Tag: women

Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

First I want to thank all of my readers and fellow bloggers that have hung in there with me for the past three and a half years. You’ve read my stories, laughed and cried with me and left me wonderful comments that have kept me writing all this time. I write because I love to write and would write with no audience, but because of you writing is more fun. You’ve kept me challenged to grow as a writer to try new ideas and travel down new roads in writing.

Recently I was diagnosed with breast cancer and last week underwent a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction. Monday I received the pathology report on my follow up visit with my surgeon. The cancer was determined to be Stage 1 and there was nothing in my lymph nodes. The cancer was very small and with the mastectomy all of it was removed gone forever. (I hope) The surgeon told me that the survival rate was 95% for five years.

That was probably the best news I’ve ever received, so you can imagine how I felt. Me, who never gets excited over anything, was babbling pretty incoherently. Poor Mitch had to tie a rope around my waist just to keep me from floating six feet off the ground. I was walking around making plans, talking nonstop not letting Mitch get a word in edgewise.

Bottom line now I can move on and get back to the reason for this blog, to entertain you with stories about those spoiled rotten wretched dogs that love to use me as a boat anchor on their walks. Thank you so much for your continued support I promise I will not disappoint you.

PS. During my recovery time of lying around and healing, I decided to start another blog site, “Susan Uncorked”, this one dedicated to one of my other passions, wine. I love everything about wine, so it just seemed like a perfect match, I drink wine then I get to write about wine. When you have a moment, please check out http://susank456.wordpress.com/ and let me know what you think. I love hearing from you.

What a Tyrant!

I am married to a tyrant. It just proves the adage, “Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” or something like that. Anyway, I go and have a little surgery and now Mitch thinks he’s the boss of me. And he is certainly enjoying his new job, a little too much I might add.

“No, you can’t do this’ or “What are you thinking, of course not, you can’t fix breakfast.” “You had major surgery three days ago and was just released from the hospital one day ago, what are you thinking?” Granted I only felt like lying in bed and sleeping until this morning, but it’s MY JOB to take care of him and run the house.

If I start to get out of bed, he almost runs to my side of the bed and asks what I want, then pushes me back and goes to get whatever it is I want. The only thing he can’t do for me is go to the bathroom but if there was a way to accomplish that he would do it for me. He follows me around the house asking what I am doing or what do I need? God forbid I stand in one place too long, then Mitch gets really nervous and makes me go sit down or go back to bed. I think he is afraid I’m going to clean something or start cooking.

The dogs are glad I’m home. They give new meaning to the phrase, “Love me to death”. They were so excited to see me get out of the car, I thought they were going to crash through the door to say, “Hi, glad you finally made it. We missed you soooo much.” Mitch had to put leashes on them and take them for a walk to burn off some energy while my son and brother got me in the house and back into bed.

Now it’s a race to see who can get to the bed first and position himself close enough to be in the best snuggle position and not mow me down as they launch themselves from the living room in a race to be first. I’m telling you, two dogs weighing one hundred eighty pounds combined hurling through the air at you is the true meaning of terror. And then there’s Mitch right behind them trying fruitlessly to get control of the situation before he might have to take me to the emergency room and explain how I got squished.

As much as I complain about him ordering me around, I know it’s because he loves me and the longer I take to heal, the more likely he will starve. It would just be nice if he didn’t take so much pleasure being the boss of me. It is nice knowing that there he is taking care of me for better or for worse. But between you and me I won’t tell him that.

It’s Okay

Today is the day. Today is the day I’ve been waiting nervously, anxiously for. Today is the day I’ve been dreading. I made the decision to have a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction. I didn’t make the decision lightly. I came to this decision after three other lumpectomies, albeit all benign, and I don’t want to have to make a decision like this ever again.

I’ve joked about the cancer, mocked it and made fun of myself for getting breast cancer. Some might think I was being callous, not being caring and thoughtful of others that are and have gone through this, but I’m not. This has been the only way I can deal with having cancer. To mock it and laugh about it is my defense against it. Otherwise I would walk around like a zombie feeling sorry for myself, sorry, that is not me. Besides I wouldn’t put my family and friends through that misery.

