Okay, it’s been almost a month since my last confession, er, entry.  Time goes so rapidly now.  I work five days a week.  I know a lot of people do, but I have been off for seven years thanks to cancer and stem cell transplant.  My mother moved in with us after her fall in March.  I have had the grand-kids a couple times a week.  And Spring came early here in the midwest.  We have a huge garden that was already threatening to go to weeds.  I bought 130 bags of mulch last week.  So I have been weeding, feeding, digging, spraying, planting and transplanting, mowing.  And this is not to mention building a 16′ x 7′ trellis along the English garden and a matching structure across the yard for a swing.  I’ll try to do better.

Readership is still steady – around 300 visits a day.  I am still avoiding moving my site to a cloud and upgrading my blogging software.  For the past couple of months I have depended upon readership and notices of new blogs.

The latest is from Andrea Hutton, author of “Bald Is Better with Earrings.” Here is a taste of her writing.  She writes as Bald is Better with Earrings – your breast cancer companion

How Breast Cancer Changed My Life

I know, I know – so cliche. The thing is, though, last week I was interviewed by my local paper – The Santa Barbara News-Press and at the end of the interview, the woman interviewing me asked, “How has having breast cancer changed your life?” I answered,”In every single way.”

I’ve been thinking about that for about a week, and it’s true. Having breast cancer changed all of me: body and soul. It’s not that I’ve changed my life. I still eat way too much chocolate, watch tv, read the same newspapers (including the News-Press – yes, I’m shamelessly pandering). It’s more that I have been changed.

Let’s start with the obvious – my body. I lost those pesky 7 pounds I’d been fighting for years. Nothing like a little chemo diet to get you started. And of course, the more obvious – I’m not only minus those 7 pounds, but a breast as well. No, my breast did not weigh 7 pounds – I wish! My hair might have though. It was pretty darn thick and luscious. As you know from my previous posts – not so anymore. Now it’s thick and kind of like a poodle’s. I also sport a Port-a-Cath in my chest near my collarbone for easy infusion and blood draw access. Yup – I’m very accessible. In addition, one of my toenails has never quite recovered from it’s bout with chemo and at any given moment, I’m likely to burst into flame from the early medically-induced menopausal hot flashes. That’s just the outside.

The less obvious – I slowed down. Almost every breast cancer survivor whom I’ve met has said the same thing. It’s not that I changed my religion, or found yoga (in fact, I hate yoga). I didn’t give up coffee or anything else, for that matter (except Diet Coke – my son made me do that). I just found that I can enjoy a slower pace now.  It’s not exactly – take time to smell the roses, slower – but it’s different. Life is short and that stupid, pink, ribbon-wearing elephant takes up a lot of room in my house and mind so there’s less room for clutter.

When you undergo treatment for cancer, people always say, “You’re so strong.” Or, “You’re so brave.” The truth is, most of us are strong and weak, brave and absolutely terrified. And that’s okay. We learn the truth about ourselves in those dark moments – and sometimes the truth about those around us.  I dealt with some of it well, and some of it horribly – just like everyone else. I definitely learned how to say, “I’m sorry.” That and, “I have to lie down.” Not entirely sure which one I said more.

So, when we moved to heaven – otherwise known as Santa Barbara – I could walk on the beach, collect sea glass, and be happy with that. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I had to be outwardly productive all the time. It turns out quiet time is productive too, but it was during my year of nothing-but-cancer that I learned that. When your life is filled with doctor’s appointments, blood tests, infusions, and side effects, you simply don’t have the time to do everything you used to do. So you learn to do less, and that seems to stick.

Then there’s the not-so-obvious. I became a writer. My first blog was on www.caringbridge.org and was just to keep my friends and family up to date on my treatment and progress. Then I realized that all the information I had gathered along my breast cancer road needed to get out there. I wanted to share all the tips and hints that the amazing doctors, nurses, survivors and my own research had taught me. Never in a million years did I think I could write a whole book. Turns out – I can. I hope it gets published and out to the women who need it some day, but at the very least, I learned I can write.

Cancer changed my family as well. I won’t speak for them (because they hate it when I do that) but, without a doubt, we are all changed.

