Saying good bye to The Girls

I remember when you first appeared in my world. So small... so delicate. But I knew you would grow. Like all females of our species, I noticed others and compared how you grew. Sometimes I was jealous that others the same age seemed so much more mature than you. Sometimes I dolled you up, dressed you in your best to be presented to the world, even if you may not have been comfortable in that particular outfit. I have to say... you did me proud. The admiring looks from others when they saw you in your lace, your frills, or sometimes when I let you just do your own thing and be completely unrestrained.

As you and I got older, you changed. You were not quite as perky as you used to be, but you were still beautiful. Sometimes you caused me pain. Sometimes I cursed at you, and I am sorry for that. At times, I wish we could go back to when you were little, when you were more under control. Every morning I see you and I never really think about what life would be like without you. And yet, here we are... about to go our separate ways. People tell me that I will get over it. That I can always replace you. But it wouldn't be the same. So tonight, for the last time I will say goodnight.

I will miss you...

One Day Till Surgery

It's almost here. The big day. And again, I am up early with only my Best Friend to talk to. So bear with me while I pour out what is in my head.

God, I am not really sure why I have this- this disease, infection, whatever you call it. I wish I didn't have it, but I think everyone says that. I am not sure why such things exist, but they do, and it's something I have to live with. And that's exactly what I would like to be able to continue to do... Live.

I want to thank you for all the blessings I have had. For my family. For the wonderful women who make my days crazy sometimes. For my mom who loves me and would give anything to make this go away or take it from me. It's from her that I learned to give people a chance, because no matter how many times she has been burned, she keeps trusting that everything will work out for the best. For my wife who has taught me what strength is. It's not always physical... most strength is the ability to not let your past limit your future. It is making hard choices and putting away your dreams to take care of someone else when the time comes. It is getting past the labels others try to pin on you and defining yourself. It is learning how to overcome.

I want to thank you for my friends. I am probably the hardest person to be friends with. I don't like the phone. I am not big on visiting (I am a big old homebody) and sometimes I get so wrapped up in what is going on in my own life, I forget that others have troubles too. But still, you gave me friends who love me even through my shortcomings, and I can't thank you enough.

Thank you for giving me the chance to re-connect with my sister. She is the most amazing woman and I am so proud of her. I don't know how she does all that she does and remains sane... but she inspires me. And thank you for letting me meet my two youngest siblings finally. ( I would really appreciate it if you would give me the chance to watch them grow into the cool and awesome adults they are going to be...but that's not what I came to talk to you about).  They have a great mom too, and I ask you to help me put into words a way to thank her for all she has done for them and for me. I appreciate her letting me into their lives, and trying to be there for me while she battles her own cancer. And while we are on the subject of re-connecting... Thank you for letting me and my sister in law start a relationship. I never really knew her until this happened, and I was missing out on a caring woman who loves my brother and my two nieces with all her heart. My youngest niece looks just like my mom, btw.

Thank you for the life you have given me.For all the simple pleasures, like good coffee, warm chocolate cake, fuzzy kitty cats, silly dogs. The flowers in my yard are budding right now. I want to see them do it again next year.

Two days till Surgery

Well... It's almost that time. Surgery day. Can I just say that I am seriously conflicted?

The day they told me I had breast cancer, my first thought was "Well, geez... whack these puppies OFF!", but then we went through the chemo and I had four months to start dreading what is quickly zooming towards me- Surgery.

I have never had a major surgery. I am one of those lucky few people who has gone tripping through life with little more than a few minor injuries that required stitches, but never have I had to be completely knocked out for hours while someone I don't know well has me laid out on a table wearing just my surgical undies. You know, they have Law and Order episodes about stuff like that. So to say I am a bit apprehensive would be an understatement.

Actually, I am flat out terrified. I try real hard not to play the What If game, but I find that impossible lately. What if I don't wake up? What if they get in there and it's worse than they thought? What if I wake up and they say that there is nothing more they can do? What if....man, I hate it those words. I hate the feeling of powerlessness I have right now because there is nothing I personally can do to change anything at this point. I just have to wait and see.

