Taking the Dirt Road

You've heard the John Muir quote, "of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt."

The older I get, the more I have tried to abide by this sage advice.

On my journey through life, there have been some pretty big bumps. Hell, sometimes the road just blew up. Divorce, illnesses, heartbreak. All the big ones  I've started over more times than I cared to, but usually things have worked out pretty well. 

Everyone has tough times and ways of surviving the chaos of life's challenges. For me, it is writing. I have been journaling off and on since I was in high school. As I look over the last ten years of my writings, the happiest entries are those of time spent with my two beautiful daughters

Peppered throughout the pages were also favorite quotes that inspired.

"Life is a journey. It hurts too much." -- from the film 'Garden State'

The written words of others energize me. Music does as well. During some of my darkest times, they both have lifted me up.  My memory has gotten so heavy I can't think straight. So writing those memories down helps.

And reading them later on, I realize I have survived much and am still standing. Even after the blast in the road.

Joni Mitchell once said, "Bad fortune changed the course of my destiny."

So what if my destiny changes. My road blows up. I've decided to take the dirt path. The scenery is better and the ground feels much better beneath my feet.

Jada with some of my journals

I wanted to buy a mumu

I was in Target recently with my daughter. She needed some things so I tagged along. I don't shop much and I was amazed at all the neat merchandise they had to offer. While I was waiting near the back of the store at the changing rooms, I saw a rack of Hawaiian printed mumus. I went over and grabbed one off the rack. As I held it up to me and it grazed my feet, I could just hear the seagulls and smell the salt air. I must have looked a little crazy to the sales lady.

Mumus, I always thought, were typically worn by older ladies. I remember my aunts wearing them. They looked so comfortable and breezy. You really didn't have to think much about what to wear just throw on the mumu.

As I hung the item back on the rack, I suddenly realized that I am in the mumu-wearing age group! Crap, when did that happen! Surely not. The garments were at the back of the store and had not yet been placed in the department they belonged. I didn't stick around long enough to find out where they    put them.

It's been a rough 3 years. Fighting cancer is hard. It has been a tough opponent but I am not giving up! Every time I get another diagnosis, I just say tell me when surgery is and cut it out!  This latest surgery kind of threw me but I got my bearings again, not to mention a damn good surgeon.

No, cancer is not for the faint of heart. But I believe whenever it comes knocking, that patient will discover strength they never knew they had and find the will to persevere. Because on the other side of recovery is survival. And after survival, is living the rest of your life and accomplishing the things you always wanted to do.

Like wearing a mumu.

Let's Try This Again

It's been awhile since I last wrote. I got a little side-tracked with a few more cancer surgeries and crap involving cancer. Ugh. Oh well. Whatever. I'm still here and that's what counts, right?

So I thought I would sweep off the dust and spiderwebs, and try this blog thing one more time. 

Just random thoughts from a crazy lady.

Sometimes, I measure time by television seasons. For instance, Grey's Anatomy is in Season 12. Twelve years ago I was living in Mooresville, unhappy, feeling like nothing was ever going to be different. Mer and Der were in a dark and twisty space and so was I. Now, Der is out of the pic and Mer is moving forward, just as she always has, like a badass. 

I'm doing the same!

The Good Guys Always Win -- Thank You Jack McCoy and Perry Mason

I've always loved cops and robbers shows. The shows where the bad guys always gets what is coming to him. In Hollywoodland, it usually works that way.

Daniel Boone tried to keep the wild westerners from using the "hanging" justice. Instead, he encouraged them to believe everyone deserved  fair trial. 
Marshall Matt Dillon also tried to abide by that same wisdom, though occasionally, he had to eliminate a bad dude with a bullet. Though I believe it would have been justly deserved. Who would ever question the Marshall?

Then there is the irrefutable Perry Mason. I think he only lost one case his entire television career! The most amazing part was how he always got the confession right there in the courtroom. Usually the bad man, or woman, confessed from the gallery. Brilliant!

Then over the years, the dramas grew darker and wackier. There was your standard cop shows such as Hill Street Blues and detective shows like Charlie's Angels. Then there's one of my favs, Twin Peaks. 

We hit the "jack"pot with Law and Order. He may not have won every case, but Jack McCoy was mesmerizing to watch give arguments in court.

There are the really disturbing shows like The Sopranos, CSI, Criminal Minds and Dexter. I don't know why I have always been drawn to such horribly dark stories.
I think it's because there is always resolution. The bad guys are caught and dealt
with.

There are all kinds of dark forces roaming around us shrouded as something else. I have a dark stranger that visited me in the form of cancer. I did not invite it in. It just invaded me. Cancer robbed a real piece of my physical being that I can never get back. And it still may be lurking. A team of medical professionals zapped me with high powered beams of radiation and toxic chemicals that supposedly eradicated the dark one. It was like a home invasion only it was in my body. I felt violated. I wish I could call upon Marshall Dillon to aim his rifle at that bastard cancer.