~ from Bald is Better with Earrings – your breast cancer companion

Renn just passed her first year anniversary as a breast cancer blogger.  In this post she honors a fellow traveler whose journey had recently comes to its end. Renn writes at The ‘Big C’ and Me

HONORING MARY

Another bright light has been extinguished by breast cancer.

Mary (aka MBJ on BCO) has died.

Doctors gave her four months. She was gone in six weeks. Her passing has left the online breast cancer community at a loss for words.

Cancer is some scary sh*t.

I feel a need to honor this lovely woman who was so generous in spirit and insight; who always had a kind word to spare no matter where you found yourself on the breast cancer path; who so readily shared her own pain in the hopes that it might help others. And she helped so many others.

Mary was just two years out from her initial breast cancer diagnosis when she developed constant shoulder and arm pain. Several doctors told her she had a frozen shoulder; another said she had nerve damage. Mary herself suspected that maybe she tore a muscle or ligament. She received cortisone shots and some physical therapy, but the pain never went away.

Mary was also uninsured. She waited months for an MRI appointment (which, ironically, is tomorrow). When she was finally (correctly) diagnosed in early February (yes, just last month), doctors sent her home with hospice. She died six weeks later. She never had a chance. But you do.

How can we honor her life? By listening to our bodies, speaking out on behalf of our discomfort, and not taking no (or “I don’t know”) for an answer.

And listen to your gut. If what you are hearing from a health care professional doesn’t sit well with you, keep shopping — until you hear something that does.

R.I.P. Mary. (To hear her lovely singing voice, visit the website her husband created for her here.)

from~

This one comes from a young woman diagnosed with AML, acute myelocytic leukemia.  She writes at Girl With The Swirl

While I’m not caught up in ad world, I’m trying to take more small walks. Here’s the current predicament, which is pretty minor in the grand scheme of things. I’m pretty sure I have muscle atrophy from completely suspending all my physical activities I used to do 8 months ago + 2 1/2 weeks of solid bed rest have now left me tired and sore from being in the same positions. It’s like my bed has a crater and I’m a moon unit officially parked on it. So in my attempt to get rid of my muscle soreness I try and walk, but I get quite tired from lack of activity, so I can’t push myself a lot otherwise the artery in my neck feels like it’s going to burst. Lol what a joke I feel like right now. I could start physical therapy when I have built up enough stamina, says my oncologist. However, since I’m pretty familiar with how to work out, stretch, and build muscle I can do it myself. I just need to be extra slow working into it.

I had a good phone conversation with a friend I made in Moffitt while I was there in August and September. We both shared our “war stories” of hospitalization in the past week. I completely hate we’ve (ESP they) gone through rough times dealing with our health provider staff and system. It’s such a frustrating, helpless feeling when you feel things are going wrong with your treatment (which has been rare in my case) and you have no impact on changing it, or you’re too damn fed-up with it all, you have no choice with it but to go with the flow. I can’t even describe the level of stress a patient feels walking into the hospital some days. You’re thinking about annoying problems like the previous paragraph, to someone next to you telling you they’re terminal, tracking down insurance and providers regarding billing errors, what your blood levels are, am I going to have an 8 hour day here, am I eating enough, do people think I’m just on vacation and I’m not really sick, what if cancer ever comes back, how long is this going to take for me to get back to normalcy? I mean, you name it, I think it goes through your head. I’m currently trying to not freak out on my insurance company who is trying to dodge payment and pass onto me. My parents have been a godsend about this issue. I would be totally clueless with how fogged up I have been on medication to figure this all out. I’m so glad I got that paperwork in order days after I was diagnosed that made them legally allowed to handle this stuff with me. They’ve been here a month. Can you believe that!?

from ~

Got an email last week from Beth Fox who lost her son to cancer.  So this is a bereavement blog, a tribute.  The web design is interestingly different.  Learning to navigate it is its own voyage of discovery.  Beth writes at A year of Black