Every single day I have prayed over and over for God to protect me and those I love. I pray that everything will be okay, that I will come through the surgery fine, that I will go through recovery fine and that I can return to my normally scheduled life of work, home, friends and family. I ask everyone I know to pray for me. Sometimes I feel like I am bargaining with God. Please make everything okay God and I promise to be a better person. I promise to try harder. 

Am I lucky or what?

Bear with me as I skip around while I get up to the present day. See, I am not an organized thinker. I am a logical person, but my logic is somewhat free-form. Trying to write down my thoughts is like trying to herd cats. But what I want to talk about now are side effects.

You know how you read the side of the cold medicine box and it says "May cause drowsiness, headaches, nausea, vomiting, heart palpitations and in rare instances you may sprout an extra head."  Guarantee you, if I take that medicine, I will be sporting not just the extra head, but another foot and an extra arm. So, when we started chemo, I had serious side effects. It started the first day of Chemo.  I go to my chair (which is the chair I used every day from then on because I really got attached to my drip pole... I named it George), we get me all set up, all the Meds are stacked beside me, we open my shirt to use my newly installed port for the first time and... Oh Crap! I am covered in a rash. The doctor rushes in, the nurses are all standing around, I am still groggy from the xanax I took to get through this. Turns out I am allergic to Betadine. Yep... the port surgery I had the day before caused the rash.

I had all the usual side effects of the chemo, plus the extra ones from the nausea medicines. I drink so much water my kidneys hurt and I pee so much that I can tell you how many tiles are in the stall at work. I had constipation... which I have never experienced before, and that was a whole other bit of excitement for me. Then my skin started peeling. I looked like I had some strange melting disorder. We switched soaps. Nothing changed. I sent out a cry for help and lucky for me, my friend Holly works for a company that makes paraben free products and sent me a box. Oh thank God for my friends! I had been putting hydro-cortisone all over my face, and when I told my doctor that she was not really happy with me. Apparently, I can't use that any longer because it might aggravate the cancer.

So the first round of Chemo is over with and we go to the second set. Taxol and Herceptin. I was all worried about the vomiting and the doctor assured me there is little nausea associated with these two, and that things should get easier for me from here on. Silly me... I should have looked at the side effects list for these two just a little closer.

I do my first round and I feel great! Oh Joy! My life might just get back to normal!  I was so excited the day after chemo and the day after that. Friday rolls around and I am certain that I am dying. I have never felt this kind of pain before in my life. Ever had a shin splint? Or a really vicious charley horse? Okay... now imagine that your entire lower body is doing that nonstop for two days.

I am sure I have mentioned it, but since I got out of my teens, I really have no use for drugs. But I called the doctors office and BEGGGGGGGGEDDD for pain medication. My doctor wasn't there, but my favorite nurses were and they had the other doctor call in some good drugs for me. But what that meant was the taxol treatment that was already an all day affair would now get longer because now, to stop the pain (which is apparently only happens in 2% of the cases... 2%...am I the lucky gal or what?) we will be adding steroids to the mix, along with the benadryl, taxol and herceptin.

Then... I start to lose the feeling in my toes and fingers. Again... not a side effect that everyone gets. I start dreaming that I have grown extra toes. They give me gabapentin, which they give to diabetics to stop neuropathy. My little medicine box is no longer a shoe box, but a boot box. I am taking so many pills I lose my appetite. I have lost more weight in the past four months than I have in years of watching my weight. Remember the constipation from the first round? Well... that came to a screeching halt. I actually had to come home and change my pants a couple of times. Thank goodness we live right down the road from my job.

Now for my favorite part... Menopause. Yep... apparently all these drugs and toxins sent me careening into menopause at record speed. My hot flashes were so bad we didn't use the heat at night. I started crying at commercials on Hulu. I became absolutely convinced that I was going to lose my job because I was acting crazy. Guess what... another medication...

My last round of Taxol was Feb 7th. I have had a brief break from all of the above and thinking back over it, I really hope it was all worth it. We are coming up to my surgery date, and thats when we find out how successful all this was. I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I will herd those cats later.

Working through it...