My family and friends have been outstanding through this long waiting period. There have been lunches and dinners (with alcohol), shopping trips to buy zip up tops, pajamas and undershirts for the healing process and too many hugs to count. A dear coworker even bought me a massage for the night before surgery just to help me relax and have positive energy. Poor Mitch, who has especially had to endure my warped sense of humor and totally inappropriate comments, has no idea how much I love him. I told him last night that he was the best time I ever had. Just in case.

This morning after no food or drink after midnight, not even a cup of coffee, I get to go have dye injected in me, have both my boobs whacked off and the rebuilding begun. Of course on top of having all of this fun, I get to go wearing NO MAKEUP. This from the woman who gets up an hour early on hunting trips just to shower and put on makeup.

Now that today has finally come, I’m scared. I wasn’t going to let it get to me, but it did. Damn cancer. But I’ve decided that today it’s okay to be scared.

Thursday Poetry

Dawn

Grass heavy with the morning dew
Leave tale tell signs of her passing
Stirring the thick mists
Hanging just above the ground.

Early morning dawn breaks
Through the low hanging branches
Soft light across the meadow
Dew drops sparkling.

My Rose Garden

So far the real downside to breast cancer is that I had to give up my hormones. I know that in the great grand scheme of things, giving up taking hormones is insignificant to staying alive, but these hot flashes are miserable. That sounds petty and small to some I’m sure, but until you’ve had a hot flash you have no idea what I’m talking about.

You don’t know what to wear, either you don’t have enough clothes on or way too many and sometimes not enough on that you can remove them in public. You never know when one is going to strike, no warning, just all of a sudden there is blast furnace turned up on high inside you and you can’t get any cooling relief fast enough. I keep a small fan on my desk and am constantly turning it on and off, to the point that I’m starting to get the crazy eye looks from some of my coworkers. Of course, they’re a little scared of me under normal circumstances anyway, so this just adds to the fear.

Its small comfort that it’s late autumn and winter is coming, maybe it won’t be so bad with colder weather. Of course the neighbors will think I’ve lost my mind when I’m walking the dogs in a snowstorm wearing a short sleeve t-shirt and shorts.

Stupid breast cancer, couldn’t it have been something else that could have caused it besides hormones? I would have gladly given up turnips or fish, (even though I don’t eat turnips or fish anyway) to save myself from breast cancer. Of course I don’t know for sure that the hormones caused the breast cancer, not yet anyway. I’ll find that out after the surgery when they take it all out and some of my lymphatic system too. It just sucks that not only do I have to worry about breast cancer, but I have to be miserable off and on too.

Where is that rose garden, nobody ever promised me anyway?

Thursday Verses

Do Not Cry

Do not cry for me
For I am not here
I am the wind,
The earth and water.

Do not cry for me
For I am at peace
I am light and dark,
The sun and moon.

Do not cry for me
For I am free
I am soft and gentle
The mists and fog.

Do not cry for me
For I am the light touch
You feel on your cheek
When you think of me.

Frosty Morning Romp

I took the dogs on an early morning hike or at least that was my plan, but when I pulled up to our regular spot there were other cars already there. That was when I noticed the large letters under the sign that said, “Dear Archery Hunting” and realized that we would be out there with men carrying large high powered compound bows. So in order to protect the dogs and me, we went elsewhere.

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Orso looking dapper in his bandanna

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Charlie in his bandanna

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The sun peeking through the trees

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A frosty dandelion

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Tall foxtails

Photos taken with my Canon Rebel

What a Day!

What a fun day Tuesday was, I couldn’t ask for a better day, oh sure. I woke up with a monster headache for the third day in a row. Switching from Daylight Savings Time to normal Central Time is a killer, even though we gained back that hour we lost in the spring. I keep waking up an hour earlier which is not good since we get up at 2:30 in the morning because of Mitch’s work schedule. Charlie and Orso are totally confused and don’t understand why they are eating an hour later but their stomachs are still on Daylight Savings Time. They were being especially annoying poking and pacing letting me know just how put out they were waiting for me to get my contacts in and clothes on. Ever tried putting a contact lens in when all of a sudden you get a jab in the back of your butt? Super good time.