Spring is coming. In my house we love the outdoors, we spend lots of time hiking and walking and going to the park. Nolan was famous for bringing a sword everywhere he went and he protected all of us from the usual horrors, aliens, rattlesnakes and imaginary dinosaurs. He loved hiking and we made up names for the trails we went on and I still call them those names when I run, and I think about him and how happy he was to be outside and running around and being a kid with a sword. Now I have 2 little princesses who I take to the park, and some part of me always cringes when I go, because I am afraid. I read recently about how parents with Kids who are dying should prepare themselves( as if…) and one of the things they said was that a parent should prepare himself with answers to questions people would ask, like “how many kids do you have?” Harmless question normally. Ugh, but not at my park where there is a mecca of jogging strollers and too many sand toys, these are professional moms and they like to be social, and if you know me then you know that I struggle with general sociability. So I am afraid to go to the park because In my moments where someone is brave enough to approach me, (ok, not true! I am mostly friendly!) they always ask how many kids I have. Let me lay this out for you. I miss my son, I often don’t mind talking about him and sharing stories about him ,but strangers don;t know that, and so what then? They ask, they see your 2 girls and do you throw in a bombshell about a son in heaven or do you mention 3 kids and hope to heck they drop it so it doesn’t get awkward. Or do I lie and say 2 kids, which isn’t a lie but a technicality and feel like crap because it makes you feel like you have lost the ability to count him anymore. whew. I know I am not the only parent who has felt like this. Sometime I avoid it all together, but mainly I change my answer everyday and still nothing feels right, after 2 years I cannot decide how many kids I tell people I have.
I have learned that people take there cues from you. If you are sincere and stable about your losses, then they are too. Sometimes My answer depends on the type of person I judge them to be, wrong I know, but sometimes I wonder how I could touch someone in a moment unaware of what they might be going through. I can put surety in my voice and hope in my response. I can cover a hand in peace and I can stand up before a throng of people and say that something terrible has happened and yet there is still life and goodness and Peace. I can share hope when I can. But to be honest sometimes I can’t; some days I wrap myself in black and murmur that I have 2 girls and they are making me crazy, and then shuffle home and stare at curly hair and a big smile that I wish I could touch and I scoot myself under the covers and bury my head in my pillow and talk to God all night long because there is no good sleep anymore.
I don’t have an answer, and If i could bury my head in the sand at the park I would, but then, who would push the swings?

~ from A year of Black

Here is a blogger from “down under”. In her email Liz wrote “I’m writing to you from Australia’s ‘Top End’. I’ve just started a blog called ‘Paw Paw Salad’ about living with breast cancer, and life in this part of the world (I was diagnosed only a short time after moving here from the Big Smoke – it’s been one hell of a journey!). This site is a great initiative – I’ve already had fun checking out different blogs, and plan to do much more. I’d love it if people popped in for some ’salad’ and to say hi! Cheers” ~Paw Paw Salad

Life in the slow lane.

For a lot of us this problem presents itself right at a time when you really have too many other things to worry about:  you are newly diagnosed with cancer.  Who to tell?  When to tell them?  For Dee, today’s guest blogger, the problem was magnified by the extra sensitivity surrounding her diagnosis of vaginal cancer.  Dee just started her blog in January at WHAT kind of cancer?
Please give her a visit.

Sharing your diagnosis….to tell, or not to tell

Having a cancer diagnosis, particularly a vaginal cancer diagnosis, brings with it the awkward position of either having to tell people what’s going on or trying to keep it to yourself.  In my case, I wasn’t inclined to broadcast to friends and family that I had cancer of the vag….so I told only those I had to.  Like my bosses, and my direct reports–both of whom would obviously notice the sudden departures from work for treatments.  The curse of being a workaholic is that everyone comes to expect that you’re always at work, so when you’re not, it’s somewhat conspicuous.  So in total, probably about 5 or 6 people at work knew I had cancer.  I gotta say I think it would have been easier if it had been breast cancer, or lymphoma, even bladder or colon cancer.  Anything but telling your co-workers (all men) that you have vaginal cancer.  Sharing that information was to me a curse worse than death.  So I snuck out when I could, never called in sick, and in general felt like crap and looked like shit for about 8 weeks. Some people asked what was going on; I dodged the questions and said something vague.
I should clarify–even those at work I had to tell–I never specified WHAT kind of cancer it was.  Just that it was a tumor that they could not operate on due to the proximity to the bladder. Which was true actually.  The V word would have made for a much more uncomfortable conversation — for them and me.
Of course my husband and daughter knew…they live here.  That said, we didn’t really talk about it much.  My teenager went from certainty that I was going to die to barely remembering when my chemo days were.