Work. We all do it, whether we do it at home or at a place of employment. And like I said, I am a retail manager. Now, I know when you hear manager, you think of the guy in the blue shirt who is always freshly laundered, neatly pressed and wearing a tie, who looks like he just sits in the office and says " Do This! Do That!", but I am not that kind of manager. I am the woman who recently had to take an umbrella into the mens room to repair the sink because two kids yanked the faucet handle off and water was shooting to the ceiling. I go to work clean and come home looking like I rolled on the floor all day. I am filthy from my feet to the top of my head. I use my boobs as a shelf, so when I come home, they are two clearly defined circles of dirt on my shirt. I unload trucks, clean restrooms, stock shelves, clean up vomit, blood and for some odd reason, at least once a month I find a pair of poopy undies in the men's room. On top of all that, I manage a PHARMACY.  Full of sick people.  Yep... the ideal environment for a woman whose immune system is now compromised.

Don't get me wrong. I am not complaining. Strangely enough, I love my job. Well.... let me amend that... I love my customers. I love getting things done. I enjoy my staff. I feel a sense of pride when I look around my store and it looks neat. I love my boss. In fact, the only part of my job that I really don't like is everything regional and up. You know how it is when you work for a corporation. Lots of people who are years removed from the real work of running a store telling you how to do your job. But I digress...

As soon as I started this, my staff jumped right in to help me get through it. They dealt with schedules that changed on a moments notice due to my vomit comets. They switched duties with me so I was no longer unloading the trucks. They monitored my energy levels and picked up where I was falling behind.  My pharmacy staff waged war with the insurance company to get me my medication in the amount that I needed when I needed it at the price I should pay, not some weird made up price they tried to charge us.

Then there were the customers. My regular customers have got to be the greatest people on the face of the planet. I have had more people stop to hug me, talk to me, pray with me and generally show me that they love me than I think anyone in any other line of work would ever experience.  As we moved through the months of chemo, I had people stopping in just to check on me. As we get closer to my surgery day, I have those same people writing down my surgery date on calendars so they know when to pray for me. These are some awesome customers. Sometimes, I come in to work and find envelopes left for me with pictures and cards. (See why I love my job?)


So what was this whole stream of babble about? I think what I am trying to say in my long-winded way is that while work is hard, and working while undergoing treatment is even harder, sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. But it helps if others are there to help you. And for someone like me, who is not a person who likes to ask for help, this has been a learning experience for me. I learned that I don't have to do everything. I learned that for some people I am more than just the lady that manages that store... instead, I am the heart of that place, and you know what... I like it.

Christmas and Chemo

When I started Chemo, my doctor told me many people continue to work all the way through their treatments. This was great news for me, as my chemo schedule took me right into the busiest time of the year for my job- Christmas.

Christmas in retail is a nightmare. Anyone who has ever worked retail can tell you that the reason for the season, namely the birth of Christ, is buried by the commercialization and rampant greed of the public. I am not going to go on a rant here, but I do want to say that having cancer seemed to clear my head this particular holiday season. By this point, all of my hair was gone, and it's hard for a customer to yell at someone about anything as stupid as being out of stock on a toy when that person is bald and wearing reindeer antlers.

On top of all of this, Michele had been throwing up a great deal. We thought it was stress, so we made a doctors appointment for her. Lucky us... it was gallstones. So now she has to have surgery the week before Christmas. Sometimes I wonder about God's sense of humor. The good thing is that this surgery is outpatient and relatively easy on the body. Two small incisions and they suck the gall bladder out. She was healed enough to be back to normal by Christmas day. I told her she was just jealous of all the attention I was getting. She didn't think I was very funny. At any rate, we made it through Christmas without me having to miss any work, and she was now able to eat normal food again. Thank God!

Friends and Family

I must say... I have the best friends in the world. I know... everyone thinks that, but my friends have really been a bedrock for  us. As soon as I broke the news, we started getting letters and cards and surprise hats in the mail. I have worn every hat I received, read and re-read every note, card and email. On those days when I felt like hammered whale poop, all I had to do was look on Facebook and there was some funny something posted that made me laugh. I can't begin to explain how much it means to me to know how many people out there are praying for me.  Our friend Deborah sent me a box of my favorite soup mixes. Diana brought me bags of dark chocolate from the people at our church.

