Peaks and Valleys

What a year this has been. For 9 months I have been living life with cancer. So much has happened to me and it has really changed me. All the changes have been for the better. I find myself looking up at the universe and saying 'Ok...I get it....I get it! Cancer has really taught me how to live, and that is really something.

The thing I am finding the most surprising these days is how little arguing I have had to do about my choices for my care. I have had the expected amount of nay saying. Some how I expected something more dramatic.

Every day I look for input and ideas on how to continue to monitor and manage my health. Right now I am in the process of gathering all of my medical records from UNC and Duke. I am about to order a slew of blood labs through my regular doc's and once I have all of this information I will have a phone consultation with a guy named Jason who works directly with a man named Donald Yance, who I hear is 'the guy' in this country to talk to about treating cancer herbally. I bought his book and I have been reading it; It's very readable. I am inching my way through it, as I don't have 5 spare minutes these days to read, watch a movie, or walk my dog. I am already on some of Yance's herbal mixtures, and other than making me poop like crazy I feel pretty good.

Last Thursday I had an MRI and interestingly enough it came back not only clear and stable but even slightly better than the last one. This greatly encourages me and makes me all the more sure that I am making the right choices.

Today I went to see a Dr. in Raleigh who my acupuncturist recommended I speak to. He does work with thermography, which is as I understand it taking infrared pictures of the body to find 'hot spots'. According to K.M. they have discussed studying using this method along with acupuncture to actually prevent breast cancer. K.M. would take information about hot spots and use it to clear them with acupuncture treatments before they ever had an opportunity to develop into cancer. Dr. S was a nice man. He sat down and said "Okay, tell me everything". I did not tell him the whole story. I would have been there for hours. I gave him the basics and told him my main impetus for being there was that K.M. thought he would be interested in hearing about my amazing experiences during his treatments. Dr. S examined me, and looked at my breasts with an ultrasound. He urged me to get a thermography scan and he told me that if the tumor bed shows up as 'hot' he strongly recommends I have it removed. This would be a lump of tissue 'the size of a butter bean' in his words...not a radical left breast mastectomy like my onc's want me to do. I am willing to consider it. He also does not want to take anymore lymph nodes. That is my only real regret with the treatments I have had so far. 11 missing nodes is a real shame; they are important to the bodies immune system, and I am at risk for lymphadema because of them being removed. I am completely against getting radiation therapy. It seems totally stupid to me to do something that can increase your risks of developing cancer. Dr. S said that he thought I had made all the right choices so far, and that I should work on continuing to be 'a real healthy kid, eating lots of fruits and veggies, and eliminating stress from my life'. That alone was worth my $30 co-pay. I definitely want this guy on my team, if for nothing more than monitoring and another perspective. He and I talked some about what Ken said per breast cancer prevention treatments and he replied that 'We have been treating breast cancer the same way for way too long now'. I really like this guy.

So, my life has been a roller coaster. My health continues to improve and that is the number one priority of my life. But this year has still had a lot of sorrow for me. Most recently A.M. broke up with me....AGAIN. I realized kind of all at once that this is a person who just gets off on being the hero good guy in the story. He has galloped back into my life every time I have had a crisis, and it seems like literally the moment things are really good he falls apart and does not know how to really love me. I have spent so much energy telling all the doubters that he is so mature, and grounded and stable. All along here is someone who has repeatedly put down my physical appearance. He has criticized at different times my hair, my clothes, my skin, my glasses and the size of my breasts. He actually wanted me to lift weights because that would have the potential to make them look larger. Seriously...how insensitive and shallow can you get? And how stupid am I for having put up with it, for three courses no less? I just kept laughing it off. I realize that if I was not very comfortable and confident with my appearance and if I did not like myself so well these little sideways remarks could have been totally devastating. I encouraged him to tell me what he liked...but there is a difference between "You look pretty in red" vs "Your boobs are not big enough". I am SO angry with him, and with myself. I loved and trusted him, and he was catastrophically disappointing. He has some serious growing up to do, and I am done beating my head against that brick wall.

I am planning to move. I put out a missive to some of my closer friends and local contacts asking for advice and help. I have a lot of debt from this past year and I need to live more leanly if I plan to be able to afford the herbal treatments I want to take. My friend N.Q. has offered to give me a free place to stay for a few months, and after that I plan to look for house sitting gigs and other cheap or free living arrangements. I am going to sell and give away everything I can't stuff in my my car, and just go vagabond for awhile. I am actually very excited about it. I am a minimalist in my heart, and this will be such a great exercise for me. I got so many really good suggestions from people; from the most simple to the quite creative. I plan to explore them all, and I think it is going to be a ton of fun.

My adventure continues, and I am so overwhelmed with gratitude for my health that the blue blue sky on the highway had me laughing and crying at the same time, thanking god for how much it hurts to be alive.