I told my sister, because she’s had close and personal experience dealing with cancer and cancer treatments before.  And because I trusted her and valued her opinion.  She in turn told my other siblings, nieces and nephews.
I was kind of pissed at first (and still am occasionally) but I realize that life is too short to worry about any self-imposed embarassment sharing this information brought with it.

My sister-in-law knew because she was here when my OB-GYN first called with the news about 9:30 one night…instant clue that something’s up. She ended up telling my step daughter many months later, who was hurt and offended that neither me or her dad had told her while I was going through it.

I never did tell my parents, even though others thought that not telling them was horrible of me. I just said…you don’t know my mother.

I’ve always been a pretty private person (insert some psycho babble about a dysfunctional upbringing here) not one of those ‘let’s get everything out in the open and talk about it to everyone who strolls by’ types.

I’m only sharing these examples and covering this topic in a post because I’m all about trying to help someone else who may be trying to figure out how to maneuver through this.  So my sagely advice on this topic:  tell everyone that means something to you.  Even if it’s embarassing, and even if you’re fairly confident that you’ll be fine in the end. If you don’t, you’ll wish you had, and at some point it becomes just too late to share because then they’ll be hurt that you didn’t tell them earlier.

I think perhaps the best approach would have been to just put it out there, ask for no pity, and move on.

- from

A dreary wet Monday after a gorgeous sunny Sunday.  Being it is the second week of March though, I can’t complain.  Crocous have been in bloom for weeks now.  Tulips starting to bud.  Trees and bushes too.  It really feels like Spring.  But this evening I must return to work at the clinic where it is still a cold winter for some.

Today’s breast cancer blogger hails from the UK.  Yvonne has been penning her posts for a little over a year now.  I decided to include her “About me” profile as it is such a succinct and well written introduction to writing about cancer. You can find Yvonne at time to consider the lilies

About me now …

What about me these days? Given what I’ve read and what I’ve seen, I’m not that different from many who wander through cancerland.  I used to complain about the pace of life as a woman trying to play well the parts of mother, wife, and profesional.  Just months shy of 49  (a fact that shocks me), with no family history of breast cancer, and the “all clear” on my baseline and subsequent mammograms,  I was wholly unprepared to add the job of cancer patient to my curriculum vitae. Unprepared. Reluctant. Angry. Just as I was coming into my own last October, rediscovering the endorphine high from a good run, I found something. Not a lump exactly, but what my doctor would tell me was a distinct difference in my right breast. I would like to say I was doing my monthly self-exam, but that would be untrue, and apparently typical for almost all the women I know.  By 11.11.11 – the luckiest day of the year – I was dealt the diagnosis that deposited me in new land with a new lexicon. It is a surreal land where staging doesn’t have anything to do with the theater, where “if this, then that,” becomes an acceptable answer, where so much is accomplished on the count of 3; it is a land where visitors are likely to encounter the very best, most noble expressions of humanity along with the very worst.  This place was not on my itinerary.  I was busy at work, I’d finally figured out the importance of staying hydrated and eating green leafy vegetables. This cancer diagnosis simply had to be a mistake. I felt great! Just weeks before, I’d had one of those AHA! moments so cleverly co-opted by Oprah, and decided, based on my sister-in-law’s success, to go from couch-to-5K in nine weeks. More than that, I had even bragged on facebook that the 2012 Belfast Marathon was well within my reach. In retrospect, this must have given God a good laugh. While it shook me to my core, the diagnosis brought with it daily opportunities for think differently about my life and the people in it, to gradually learn the truth about breast cancer, and so to live better within a state of grey. With a nod to Gilda Radner, this “delicious ambiguity” is a collection of my musings on “the cancer.”  Too, it is a rebel yell for change in the conversations we have in this country about breast cancer.