And my family... Mom and Michele have been wonderful. Mom sat with me for every chemo treatment even though I slept through all of them. They made sure I took my meds. They took me to appointment after appointment, remembering to tell the doctor about side effects that I forgot to mention so that I got the best treatment possible. Robbie (my brother in law) and his girlfriend Cynthia visited with yummies to make me feel better.

Then there came the hardest part... telling our son. See, he is currently living with his grandparents and attending college in PA. When he moved there, his Aunt was also living there and she was in the final stages of a different form of cancer. Her death was not easy. So, when he heard cancer, he immediately thought I was at the same place his aunt was. He was ready to drop out of school. He called constantly. Finally, we bought him a plane ticket for him to visit over thanksgiving. That also happened to be what we called the bad Chemo week.

See... my Chemo happened for the first cycle on an every other week schedule, so one week I had what is known as the "Red Devil" and that made me sicker than sick. Well, his visit corresponded with that week. How unfair that the week of Thanksgiving I would be on the chemo that made me not want to eat, and my son would be here. So, my acting ability had to come in to play.

I have to say, I am a pretty convincing actress. It's all the years in retail. I can be the most extroverted, happy, caring person in the world as I listen to complaints, concerns and disgruntled arguments from customers. Therefore, acting like I was 100% healthy for a week while my son was here was something I felt pretty confident I could do.  I just needed him to be reassured enough to go back to PA and stay in school without worrying about me dying.

Did I mention that chemo kills your tastebuds? Well... it does. The only things I could taste were Dark Chocolate and jalapenos. Obviously, neither of those are part of Thanksgiving. So, we did the big dinner and everything went well. The week went by without him suspecting how awful I felt. He returned to school a much calmer young man, and I breathed a big sigh of relief. One potential catastrophe averted there.

Are You there God? It's me... Dawyn

One of the first strange side effects of the medication to fight the nausea of chemo was the change in my sleeping patterns. Every day I would be up around 4am. There really isn't much a person can do at 4am. It's not like you can run the vacuum, or do any serious house cleaning because everyone else is sleeping, so I spent my early morning hours sitting with my coffee, waiting for the sun to rise and talking to the only person I knew was also awake right then... God.

I talked to Him about my fears. I am not going to lie... I am afraid of dying, but not because I worry about my afterlife. I worry about the people I leave behind. I worry that I have not done enough to protect them since they both depend on me so much for support. I worry about dying in pain. I worry about what people will remember about me. Did I do everything I could to live the life that God directs us to lead. Have I helped people? Did I make a difference in the world? What more could I have done? I think back over actions I did and actions I have not done. I think about the three homeless people in Charlotte who I  gave clothes, shoes and groceries to. I remember the man I caught shoplifting soup, who, instead of turning him over to the police, I bought the soup and some groceries and let him clean up in the bathroom while I heated his soup in our microwave at work. I remember the baby of the crack addict we housed for two months while her mother got cleaned up. I think about the homeless man we took to thanksgiving dinner because no one should be alone on the holidays. The local artist living in a house full of junk with no heat, but the most beautiful art that I am trying to help sell some of his work. Nothing in this seems special. It's exactly what anyone would do when God puts a person in need in their path, but is it enough? What more should I have done? What opportunities to make someone's life better did I miss?

I think about my mistakes. The people I hurt over the years. The ex girlfriends who I wish I could apologize to, but who will never know how sorry I am that I hurt them. The distance I placed between myself and my family when my parents divorced. The people whose requests for help I dismissed because I questioned their motives. I go over all my sins of pride. The way I look down on some people and think to myself that they aren't trying hard enough to fix their situation. The people I have harbored bad feelings for in my heart. You know, it is a hard thing to look at the dark side of yourself and admit that all that icky stuff is a part of you. It's harder still to admit that you have done nothing to change it, but instead you bury it, or cover it over with rationalizations when the truth is, you could have done things differently.