The morning just kept getting better and better. I unplugged my phone from the charger pushed the button to turn it on and nothing happened. The screen stayed black and the phone felt hot. Wonderful, phone dead. It is two years old but I wasn’t ready for an upgrade, it worked just fine for me. I guess Sprint had other ideas and probably secretly sent a self-destruct code to my phone while it was charging. You don’t realize how attached to the little buggers you are until it doesn’t work. I always carry my phone when walking the dogs because between my “natural grace” and the things that go bump in the dark, I want to be able to call for help when they drag me off a cliff chasing some deer. I told the dogs that they better not knock my down or drag me around since I had no phone, like they care. I spent the day randomly calling my cell phone just to see if anyone called and left a message. No messages, just goes to show you that I really shouldn’t be so attached.

I was swamped all day at work with no time to take a breath, which makes the day go by faster, but didn’t help my headache. I had a consultation appointment with a plastic surgeon late in the day to discuss whether or not a mastectomy was a viable option and what the recovery time was. I have already read the horror story articles about women that the surgery didn’t go well for them, complications and infections, multiple surgeries and taking years to heal. I’ve heard the “It’s a great way to get a boob job” remarks and read the articles that paint a rosy picture of the procedure and wanted a realistic explanation from a reputable source. The plastic surgeon was awesome, we spent an hour and a half asking and answering questions. He explained the different types of reconstructive surgery available. When we left we both felt that we were as informed as possible about the procedure.

Mitch just had to tempt fate and suggested that since we were in the area, why not buzz by the Sprint Store and get a new phone. I don’t know about you, but there is no buzzing by a Sprint Store. We pulled into the parking lot and of course it started pouring down rain just as we parked the car. We made a mad dash into the store and was greeted with a packed house. Sprint was the place to be evidently. A Sprint staffer pointed out that there were eleven people in front of us (I think she wanted us to go home) and would be helped as soon as someone was free. Of course I didn’t know what I wanted, because I wasn’t looking for a phone so I wandered around looking at the different phones available. I am not super tech savvy so I mainly looked at the different sizes and colors. When it was finally our turn, I had narrowed it down to two models, decided on one based on the staff’s help and thought I was good to go. Oh no, I had to pick a color and a case to match, then it was screen protectors to avoid scratching the screen. The last challenge was trying to get my old phone to turn on so that they could sync all of my contacts and data over to the new phone.

Two hours later, we walked out of the store new phone in hand back into the pouring rain and headed home. Pour Mitch, by the time we finally got home it was too late for dinner. More good news, my headache was still going strong.

I Just Love Orso’s New Habit (Not Really)

Orso has a new habit and it’s a doozy. When I had my foot surgery earlier this summer and couldn’t walk the dogs, we had these wonderful friends that came over every morning and walked both of the dogs for me. Sometime during that time Orso decided that he really liked standing up on his hind legs and giving me a good greeting face to face. At ninety-eight pounds he literally can put his front paws on my shoulders and look me in the eye. What a great experience when coupled with that same ninety-eight pounds coming at you with a lot of exuberance and me being in a walking cast.

I have no idea where he came up with this new “fun” discovery of his. Maybe he picked it up from watching westerns on television in the mornings after I left for work. We started leaving the television on when we were not home for AJ our black lab who had severe separation anxiety issues to help him cope and just continued on after he died. Maybe I should stop this practice; it seems to be giving Orso ideas.

Since then we have been trying to break this new habit without much success. Orso has decided that rearing up like a horse is a great deal of fun. He’s started standing up routinely when we meet other dogs walking during the afternoon. This is his new way of saying hi I guess. The look of terror on the other dog owners faces don’t seem to agree with his idea. If he sees a deer in the darkness on our early morning walks, standing up barking at them and then lunging forward is huge entertainment for him. Couple that with me getting lurched around and jerked almost off my feet and we’re having a great walk.