cancer on our calendar

This relatively normal Christmas could have used the enviable scheduling skills of the Breast Patient Navigator.  The hustle and bustle of my favorite season has been overshadowed by interminable waiting for results of tests on tumors and saliva. By some miracle, the Christmas tree is up and twinkling in our front window. I even managed to resurrect my camera. I  forced our daughter to put on a winter coat (on a 70 degree day) and pose under a tree in the backyard. The effort and the eye-rolling was worth it, producing a seasonal picture which was hastily uploaded to shutterfly where the nice people there transformed it into a Happy New Year card and, for an additional cost, even mailed it to friends and family, far and near.

Christmas means lots of mail. Along with the greeting cards this year, are thick envelopes from medical imaging companies, the health insurance company, and different doctors’ offices.  On Christmas Eve, I received a Surgery Scheduling form filled out in in neat handwriting that brought to mind a worksheet completed by a student for extra credit. At the top, next to the date and time, two words jumped off the page. Simple. Mastectomy. On the same line. In the one breath. How could the two coexist? True to form, I headed to google and entered “simple mastectomy” and in a second found it separated by an “or” from “total mastectomy.” Not so simple. My mother agrees.

For 25 years, long-distance phone calls with the woman who knows me best, have required no effort, no brave face. Knowing she is on the other end of the line, I easily fall back into the rhythm of the way I used to speak. The colloquialisms of home are comforting and help counter the strange words that fly like bullets from the lips of surgeons. Worse than hearing and seeing them in print, however, is waiting for the new words that will invariably be added to this strange lexicon. And slightly worse than that is figuring out how to respond, without appearing mean or small, to well-intentioned encouragement from people who genuinely care for me.  Perhaps as I was, they have been conditioned to a culture where it has been acceptable to settle for emphasizing early detection rather than prevention; finding a cure rather than a cause. They cannot possibly know the silent rage I feel against this breast cancer that has taken up residence in our family, just in time for Christmas. But it feels wrong to say that out loud. So I am learning how to respond, without falling apart, when people tell me, “you’re so strong,” “you’ll be just fine,” “if you’re going to get cancer, breast cancer is the one to get,” “at least you caught it early,” “you’re so lucky – new boobs and a tummy tuck!”

I know now what to say when someone assumes I haven’t had a mammogram. I can point out that I’ve had three, and none detected the invasive cancer that has resided within me for perhaps a decade. A decade. Had I known at 38 that it might have been important to ask about breast density, perhaps our family would have been spared this “journey.” I can now, with confidence, tell other people that a mammogram is an imperfect test. Sometimes, as I deliver this news, I find myself having to look away, because I cannot bear to watch the shock spread across the faces of women dear to me, women who have placed all their confidence in a negative mammogram. Like me, some of them hadn’t realized or hadn’t ever been told that dense tissue may make cancer more difficult to detect on a mammogram.  I don’t know how to respond when people close to me say, “You’re a fighter. You will beat this. Deep down I just know it.” I find myself fearing what they would have said to me if, deep down, they just know I won’t.

This Christmas and next Christmas, what I want someone to tell me is that I’m not going to die soon. That I won’t be ravaged from the inside out by a disease I hate. I want to know what caused Invasive Ductal Carcinoma (IDC) in my right breast. I want to know what to say to my 14 year old daughter who has walked for a cure and pinned pink ribbons to her clothing, but whose own mother cannot tell her how to prevent this disease.

And so, if you look closely enough, indeed you will see the cancer in our gingerbread house. Within the papers in the envelopes that are stuffed along with utility bills and bank statements into a basket on the kitchen countertop; on our coffee table, it is splashed across the pages of publications hidden between Vanity Fair and The Pottery Barn catalog. All I never wanted to know about managing my life during and after cancer. Nothing about how I could have prevented it.

from: time to consider the lilies

I received this interesting email recently “I’ve been blogging about my journey through metastatic rectal cancer, mothering young children, alternative therapies, and the spiritual/emotional crash course of living with this illness. I just returned in Feb 2012 from 5 mos of alternative therapy in China too.”