I will soon find out if the cancer has spread. Then I will need a full on SWAT team to come in.

I can visualize those officers repelling down into my lungs with
C-4 explosives to snuff out any unwelcome assassins.

"We should mobilize another unit to my liver and kidneys." Wow. I'm talking like a unit leader.

Somebody needs to call Lt. Van Buren and have her dispatch Detectives Brisco and Logan (they were my favs). Once intruders have been apprehended, take the suspects into custody.

And then again, I think maybe this time we won't need McCoy's great services.

I think this time it calls for the old wild west justice. Just blast the evil cancer seeds outta here. Annihilate them. They are guilty.

10-4. Copy that.

MJ doesn't live hear anymore

I have gone down a dark hole. It definitely isn’t Alice’s. This has made my brain synapses blast to next is “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.” A great little movie from 1974, starring the fabulous Ellen Burstyn -- a down on her luck single mom trying to get back on her feet as a night club singer.I can't help but think of Ellen's other great role. Sara Goldfarb in "Requiem for a Dream." I feel like I'm Sara in her hell, but I must focus.

This hole has closed behind me with a resounding boom. I can see some faint light ahead. I mean WAAAAAAY ahead. It is just a speck of light that is wavering. Much like the light of a flickering candle. I am almost afraid to move or breathe, for fear the light will be extinguished.

Once I am sure of my footing, I begin to see that I am surrounded by a darkness that envelopes me like a warm blanket. I suddenly realize I am so exhausted. Just ridiculously tired that I just want to lie down on the cold hard ground and go to sleep for about a 100 Van Winkle years.

But I don’t. I put one foot in front of the other and trudge forward. Like I always have. I think Alice would be proud.

As I march on, I realize the light never really gets any closer, but I quit focusing on it. What is really running through my head is how angry I am. And the further I walk, the angrier I get. I suddenly hear a loud noise. It is the most mournful, grief-stricken moans. My footsteps have ceased.  I am wringing wet with sweat.

The sounds were my screams. They were my moans. Moans of anger and of sorrow. Cries of regret.  I drop to my knees and pound my fists to the ground. Those brain synapses are firing again to a long ago bible verse from childhood. My six-year old self sitting in the pew doodling on the bulletin barely paying attention to the pastor until he read verse from Job. Job is Old Testament. Old Testament, I would soon learn, is hard core.  And God, is also hard core. The pastor reads, “And my gnawing pains take no rest. By great force my garment is disfigured; he has cast me into the mire.” Job 30:17-19.

My pencil dropped to my lap. I had never heard such awful words. Why would God, whom I had always thought was so loving, torture anyone? My silly innocent, naïve self. I would soon grow older and learn of other things such as the New Testament. It was really a good preparation for life. Girding me for heartbreaks of the real word. There would the verse from Matthew 13:42. “and they will be cast into the furnace of fire. There will be gnashing of teeth.”

As I was on my knees, I cursed everything I had ever believed in. God, love, prayer, faith, doctors, medicine, vitamins, exercise, rest, education. One thing I knew for sure, nothing had worked for me. Everything I had believed in and trusted all my life had failed me. When you get cancer, it all goes to hell.

I was so positive throughout my diagnosis, through all the surgeries, all the horrible, awful treatments, all the hospital stays, the dreadful emergency room visits, the procedures, the incompetent office staff, the condescending nurses talking to me like I was a child, the goofy  idiotic oncologist who I would never refer anyone to go. The 36 agonizing, horrible days of radiation that would blister the inside and outside of my neck and mouth. The treatment to kill those cancer cells would make me lose me taste for who knows how long now. Maybe Christmas? I am getting my nutrition from a feeding tube that extends from my ever shrinking belly. And when I can stop using it for two weeks, the doctor says with enthusiasm, I can go to his office, lay on the table with no anesthesia, and he just yanks it out!

“Easy,” says he.

“Holy Crap!” I say.

This just keeps getting better and better. Til it doesn’t.
And then it is over. All done. I get to ring a little bell. They give me a certificate that I completed radiation treatment and chemotherapy. They clap for me.
I look at them like they are sadists. What the fuck are they clapping for? I have been hospitalized twice for extreme fever and uncontrollable nauseas due to side effects. But I still have to continue the treatments. And then they want to throw a party. No freaking thank you.

I want to leave and never return. I go back to my surgeon and tell him so.
“I am choosing my next oncologists. Those you picked were idiots.” I say in a loud voice.

He agrees. I am too weak for him to perform the ultrasound on my thyroid. I hope to hell there is no cancer there. I may just cut it out my own damn self. I have lost all faith in doctors and modern medicine at this point.

