Ready to be done

Two more chemo treatments left. After tomorrow: ONE.

[This countdown has been making me feel like I am in a twisted version of Sesame Street with the Count - how about you?]

Kate turned 6 last weekend. It was wonderful to celebrate with friends; we rented a covered space that had picnic benches and a huge grill, and did all sorts of fabulous activities. It ended up being a little more over the top than I probably should have done the day after chemo, but getting cancer with kids this little has made memory-making seem even more important.

"Don't boast about tomorrow, for you don't know what a day might bring." Proverbs 27:1

Today, we had the Big C come up three times with the girls. The first was at the grocery store; Kate fingered a pile of prostate cancer awareness bracelets at the check stand. When the clerk answered Kate's question about their purpose, Kate said, "My mom has cancer, too!" The check-out gal asked what kind and Kate said, "BREAST!"

I thought: Over-sharing at its finest. Oh how I love my child.

But then the clerk looked at me and said that she had had breast cancer, too - 17 years earlier. What a encouraging thing to hear! I have been still dealing with a nasty chest cough, and have been feeling: Exhausted. Frustrated. Even defeated. I think if we knew of all the people who walked amongst us who have done battle with this ugly stuff, we would be astounded.

Later today, Belle asked at dinner: "Why do you need chemo-ta-ter-apy?" John and I exchanged a puzzled look. We have been very honest with our girls about how I am taking super strong medicine to get better. It turned out that what Belle was asking, upon additional clarification, was: Why do I have breast cancer?

We told her that most people don't get cancer - just some people, and no one knows why it happens. I said, "It happens to an unlucky few - like your momma!" But I also said that we believe that God had allowed this to happen for a purpose. Kate wanted to know what purpose - and then said, "You have been through a really bad car accident when you were little and now you have gone through breast cancer - that is a LOT!"

I told her that we don't stop loving and trusting God when things got tough - that really, that's when we need Him the most. She is 6, and thankfully, she doesn't have a huge grasp of this concept yet. But someday she will.

Then tonight, as we were getting ready for bed, Kate asked, "What's a mastectomy?"

I told her it was a surgery that would remove my breasts, and that this was the surgery that I had been talking about the last few weeks (it is tentatively scheduled for Sept. 7). Her beautiful blue eyes widened and she wanted to know if it would hurt and whether my breasts would grow back (wouldn't THAT be a sweet set-up?). She said she felt scared about it, and wondered if I was scared, too.

"A bit," I said, and my voice got thick with tears that I even had to be having this kind of a conversation with my daughter. "But I'm also glad because it will help me from getting sick with cancer again."

Two more treatments left! Soon one. Oh, I am so excited to be done with this.

Provision

Chemo No. 13: All done, baby!

It was a very full treatment room yesterday - there are about a dozen comfy recliners positioned in a large circle and they were all full. Most all of the folks I see each week are in their 60s and 70s - and while I wish that NO ONE had to do battle with this crud, I feel gladness that I am not surrounded by people my age and younger each time.  I would much rather current and future "seat warmers" are spared this junk as loooooooooong as possible - well after watching their kids graduate, get married and have babies of their own.

And yet as soon as I write that I ask: How can I say that about myself? I feel so strongly that there is a purpose for this in my own life - I am on my face in thankfulness at how God is bringing us through this with a heaping measure of grace and love.

Like last night. After the girls went to bed, I went to town and picked up some groceries. I did not bother to spiff up, and it had been a long day of chemo and driving - and I have given up thinking that it's not incredibly obvious that I'm bald! As I was checking out with my groceries, I saw a woman in my peripheral view coming at me quickly. She had already checked out and was leaving the grocery store, but was making a bee line to me. "Excuse me," she said. She didn't sound happy. I didn't look up, hoping she was actually talking to the person behind me. "EXCUSE ME," she said again, stopping a couple feet away.

She was holding out a coupon she had just received for 10 dollars off my entire grocery order.