So, at 4am, God and I talk about these things. I have no way to make amends for my wrongs, but I ask God to forgive me and give me the chance to start fresh. When I feel the old thought processes starting, I ask for the strength to change them. And yes... I ask God to heal me so that I will have time to make myself into a person worthy of being remembered. I may never do big things, like form a Susan G Komen type foundation, but I will make a difference in every life that I can. I will make certain that every person who comes to me in pain, in need of comfort or in need of anything I have the power to supply will not leave without whatever I have to give.

Did I mention we read?

By the way... did I mention we are a family of readers? I mean like serious readers. Like we had to rent a uhaul when we moved not for the furniture, but for the books. Whenever we go to make a major purchase, we buy a book about it, research it on the internet, check consumer reports (it's amazing we ever buy anything with the amount of time we spend deciding). So, of course, immediately after the diagnosis we start the whole reading thing. Let me amend that... Michele starts the whole reading thing. I personally don't want to know anything more than what I already know. But she buys me some books anyhow, and I look through them.

First, let me say that I am sure that these books are great tools for the majority of women, so please don't take what is to follow the wrong way... BUT... these were probably the least helpful books I have ever read. Yes, the technical stuff was great, but the rest of it.....ehhhh.... not so much. The problem starts with the fact that most of them are written for heterosexual women. They are also written for women older than me. And they are written for a woman with a very different approach to the world than I have. Now bear with me as I explain these observations.

I'll start with the way I approach life. I am not a blamer. I don't blame my troubles on others, on myself or on God. I accept that sometimes shit just happens and we don't know why, but generally if you just go with the flow, the reasons become apparent. I am also not a person who throws up my hands and says "Why me?" because basically, when you say that, you are saying that it should have been someone  else. So, what would make me so special that I should be spared this? Yes... it makes me a little bit  mad (okay- maybe more like a lot) that I have this, but the crack addict who shops in my store continues happily through life without ticking time-bombs attached to her chest, but I wouldn't wish this on anyone.It's NOT fair, but then really, who ever was promised that life would be fair? So all those chapters reassuring me that what I felt was natural just pissed me off. Of course it's natural.

Next is the age thing. The books spend a great deal of time dealing with the loss of femininity that we will go through as we lose our hair and eventually our breasts. Ummm... since when did my hair or boobs make me a woman? Like I will go bald and boobless and suddenly I will stop being just as girly as I have always been? No... I don't think so. Younger women now realize that if you aren't happy with your boobs, you can change them. Bigger, smaller, more perky, more rounded, less saggy...whatever. And I see lots of beautiful women with shaven heads, so if it isn't the hair or the boobs that make up your femininity, what exactly is it? I mean, I know some butch women with HUGE bazongas and hair you could use to climb a wall with who are by no means feminine. I think it is a generational thing. For me, femininity is a state of mind.

Finally... the biggie... Sex.
The books spend a good deal of time talking about sex and intimacy while going through the process. I think at this point I kinda threw the book on the floor in disgust. Not disgust as in sex is disgusting, but the whole mess about being there for your partners needs and how to continue to have a sex life. HELLO?!?! Seriously? I may be the only woman in the world who thinks this way, but you know, right now, I really don't care about getting my freak on. And I definitely am not going to do it just to make my partner feel better. Let me break it down for you, so if you are squeamish, you night want to skip this next paragraph.

When you lose your hair, you lose ALL of it- pubes included. So now your privates are kinda prepubescent. That may be sexy to some people, but for me, its a little creepy. Also, chemo changes your body chemistry and you smell weird. I wish I could explain that part better, but the best way I can explain it is to say that your body gives off a sour smell. (of course, I could just have a real sensitive nose). So now I am hairless and smelly. Add to that the fact that my stomach still can't decide which direction my food should be headed, and as far as I am concerned, this is not the recipe for romance. I just find it hard to believe that any woman who has been married as long as I have can't wait the eight months or however long the treatment is before getting a little nookie. All I can think is maybe the women who can get past all that to actually have sex are either way more interested in sex than I am, or they are worried if they don't put out, they might end up like Newt Gingrich's wives or Elizabeth Edwards. Lucky for me, my wife loves me enough to respect the fact that I am just not that into it right now, but that I would love a snuggle or twelve. And when we do finally get to the point where I am back to myself.... well... the neighbors might complain. 