Rectal cancer is relatively rare.  It deserves a rare voice. ~ Shira Shaiman’s Blog

About Shira:

This blog is dedicated to the explorations of my time of healing. I am a happily married 39-year-old mother of two boys, Toby (born May 2007) and Leo (born February 2010). Shortly after giving birth to Leo I was diagnosed with rectal cancer, on my 39th birthday of all days. A bit of a shock. I had imagined the weeks and months after my second child’s birth quite a bit differently, but cancer had something else in mind for me. So here I am, trying to make sense of this interesting time of life. Writing about it helps. A lot.

April 10, 2010

I feel vulnerable, especially at night. After the kids are in bed and the house is quiet, a dark space opens up like a mirror to reflect what I’ve pushed down and staved off all day: cancer. Dear God. This time it’s me. And I want David’s arms around me. I want to wear him like a blanket. I want him to protect me from this or, better, make it go away. And so I tell him that I don’t want him to leave the house to go pick up that free garbage can with a lid someone was giving away up the street. I tell him I want him to stay with me. I don’t even want him to go downstairs, to be on a different floor. Me, who is usually so independent and strong. David has called me his rock. Now I am small. I am so tiny I can disappear and never again hear the words cancer or chemotherapy. But then I picture Toby’s electric smile and long dark eyelashes and I remember the weight of baby Leo’s warm little body nuzzled against my breast, his mouth agape and a few drops of milk dripping down his cheek. I breathe in his hair every chance I get. I tell Toby I love him all day long. I know I have no choice. This story has been set into motion and I’m already somewhere inside of it. Wave after wave hitting against me. Salt and cool water. Wearing me down. Polishing me smooth.

February 2012

I’m not saying that I am a hero of any kind, or that I have any enlightened wisdom to share with you. I think I am still somewhere in the wilderness, still seeking, still learning what it means to heal and therefore what it means to face death and to be alive and at home inside myself and in the world. Oh, how could I have been so obtusely blind to myself! This whole time in Asia that I have been immersed in cancer treatments I have also, and just as importantly, been unwinding the threads of my life to find that essential, perfect, shining core that exists within each and every one of us. As I prepare to go home, I realize that that’s all I’ve been trying to do since I arrived here, and on some level for a good portion of my life. My journey for healing is my quest for home.

When I look in the mirror now at my bald head, the image that peers back at me doesn’t say cancer or victim or the ravages of chemotherapy. I see warrior. I see mystic who has renounced worldly attachments. I see grit and edginess and a cool attitude. I see the shadow of new hair. I see the promise of rebirth.

~ from: Shira Shaiman’s Blog

Another new blogger – this one with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  Lily comes from the UK.  You can tell that by some of the cute idioms she uses in her posts.  Her recent search of the internet yielded some quotable quotes on cancer. It’s a nice way to begin our weekend.  Lily writes at Befuddled Baldy

“Cancer is a word, not a sentence.”

“Cancer is a word, not a sentence.” John Diamond.

“If you’re going through Hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill.

I was searching the web yesterday for quotes, as my nerdzilla side came out…and I found these wonderful quotes! And I also found this wonderfully charming quote, which reminded me slightly of my own wonderful Christopher Hingston:

“My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.” John Cheever, 1982.

