MAGIC. I want it.

I know this is a bold move on my part; regaining control of my hair. Honestly? I just want to move through my daily routine feeling like a better version of myself, and not some imposter staring back at me every single time I catch my image in the mirror.

Is that too much to ask? No. I think not.

#cancerschmancer

03/06/2016

Riding Blind

The chamber is loaded and the hammer is cocked. The muzzle is aimed directly at me. I squeeze my eyes tight, waiting…waiting. I can hear the pounding of my own heartbeat and I can feel the blood coursing through my veins as I look within myself. I pray for the waiting to be over. Whether it’s a bullet or a blank, I just want them to get on with it. Deliver THE NEWS.

I grapple emotionally with the knowledge that whatever time remains for me, it is slipping away, and there is nothing I can do to recapture any of it. Not one single moment. JUST GIVE ME THE NEWS.

This is what it’s like for me. Russian Roulette. Every three months, each time I get a CT or a PET scan. I lose sleep at night wondering if it’s time to begin the big clean up…get rid of the tangible nonsense, so my kids and hubby don’t have to deal with it. I mean, what is there, really? I’m not a hoarder by any means, but I have hung onto things that have emotional significance to me, but to anyone else they’d simply wonder why the hell I was hanging on to that old thing. My closet is loaded with clothes I never wear, but they make me feel good looking at them. And then there’s letters and photos I’ve kept from decades ago…I already purged much of that. Dumped images of people that no one, aside from me, would know anything about.

Russian Roulette when you’re living with metastatic cancer goes like this:

If the news is good (say ‘stable’ or ‘remission’) when that trigger gets pulled, then it’s simply the sound of an empty chamber, a quiet click.  And I can breathe a huge sigh of relief while I shed a waterfall of joyful tears.

But if the news isn’t good, the gun goes off with a nasty blast, causing me to lose my emotional balance just momentarily as I absorb the shot. And it’s simply a matter of how lethal the shot really is…and did it hit a vital organ?

Positive attitude only takes you so far. You stay busy, upbeat, occupied, or just asleep…anything to keep your mind from wandering to a dark place. But no matter how well you’ve mastered that, it’s still a bit like riding blind.  You have good centered balance and navigate the turns well with strength of character and sheer faith, but you simply can’t prepare for what you can’t see.

And it’s so easy, SO EASY to get emotionally swept away by the incredibly comforting energy of positive thinking.   You begin to envision your celebratory victory lap as you now wait for the scan results to come in. But I know from experience, you can get completely blindsided by the proverbial gun when it in fact fires off a dreaded bullet.

Well, at long last…here’s THE NEWS (received 3 weeks ago…sorry, it took me some time to truly absorb it before I could publicly report it). This time around, all I heard was a simple click…the sound of a blank. The PET scan results confirmed that my cancer is stable. This means there is no change since the prior PET scan. Although my cancer is not in remission (the better outcome), it has not progressed any further. Godzilla is my new best friend, and I can breathe easier for another 12 weeks.

I’m STABLE.  I’ve said it out loud to hubby, to myself,  at random times.  The relief of that news was greater than I can adequately describe.

I’m back in the saddle and I’ve fully regained my balance.  Feeling so grateful.  So blessed.

#LiveTheDash