Catching up.. Plodding Forward.. Moving On..

It seems like an eternity since I sat down to update my blogs.  I know, I'd promised to do so regularly over the course of my treatment but it didn't happen as planned. 

I sat down at the keyboard a few times during chemotherapy planning to write something to update everyone, but everything I wrote seemed to come out part sick of the med zone part hopeful fortune cookie and I would abandon the post in mid-stream and move onto something else. 

Once I hit radiation, we were staying at the Maurice Grimes Lodge in Ottawa and for some odd reason, I could not get the Blogger site to cooperate with me for anything. I was using my husband's laptop and I might as well have been trying to crack the Caramilk Secret.  

I finished my radiation at the beginning of March, and hair hard just starting coming in.  I will laugh about it for some time to come because the hair was coming in dark and black and I was pretty sure the black shadow was dirt and tried for some time to scrub it off.  It had been just one spot on the front of my head.  It would be a few more days before more would appear and I would realize my mistake.  I had 5 O'clock shadow on my head!  Ah well, you have to laugh, right?

I'm a couple of months into the anti-hormone treatment and feeling a lot more like me these days.  Working hard to get everything caught up and back to where it needs to be. Some days are better than others, but giving myself permission to be human helps.  

I am forever grateful for a handful of close friends and family who stood by and made sure I never got to feel like I was wandering alone.  I am also very grateful for a number of folks that I talk to often but have never met -- not a day went by where at least one of them (and often more) texted to see how things were going, or just check for a pulse.  I'd forgotten how y'all panic when I'm not online for a few days.  

This last year has been BEYOND crazy.  I never imagined that I'd be celebrating 23 years post ovarian cancer by getting breast cancer.  Only me, I swear.  

We had no idea that the night after my first chemo treatment that we'd be sitting in the ER and saying goodbye to one of the greatest men I have ever had the pleasure to know.  My father-in-law had been ill for some time, but we had no idea we'd lose him so soon.  I can only hope he knew how much we all love him. 

I keep thinking about the last conversations we had. Even as he lay in his hospital bed, he mustered the strength to ask me how I'd made out.  I told him better than expected. He'd smiled and said good! before drifting back off to sleep.  That's so Walter. Always thinking about someone other than himself.  

He had a knack for making people feel loved and important.  I was blessed to be welcomed into his crazy tribe. 

Barely a hiccup later it seemed, we were all gathered once again to say goodbye to our nephew Mikey.  He was only 24. His smile was one of the brightest smiles I've ever known. He gave awesome hugs.  One of the youngest of the nieces and nephews, everyone took this news hard. 

He leaves behind the most beautiful little girl. Too young to understand the weight of the loss she has suffered. She was so very proud of the necklace that Nana picked for her that has Daddy's thumbprint on the back.  Addiction robbed her of her Daddy.  Addiction robbed his whole family of a lifetime of memories.  He was more than his addiction.  He was loved and cherished.  If only that were enough to keep him here and safe. 

I am grateful she has so many strong role models in her corner.  She'll be OK. Her circle of love will #DoItForMikey.

I can't help but think of my sister and her struggles and wonder what we might have done to change the outcome.  Maybe something, maybe nothing but in hindsight, the stigma surrounding the situation is often worse than the situation itself.  Maybe if we'd been allowed to talk about it more things would be different today.  I often wander down that garden path and wonder. So many dreams and plans we made as kids that will never come to be.  It's sad, but here we are. 

So many tragic things happening lately, these are the things you always hear about happening to some far-away family, not us, not our friends, our family, our neighbors.  It's a Small World, never seemed so close.  None of us are safe, no one is immune.  I guess the bottom line is that all of us are dying, nobody is getting out of here alive.

Tragedy and hard times bring us all a little closer together and really make us look at what's important.  Don't forget to hug those that hold you up a little more closely whenever you can.  Life's too short to forget to let people know they matter. 

Smile often, laugh when you can.  Hug as many people as possible while you're here. <3  - TJW. 

So glad to be home at last.

It hardly seems like it's been 5 months since my last post, but it has. 

I started dozens of writings in that time that for one reason or another never got to "done."  

Most recently, I'd had several attempts while staying at the Lodge for radiation treatments where I couldn't get my computer to log into my blog for reasons unknown.  I'd initially thought that it was because it was to one e-mail account and I'd logged in from another.  I'd tried logging into it as well, and also tried logging out of everything and back into only that e-mail and that didn't solve it.  I'm still befuddled on that score. 

It didn't help that the laptop kept insisting on upgrading to Windows 10, which seemed to work for a short time but then after an update kept reverting back to a previous version of windows.  This process would render the machine useless for hours at a time.  By then I'd be on to something else. 

Suffice it to say that my laptop and I were not besties during much of my cancer treatments.  

I am grateful for my teddy bear who loaned me his laptop several times so that I wouldn't be bored silly, but oddly I couldn't seem to get logged in to my blog from it either.  This machine has always auto-logged me in, so it remains a mystery.  

So much has happened since my last post. way too much to write in the space of one blog. 

I am happy to report however that I finished my last chemo treatment just prior to Christmas.  My radiation treatments started at the end of January, ran through February and finished at the beginning of March.  

It was a long haul but I'm happy to have completed those two legs of the journey.  I'm just a few weeks into the hormone therapy now (anti-hormone therapy perhaps) and follow up with both oncologists in two separate appointments in May. 

The hair I was told would start coming back 6 months after chemo was already starting to come in as I approached the 1 month after chemo. 

I'm still laughing about how I'd seen the dark mark on the front of my head and tried to wash it off.  It really looked like ink transfer, perhaps dry skin or even dirt but I thought it might have come from one of the hats. 

 Imagine my surprise a few days later when there was a large patch on top of my head and I realized that I had been trying to wash off was actually 5 O'clock shadow on my head!  

It's funny now, but it wasn't so funny at the time.  

I thought that the medzone living would bring a slow-down, but quite the opposite.  We got home and things seemed to pick up where the left off in many respects though for sure bedtime was coming up a lot sooner.  It's amazing to me how tired you get when you actually let yourself stop moving for a bit. 

In any case, It feels great to be HOME o our grandkids and kids, to our pets, and to life in general.  Not that we ever truly went away -- being in Ottawa and working sure isn't the same as being in my home office.