"God bless you," she said. I had no idea who this person was. I took the coupon. I could feel myself choking up. I thanked her and repeated her words to her, with the emphasis on "you."

But I also say: Thank you, God.

Tonight someone dropped by some freshly caught salmon. Thank you, God.

In the last couple of weeks, I have been blessed by so many people that live near and far. When I initially started this blog entry (at 3 a.m. - post-chemo sleeplessness got me again starting at 2 a.m.), I rambled through several paragraphs about this. For brevity, here are bullets instead:

• The blessed sleep I have gotten throughout this week - I know this is a result of people praying for me, because I haven't slept this unusually well since Jan. 8 (the day before I found out I about the "big C"). Thank you, God - I loved the sleep.
• That amazing team of wimmin' who ran in my honor at the 20th Annual Alaska Women's Run. Thank you, God - the encouragement was powerful;
• A letter that read as a giant hug, along with a check for "pampering," from the dear couple who married us. Thank you, God - that will be so enjoyed;
• This cup from a sweet friend who has loved me and our girls with equal love and devotion through this process. Thank you, God, for this friend and for not smiting Star Trek in all its infinite dorkiness;
• A fabulous sweatshirt proclaiming my tough Alaska chick status (in deep, glorious pink - so there should be no confusion that I'm a girl NOW). The accompanying letter made me laugh! Thank you, God, for that chortle;
• Two more wonderful cards - both containing words of strong encouragement and one containing a couple packets of facial/foot scrubs that will be put to good use. I also received an email from an amazing friend who has been sending me cards that have made me smile all along the way. Thank you, God, for people taking precious time to write;
• A steadfast friend who made time to have coffee with me following treatment yesterday - she had been having a tough couple of weeks herself, and yet she made time for me. Thank you, God, for her generosity of time;
• An email from a terrific friend who has walked the cancer walk herself, telling me that I do not have lung cancer. She explained that one of her lasting side effects from her chemo has also been a dry cough. Thank you, God, for calming my worries. 

This is just the tip of the iceberg - these bullets are ways people have supported and loved us in just the last couple of weeks. We were recently asked if we had learned "one big thing" through this process. For me, it's been experiencing God's very real daily grace and perfect provision during a desperate time, with so much of this provision coming through people's actions.

It's all relative

A couple of days ago, Kate made her first joke connected with this whole breast cancer business.

We were reading a library book in the master bedroom - I had gotten out of the shower 20 minutes prior - and Kate looks at my head with mock horror, her eyes shining with amusement.

"Mom. You are not going to believe this," she said. "But you are BALD."

"W-H-A-T??!!!!" I exclaimed. "You are KIDDING me. How did that happen?!!!"

"You lost your hair in the shower. It just came out! I think you'll find it in there."

She and I chuckled together. I told her I was excited to get my hair back, yet also glad that this super strong medicine makes certain the cancer stays gone. I am excited to be at the point where I don't think about this current reality throughout my day, whether it's because I use a hair clip to click open my watch (fragile fingernails) or because I'm hunting a box of Kleenx to stanch a runny nose (missing nose hair).

However, the idea of a recurrence is something that will linger - especially since I will visit my oncologist and surgeon once every few months the first couple of years. Last week, I asked the oncologist's staff about my lingering cough - I wanted reassurance that the cancer had not spread to my lungs. The physician's assistant said he felt "99 percent" sure that it was not lung cancer.

"But you can't know that. It could be," I persisted.

"You're right, I can't know ... but it's not." He paused. "But if it is, you would get the same treatment you are getting now."

It felt like the punchline to a grim joke. I preferred my 5-year-old's humor to this.

"I cried out, 'I am slipping!'
but your unfailing love, O LORD, supported me.
When doubts filled my mind,
your comfort gave me renewed hope and cheer." Psalm 94:18-19

Today we girls met with some friends for lunch. When we first arrived, there was a little boy wearing a pink sweatshirt with a snowman on it. I caught his eye and told him how much I liked his shirt - and I was startled to see that this child had a large chunk of hair missing from the back of their head. This was a little girl who had recently gone through some kind of treatment and her hair was (mostly) growing out.