I figure that in the near future I am going to be paying for a really nice vacation for my orthopedic surgeon.

My World Turned Inside Out

I have been sitting here trying to think of something witty or profound to say and nothing comes to mind. I’m not feeling especially wise or funny right now. To be honest, I’m feeling lost and scared. Every year I go get my basic health exams done, you know the ones, Pap smear and mammogram. In the past both have come back questionable, so I always keep my annual appointments religiously. I had my first breast biopsy when I was eighteen. I’ve had three more since and so far they have all been benign. After the mammogram the technician put me back in a tiny room to wait half naked for the radiologist to read the X-rays and pronounce me free to go. There was a knock on the door and the technician said the radiologist saw something he didn’t like and wanted more x-rays.

After more smashing, contorting and discomfort I was sent back to my tiny little room to wait. Everything was going to be fine, I told myself, the same as always. The knock on the door and look on technician’s face said something different. The radiologist wanted to do a sonogram because he wasn’t sure if he saw something or if it was a shadow from the scar tissue made from the last breast biopsy I had done four years ago. Off I went to get a sonogram. This day was not turning out the way I had planned. The technician completed the sonogram and took off to show his work to the radiologist telling me to lie still and wait until he came back. I waited for what seemed like an eternity thinking what was wrong, how difficult could this be? The technician knocked on the door and in walked the radiologist with the technician. This was not good. The last time I saw the radiologist was four years ago when he saw the last lump. The radiologist explained that he wanted to watch the tech do the sonogram to see exactly what the tech was doing and what was showing on the screen. Oh goody, now I have two men looking at my naked chest and not in a good way.

After ten minutes of rolling the wand back and forth across my breast, the radiologist explained that the “lesion” or “mass” was new and not a shadow from the scar tissue of the previous biopsy. He said he would call my doctor and recommend either an MRI or a needle biopsy to find out if the lesion was benign or not. The technician made a DVD copy of the x-rays and the sonogram for me to take with me to the surgeon for show and tell. G-Rated of course. My gynecologist called and we discussed how to proceed. Once again it would be the needle biopsy, fun, fun, fun. She also explained that since I had been on hormones for seven years and if the mass turned out to be cancerous that I would have to stop taking the hormones. I told her that wasn’t she just the bearer of more bad news. I was not looking forward to hot flashes. Of course, I figured that it would be another benign tumor just like the previous three times. I called the surgeon’s office and made an appointment for Friday, October 11th, giving me a week and a half to stew about it. Outwardly I knew it would be nothing as always, but inwardly there was this little voice inside my head saying, “are you sure? What if…?”

I played off the impending office visit, telling Mitch and myself that it was no big deal, then immediately following up with a statement about just lopping both breasts off and not having to worry about this in the future. Friday finally came and I was so keyed up about going so that I could get this over with that I totally forgot to take my boob DVD with me. I walked into the reception area and signed in, making a joke about being early. The receptionist smiled, asked for the DVD and I gave her this stricken look, I couldn’t believe it, I forgot it. I knew exactly where it was, sitting on my dresser. I apologized profusely and walked out to call Mitch and ask him to drop what he was doing and bring it to me. What a nincompoop, I suck. Mitch being the saint he is, brought it to me in record breaking time so I could still make my appointment on time.

I took my prize back inside with me and handed it over to the receptionist to give to the surgeon. Once ushered in to the examination room, I got undressed from the waist up, donned the fashionable gown and waited for my surgeon to come in make it all better. We crossed the hall to the room with his sonogram machine so that he could find the lesion again and know where to stab me so he could take the tissue samples for testing. His nurse squirted the lubricant on my skin, and it was off the races with my surgeon rolling the wand over the area marked on the sonogram and x-rays searching for the lesion. He couldn’t find it. Back and forth he rolled it over and over and didn’t see anything suspect. He was getting frustrated and I was getting worried. Was I wasting everyone’s time on a witch hunt? Of course I wasn’t the one that found it the first time, but my brain works in a weird twisted way, I blame myself first. After about fifteen minutes of a fruitless search for the mass, my surgeon decided he wanted to call in the big guns.