That one’s my particular favourite…although I have no idea why anyone would want to be mean to cats! And I’m sure my friend Matt would agree. I don’t know which he loves more: cats ears or his girlfriend, Laura…hehe.
Unless they were a horrible, mean breed of cats…or a mean and ugly breed of cats. But I haven’t come across an entire breed of ugly, mean cats yet. Maybe this John Cheever fellow had some sort of traumatic experience with cats when he was a kid or something…who knows?
Anyhow, I’m now back on chemo. The first chemo day was awful, and I threw up violently. Which was actually quite surprising- as I haven’t thrown up cos of that since…well- since the first cycle! But then the vomiting ebbed into severe nausea (which was worse, in a way) but now it’s just a dull nauseous ache in my head and tummy. Not pleasant, but I can deal.
And of course, the joint and muscle pain is starting up again. Especially in my back and knees. As usual. The physiotherapist at Addenbrookes, Laura, has given me some physio exercises to do at home. I don’t do them as often as I should, and Mum gets a little cross at times because I’m not helping myself- but I’m so tired…and this procarbazine chemo they have me on MUST be messing with my hormones as the mood swings are ridiculous. I’m okay one minute, then I’m knackered, then I’m weeping uncontrollably the next moment. Which, I guess, could be my mental health breaking down- but I doubt it, as I haven’t tried to harm myself yet…haha. Not that the cancer and the chemo isn’t doing enough of that for me! But, yeah. So, making little jokes like that help…as you might have guessed. Being sarcastic and snappy helps too. Not other people, of course. But it helps me. God, that sounds so selfish- doesnt it? Sorry.
Singing helps, too. I like to sing…especially when I can relate to the lyrics, or when I particularly like the lyrics. I don’t know whether I can actually sing…or whether I’m rubbish- but, to be honest, I don’t really care. I love singing, and it makes me feel good. Sure, after a while, it hurts- cos the chemos messed up my throat, but it makes me feel amazing for a brief amount of time…and that’s GREAT. I don’t care that I feel crappy for a while if I sing. And sure, it won’t get rid of my anxieties, and I can’t constantly sing to make myself feel good all the time. But it’s a start. It’s a start…
Anyhow, I have to go now…but I just wanted to share one more quote I found. I was actually amazed that I found a quote that matched my mood a bit! Anyhow…happy learning, my children!

“Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.” Emory Austin.

Much love!!
Befuddled and singing to herself Baldy <3 xox

from~ http://browneyedbefuddledbaldy.blogspot.com/

Apologizing for not keeping up with the blog is becoming an unwanted habit. I get more and more involved with issues at my cancer center.  And my mother is needing more and more help.  But enough of that and on to more relevant stuff.

A number of folks have contacted me recently, several of whom are writing blogs of their own.  To give you a sample, here is a piece from a breast cancer patient.  She writes consistently well.  It took some time to choose from her recent posts.  Mila Camino seems to be a global citizen who has worked in the US and the UK.  Her writings are insightful.  Here is a look from her blog What 40 brought to my life.

New reality

I had this conversation with my mom the other day and we did not get to the right answer….20 years ago were there so many young people sick or I was just ignorant when in my 20s and I did not realize people were sick around??. The answer from my mom in particular about breast cancer was that when she was 40 there were many people being diagnosed with breast and ovary cancer but there were normally older people. My grandma was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 66 more or less and one of her sister had breast cancer twice on her late years but never died of breast cancer. Now a days the people diagnosed with any type of cancer are younger and younger and I wonder everyday why.

When my son was two he was sick all the time, we could not figure out why and I behaved like a paranoid mom being at the pediatrician office almost every week. We thought he was dairy allergic as he was sick every time he will drink his milk, well…..we found out after some test that he is super sensitive to beef and cow’s milk, and he is moderate to high sensitive to lamb, pork and some cheeses. Have you ever heard of anything like that?. We took all meat away from him (he still eats some chicken) and cow’s milk and he has been since then like a new kid.

My point is….., is it what we eat?, is it what we breath?, what is it that so many people are suffering. Having cancer has made me meet many wonderful people who I have always said are the strongest of the strongest people you will find out there. People like Ainara who at the same time she is fighting with her own cancer she finds time to battle for everyone else’s. People like Blanca that while going through Chemo makes me laugh every time I read a message from her. People like Marta that even if she got sick the other day, she is my key person to talk to about our illness. People like Janire that needs a bone marrow transplant as soon as possible, just lost a close friend for the same reason but still fights like mad to make sure there is enough education in Spain about bone marrow transplant. Or people like Paule, who has gastric cancer and just started chemo last week. People like my friend Mariam who is trying to find a way to live after losing her 5 year old to cancer 6 months ago. Or people like Eva who is in Madrid next to her son Mario who 12 days ago received a bone marrow transplant and is still in critical stages. People like Eva and myself who are trying to find our way back to normal life.Why is the list so long????, was I blind before and I lived in wonderland?.

from – What 40 brought to my life