Happiness after cancer

I came back from my mini-vacation  with a light step and a clear eye, and happier than I’d been in eons.  And I was happy all week, floating, bouncing happy, until I had to go into “cancer-land” again, for a support group meeting and to meet with the cancer counselor.  Cancer-land makes me G-R-U-M-P-Y.

the $34,000 hair cut

It keeps happening: total strangers come up to me in public and say, “Your hair is so cute!”
My response to date has been a sort 0f jaw-dropped, you’ve-got-to-be-kidding response:
“Chemo…..I got this hair through chemo.”
(Implying that in a million years I never would have chosen this haircut. Or actually not a cut, it’s only grown [...]

well-being

I spent yesterday and today filled with this incredible sense of well-being. Not quite sure how to explain it - like a spring rising up from within and bubbling over, or like the top of my head is open and streaming light towards the sky, or some beam of positive energy is reaching down [...]

My support group women ROCK

Check out what one of the Portland Young Survivors Group women did. She writes,
“My Little Waiting room was started by a conversation between two friends about how we could improve access to medical care for families in our community. It is our vision to create a safe place [...]

quote of the week

I’ve been admiring this one for a long time:
“You have to give up the life you planned and find the life that is waiting for you.”
(Joseph Campbell)

Missing Molly Ivins

Prarie Home Companion is rerunning a show with Molly Ivins, and boy was she a hoot. I miss her - it’s almost been a year. Political commentary just isn’t as entertaining without her. Part of cancer’s heavy toll.

recovery time

They say that the time that it takes to recover from chemo and rads is equal to the time that you were in treatment.  So, I was in treatment for May, June, July, Aug; recovering in September; and in treatment for October and November, so that’s 7 months.  So that would put me back at [...]

Something normal

I had this strange, persistent pain in my right jaw, with shooting pains up into my ear and dull pain around my eye. I’d had a filling, the dentist insisted it wasn’t that. Until we actually checked: he put the artificial cold on that tooth and it just about sent me through the [...]