It was decided that I would go to the Women’s Center and get a sonogram needle biopsy there by the hospital’s radiologist. Evidently the women’s center had a bigger better sonogram machine and they would stand a better chance of finding it than the surgeon’s office machine. Since it was after four on Friday, I would have to wait until Monday the following week for the scheduler at the women’s center to call and set up an appointment, another weekend of waiting and wondering. The stress was really starting to build and the little voice was getting louder, the “what ifs” coming more and more. I still presented an outward, “this is no big deal.” But inside I had a bad feeling and told Mitch so that night in bed.

His response was, “What do you want to do?”

“There’s nothing I can do but wait. I just want it done and know the outcome, that’s all.”

Monday afternoon on the 14th I got a call from the scheduler setting up my appointment for that Wednesday at 2pm. I wish I could have gone right then, I don’t do waiting well. You should see me during the Christmas season, I make Mitch crazy. Thankfully I was not responsible for taking the DVD to the center; my surgeon’s nurse ran that over for me. The staff at the Women’s Center was amazing, caring kind women that treated me so wonderfully. I can truthfully say that everyone I had dealt with so far have been the most wonderful caring professionals in the healthcare field. These are special people to do what they do every day.

As the radiologist took the syringe and prepared to stab me with it the technician reached down and grabbed my hand and held it. I looked up at her and she had such a soft sweet smile on her face, it was almost like having my mom standing there holding my hand telling me that everything would be alright. That was so unexpected and reassuring, I almost started crying. I felt like I wasn’t alone in this, that they were there rooting for me as much as I was. I felt a sharp prick and then a burning sensation in my left breast; I looked up at the screen and could see the needle moving back and forth squirting the lidocaine around the area to be snipped. It was weird and a little creepy looking at the screen and seeing the needle then the fireplace log starter moving around inside me while the radiologist hunted for the best site to take tissue samples. Again it was time for more waiting. Two to three days before I would get the results and since it was late Wednesday afternoon, I probably would not get the results until Monday.

Monday came and went no phone call; does that mean good or bad news? Tuesday I called the doctor’s office finally out of patience and was told that the results had just gotten there but the doctor hadn’t read them yet and would call me back as soon as he read through the report. My world stopped as soon as I heard the doctor’s voice on the other end of the phone, “I’m sorry, the pathology report shows you have breast cancer. It’s a small mass, which is good…” he droned on. But that was all I heard, “breast cancer” then there was a roaring in my ears and my chest tightened. I squeezed back tears, took a deep breath and clenched my jaw shut to keep from blubbering out loud. No, my mind screamed, no not now, not today. Like any other day would be a better day for cancer. I focused on what the doctor was saying. He said that he wanted me to come in and talk to him and discuss our plan of action. The sooner the better, I could come in today or tomorrow whichever was better for me. I could get a mastectomy or a lumpectomy and get radiation therapy.

I told myself I could do this and called Mitch to tell him. As soon as I started to tell him, I couldn’t talk, tears ran down my face, I took a breath and blurted it out. In his usual calm voice he said that we would get through this. We would go to the doctor’s office discuss our options and go from there. “WE” being the operative word. Not you but we. We were a couple, a team and we would fight the fight together. I don’t think I could have loved him more than at that moment. Mitch had my back, no matter what.

It is funny how you can read something and it doesn’t affect you as much as saying it out loud. I could see the words breast cancer in my mind or even say breast cancer out loud, but when I added the two words, “I have”, I would tear up, my voice dropped to a whisper and I could barely speak the entire sentence, “I have breast cancer.” It took me three days to be able say that without crying, but now I can and I can smile and think about the positives in my life. I am working with the surgeon, doing research and talking the best source in the world, my friend who went through this last year and is amazing. She is the strongest woman I know who has inspired me to try to be half as strong as she was.

I gave myself a wallow time to feel sorry for myself, but now it’s time to get beyond that and fight the fight of my life. I’m done wallowing it’s time to put on the boxing gloves.