Losing your hair or gaining more face?

me sleeping through chemo

Okay... so I have short hair for about two weeks. The hair loss started out of nowhere. I was at work, on a conference call, when I ran my hand through my hair and came out with a handful of hair. Not just a few strands, but a handful. The second the call was over, I called my hairdresser and she told me to come in that night. We shaved my hair down to just a fuzz all over my head.  My loving wife shaved her head too.

Now at this point I am not bald, but I may as well be. As the hair that was left continued to fall out, we realized that the hair was not falling out evenly, but in patches. Strangely, the patches seemed to form a map of the world on my head. We named each patch after the continent it resembled and we watched as they shrank. The last continent standing was Australia, which hung on right on the front of my head for a month.

Strangely, I didn't cry much when they said breast cancer. I didn't cry much when we discussed my cancer plan of radiation, chemo and surgery. But when that last patch of hair slowly disappeared, I cried and cried. It was real. I really have cancer.

Next Steps

I can't begin to explain what that first month was like. Constant trips to different doctors. Test after test. Pet Scans, Echo cardiograms, Port installation, meetings with my oncologist, my surgeon and my radiologist. It seems like all I do is go to work and go to the doctor. Finally things settle down as we start Chemotherapy.

Let me talk a little about chemotherapy. You read all this stuff online about what happens when you start chemo. You throw up. You lose your hair. You get tired. Now let me tell you a little more about me. I hate needles. I mean, I REALLY hate needles. I pass out when they take blood, so the thought that I would have to be stuck with needles every week for the next 4 months had me in a panic. Next... at this point I have long hair. I mean down below my butt long hair. I have been growing and donating my hair to Locks for Love for over 15 years now, so while I am accustomed to cutting off my hair to shoulder length, I have not had short hair since high school. Finally, I am an active woman. I love running around the yard with the dogs. I walk to and from work. I can work 16 hour days at work and still be active at home. Needless to say, I am not looking forward to what is coming when I start Chemo.

The week before Chemo, we cut my hair off to donate it. My hair is now right above my ears. From what the doctor tells us, I will start to lose my hair after about two weeks of the treatment, so I have three weeks to get used to not wearing my hair in a bun. Customers in my store compliment me on my new hairdo. I explain to my staff and my boss what is going on in my life. I think I am ready for what is coming. We tell all of our friends. We tell all of our family. We prep the house by cleaning everything we can, setting up a comfy chair for me in each room that I like to sit. We rearrange my work schedule so that I can still be at work 45 hours a week while going through chemotherapy.

The first week of Chemo was exactly what they said it would be. I spent a couple of nights praying to the porcelain god. I took so many anti nausea medications that I had a hard time staying awake. I lived on chicken broth, bananas and toast. I went to work every day. I discovered that the worst day was actually two days after the chemo. We adjusted my schedule for the next week to see if it would make life easier.

Week two of Chemo was completely different. I took the medication exactly as directed and took the day of vomiting off from work to sleep. This worked wonders. So for the next four months, this was how my schedule would work. And then it happened... the hair loss began.

October 2011

September and October were really busy at house. See... in August someone came in our yard and stole the lawnmower. I didn't really think anything about it being missing because mom borrowed it constantly, so when she called two days later and asked to come pick it up, I was startled. Two days later, the leaf blower was gone. Now, let me explain something. We have dogs. Big dogs. We had, at that time, a Shepard mix, a Chow mix and an American Stafford-shire Terrier ( often confused with a Pitt Bull). So, someone came in the yard past three huge dogs and stole lawn equipment on two separate days. Of course I called the police and the insurance company.

The insurance company sent out an adjuster. Three days later, we get a notice that our policy was being canceled because we own restricted breeds. We never knew that our 10yr old Shepard, the 11yr old Chow and the 4yr old AmStaff were restricted. Immediately we start insurance shopping. The only companies out there that will insure you with "restricted" breeds are State Farm and some company that doesn't operate in our state. State Farm offered to insure us, but only if we did some massive renovations on the house. So we started calling window companies and subcontractors. Meanwhile, I began tearing up our 12 yr old Jasmine that was growing up the walls, and pulling the vines off our outbuilding. Lucky me... in the vines happened to be a great deal of poison ivy and I was covered in a rash.