When I lost my mother to cancer I was 32 years old. She was 67. I have never gotten over her loss. I cry every day for her.  The anger and sadness of her loss festers in me but I manage to keep it tampered down pretty well. The cloud of cancer has always loomed over me since her death.
And then in 1998, I was given the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. That afternoon driving back from the neurologist’s office I remember clearly thinking  maybe I would get a reprieve from cancer. My silly innocent naïve self thought things worked that way.

Wow. If I was just six-years old again. If I had just never let myself grow up. Maybe that is why I want to be young at heart. It is a coping mechanism from the shitstorm that has always been my life.

So now, at age 55, I am faced with the fact that life is difficult and messy and breaks your heart and takes you places you don’t want to go.
But you have to go there. You have to go through the darkness. You have to persevere. Even as I write this, my hands are shaking and my jaw is killing me.  This is my life at the moment. Will it be this way tomorrow? Maybe. Next month? I have no clue.

Yesterday I exploded at the love of my life. He stood and took it. I unleashed a torrent of expletives and hateful words that he didn’t deserve. I have so much anger that I no longer know what to do with it.

I got through all the crap that comes with cancer. Now that is left is anger. A black, seething, all-consuming, uncontrollable rage that I am beginning to like.
Maybe I’ll let it inhabit me awhile. I will try and harness it’s power to good. Or maybe I will try and ride it out until it passes.
I am not a patient person. I want me back. I am afraid I will have to find a new me again.

I did it before, when I got the MS diagnosis. My doctor said my body was telling me to change my life.

Well, damn. It’s that time again.

What a long strange four months it's been

When I read my last post on April 29, my heart aches for that person. The person who believed very much in the hope of a positive prognosis. But really, deep in my gut, I knew it wouldn't be so good.

After the cancer diagnosis, then came five surgeries, many doctors to see and far too many doubts to creep into my brain. 
My neurologist got me in with one of the most renowned cancer specialists in the country. Of course my cancer would be one of the rarest, accounting for less than 1% of the cancers in the U.S. I have never followed the norm:)

I think anytime someone hears the word cancer, they immediately think it is a death sentence. My own mother died from the horrid disease. When I found out my type, I first thought of MCA of the Beastie Boys, who had just recently passed away from the same type as mine.
But, I just won't let myself EVER go there. 
I have always said I wanted to live to be a hundred, and dammit, I plan to do just that. I am either too stubborn or just too plain mean to let anything keep me from that path.

So having said that, my doctors have chartered a macabre form of treatment, be it all in my best interests, that will hopefully, blast these cancer cells all  to hell!!
On Monday, August 26, I will begin a seven or eight week regimen of radiation. The doc hasn't decided yet. I don't know how he does decide but he's the boss. In preparation for the radiation, they make this cool webbed mask that forms a grid over my face so the rays will know exactly where to aim their weapons of mass destruction. I asked the tech if I could keep the mask after I had completed treatment and he said absolutely. So now, of course, I am thinking of some cool art project to make with it:)
On Tuesday, August 27, I will begin my morning with a round of major chemotherapy. This will be a long day because it will require much IV fluids in between since it is harsh on the kidneys. In between the doses, I will go get zapped with a radiation treatment and then back for me chemo.
I'll be a little sick for a week or so from the chemo but I will not get another chemo treatment until day 23 of radiation. The chemo is necessary because the cancer had spread into my lymph system. 
Also, a nice little addition to all of this, is my feeding tube. Because I am being blasted in my mouth, it will likely make me unable to want to eat, hence the feeding tube. Protruding from my stomach, it's a pain in my ass. Oh, well. They don't want me to lose weight but I keep telling them I could stand to lose a few lbs. The doc didn't find that very funny.
What I dislike most about this, is my two wonderful, beautiful daughters having to go through this with me. They are my guardian angels but have endured so much. I want them to be out starting their lives and having fun. Not taking care of me. I am blessed that they seem to only want to be by my side:)

I have had such a wonderful, challenging, happy, sad, lovely, awful, beautiful, ugly, painful, exhilarating life. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. I can't wait to see what the next 46 years will bring!

the monday after

Finally am getting closer to what is going on with my jaw. after several doctors, all of whom wouldn't listen, it was my great neurologist that is finding answers for me.

I had needle biopsies on the mass and my thyroid. I should hear results in a couple of days. Hopefully, this week will go by faster than last week did. After learning of the questionable ct scan last Monday, I was sitting on needles and pins waiting. Waiting to see if I could get in to see the ENT surgeon and also to get the biopsy done in Charlotte while I was in town.

Thankfully, I was able to do both.

Now, all I have to do is wait.

But, I will not sit by the phone. I must make myself stay busy to make the time pass.

I will finish the birdhouses I have started. Completing a project is a good thing. And a good thing is what I need at the moment.