I wanted to scoop her up and kiss the back of her sweet 4-year-old head. Instead, obviously-likewise-in-treatment me made eye contact with the mom and grandma. We shared a sad, knowing smile over the heads of our little people. The whole thing happened in seconds but I'll think about them for a long time to come.

(Have I thanked you recently, Jesus, for sparing Kate cancer? Thank you, Lord. Please be with that family we briefly met today as they continue on.)

How about this splendid news: After tomorrow, I have three chemo treatments left. THREE! I am so over having no eyelashes and eyebrows. And how great will nose hair be? And functioning fingernails? I have started experiencing numbness in my toes, but it reminds me how thankful I am that sensation fully returned to my hands. I would much rather button my shirt than feel my socks, anyways, wouldn't you?

Odds & Ends on the Eve of a Countdown

Yesterday was the second time this week that I have been mistaken for a dude.

Granted, these people were not studying me intently - and I am six feet tall - but whew.

When I was in college studying to be a news reporter, I did not use my first name in my byline because I did not want readers to have any sense of gender slant. So, to the consternation of at least one editor, I insisted on using just "R" before my last name. Now I am feeling amused to find myself longing for recognition that I am a girl!

Thanks to some powerful antibiotics, I am finally kicking the nasty flu bug that has hung on for three weeks. UGH: Three weeks of thick snot by the bucketful and yucky phlegm-filled coughing. At least once I have wondered if this was actually my cancer metastasizing in my lungs. Good times, huh?

(My husband told me sternly: "You do NOT have lung cancer." We'll hope not.)

Earlier this week I was invited to help decorate some shirts for some friends who are running in the Alaska Women's Run this Saturday in Anchorage. They are running in my honor, and quite wonderfully they are using my catch phrase: Embrace the Suck ~ God has a Purpose.

How terrific is that?

When I got home that evening, my hubby and girls were finishing up a backyard bonfire. I related to JB how surreal it was to see those shirts, and most especially, my initials stuck in a breast cancer ribbon. You would think that six months of riding this crazy train would make this feel REAL. But no. Not really.

I experienced some more surreality tonight. After the girls were in bed, JB and I were in the yard to plant some peonies, lupine and bleeding hearts. An SUV pulled up. The driver works in the same field as my husband - he parked and the occupants spilled out. The kids checked out the chickens, the driver toured JB's future greenhouse site and the elderly man hung close to me.

We talked about his 45 years in Alaska, his current home in Arizona and his travels across Germany, Belgium and France. He told me he was bad luck - his first wife died. Then he had a girlfriend, but she died following a stroke. I told him that wasn't bad luck - that was life. Even so, I was surprised at how openly he spoke to me.

It wasn't until they left that I learned that the driver had lost his first wife to breast cancer six years ago. She was 35 years old - three years younger than me. The sweet old man was her father. The kids were the ones she left behind when she died - they would have been close to my own girls' ages. In fact, the 13-year-old girl shares the same birthday as Bella. 


I wonder what God's purpose was in tonight's encounter. I certainly got a peek into the lives of these people who had lost their wife, momma and daughter. What did that sweet old man think as he looked at me, clearly bald, missing eyelashes and eyebrows under my snappy little hat? I'm sure he missed his girl.


Sigh. I wish I had known. It's probably good that I didn't - I would have given that man a big hug and probably the kids, too. And who knows if that's what they really would have wanted or needed.

Chemo No. 12 is tomorrow - five left. F-I-V-E!!! Last go around, a dear friend came and sat all the way through my appointment with me. I almost wept when she walked in and sat down beside me - these appointments are not fun, and I am 3,000 percent certain she could have chosen 100 other ways to spend her time that were more fun. I am humbled to the core by her love, and the love of so many others who are loving us to the "other side" of this.