September started with tearing up the exterior of the house. We replaced facia boards, replaced all the windows in the house, replaced exterior shingles, built new supports for the porch. We had exterminators out to treat for termites. The house was repainted. The window frames were replaced. The stove broke and it was replaced. The fridge broke and it was repaired. I battled the poison ivy and had rash after rash.
Finally I had to visit the doctor because the rash just would not go away.The doctor assured me it was not poison ivy. It was Mastitis and she gave me antibiotics.

Since I had just turned 40, she also sent me for my first mammogram. I have no history of breast cancer. We have had two grandmothers die of other forms of cancer, but there have been no other cases. Also, I am large breasted and I frequently have fibrous lumps form and go away. So I went for the exam. The next day, they call back. I have some abnormalities, so we need a biopsy. It's probably nothing is what the nurse tells me. Did I mention that it is now October, which just happens to be Breast Cancer month? I go in for my biopsy. On October 12 I got the call to come for my results. It's breast cancer. Not just any breast cancer... it's Inflammatory Breast Cancer.

I have never heard of this cancer at this point. How does a person go from poison ivy rash to mastitis to breast cancer? I thought breast cancer was a lump in your breast and I do my self checks regularly. This is insane! I don't even feel sick, so how on earth can I have cancer???

Michele of course looks up IBC on the internet. It's rare. It's fast moving. It's average life expectancy is 5 years.  What??? 5 years? That can't be right.... I'm supposed to be that crazy old cat lady and I am destined to not even make it to age 50?

Life before the big C

You know, you never wake up and think that today is the day that your life is about to change permanently. You get up, you have you coffee, you read the news, or check your Facebook page. You go to work, come home, have some family time, eat dinner and go to bed. Then one day something happens and the whole world turns upside down.

But I am getting a bit ahead of myself here. First let me tell you about the family L. We are what would be classed a lower middle class blue collar lesbian family. Just me, my wife and our son. I work retail management, she goes to school full time and works part time at a convenience store. Our son is away at college in Pennsylvania. We do all the things most families do. We go to work. We pay our bills (sometimes not quite when the company would like, but they get paid). We do housework on our days off. We go dancing on Friday nights at Fred Astaire studio.We go out to dinner with friends, attend wine tastings, beer tastings and anything that involves good food, like the taste of Charlotte festival. We rescue stray animals, so I guess I should have included them in the family list since no one can convince them they aren't people too. I do photography. We are avid readers. We like to visit museums, especially Discovery Place. We go to church on Sunday. Just your boring average family.  Sometimes we have arguments over the usual stuff like money, our son, or whose turn it is to empty the litter boxes. See... nothing special.

Micki and I have been together almost 20 years. We are long past the wild passionate part of life, but that's not to say we aren't still crazy about each other. I love the early morning coffee time when she hasn't yet brushed out her curls and they are all wild on her head, kinda like Lyle Lovett. She likes the fact that the second my eyes open I get up and start singing what she calls my morning song. (I have to say good morning to every cat and dog as I set up food bowls, refill water and take them out in shifts to go potty) On Friday night, we get dressed up and head to the studio to dance. I love dancing with Micki, but so does every other woman at the studio, so we save certain dances for each other, like the Rumba. I love east coast swing, and the more energetic my partner, the better, so dance a lot with the young students who are just learning and who want to try new moves. We laugh a lot as we mess up the steps and try again.

I just turned 40 this year. For me, I was excited. I know it seems strange, but my plan has always been to be that crazy cat lady who wears big ugly hats, plants lots of flowers in her yard and has about 40 cats underfoot. Not to say that I am the delicate sort... I am actually a big do-it-yourself kinda gal. When I wanted new floors in my house because 4 dogs were just too much for the carpet, I put in the new laminate flooring myself. I am also very outdoorsy. I love camping, hiking, gardening or just sitting outside with a book getting slobbered on by the dogs as the bring me their ball to throw. I have only been sick once in the past 10 years, and that was the flu. Obviously, I never suspected that deep inside me was something fatal.