As this month came with all of its anniversaries, I thought, oh, August, what will you have for me this year?
In the summer of 2019, my mother and I were fighting for our lives. In this picture below, she’s in hospice, her battle almost over. The date of this photograph is August 10th.
I was with her every day, and some were harder than others. On the day she passed,I remember standing outside her room and staring back at the window, knowing her body was still in there, yet she wasn’t. I pretended I was waiting on her to walk out of that place, tell me it had been a terrible mistake.
I went home, and took pictures of the moon that night.
Today, August 18th, marks the one year anniversary of her passing. August 26th, she would have been 84. ❤
One of my favorite pictures of her. Taken in August (of course) 2015.
Other “anniversaries” this month . . . in August of 2012 we lost our beloved little Yorkies, “the girls,” Bella and Kiwi. Bella, on August 2nd, and then Kiwi, on August 23rd.
It was August, 2nd 2017 I received my official cancer diagnosis, and began a rigorous treatment plan of chemotherapy and radiation that lasted into late October.
Oh yes. We’re very happy! Final chemo, October, 2017They’re still there, helping people fight. The final radiation treatment, 30 in all.Best card ever from my warrior sister, Keilah Goff.
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Yesterday, August 17th, I was back at Duke Raleigh Hospital for my three month check-in. These have been ongoing since my diagnosis because the monster, a.k.a. as cancer, keeps wanting to rear its ugly little head up in new places, like my lung in 2018, and then my liver in 2019. When I started back on chemotherapy last summer for the liver metastasis, my final treatment was on August 23rd, the day after we had the service for Mom.
Since then, I’ve had three clear scans, November 2019, (PET) February 2020, (PET) and May of 2020, (CT). Clear scans in this case doesn’t mean there are no lesions, or nodules. Btw, everyone has these, unbeknownst to most of you unless tests are done and they’re found, but it’s also important to note, most are benign.
I haven’t posted about the previous scans because cancer is tricky, and the results of tests are often a lot like riding the Tilt-a-Whirl, slinging you one way, good news! then the other, bad news! The results of a scan and what is said by the radiologists sometimes leave a bit up to interpretation depending on word choices. Things like “less conspicuous” and “less discernible,” or “not well seen,” can make you sit back and question, are they there or not? What does that even mean?
Basically, I decided to wait until I was one year post chemo treatment to do any sort of update because the longer things go with no change, the better. Yesterday’s scan shows “stability,” meaning the liver lesions seen have been there, and are unchanged. In the words of the radiologist to Dr. Smith, my oncologist, “their stability is definitely reassuring.” Are they cancer? We don’t know. The key word is “stability” because to the best of what I can gather no change means they could simply be benign.
Imagine. Some good news in August. Here I am looking a little tired, (typical writer appearance) but hey! Look! My hair came back. (!!!)
The capacity of the human will, the strength of a human body is never fully realized, until it is tested.
“They” say time heals all wounds. One can readily admit to the physical side of this. What takes longer is the emotional toll of watching one of the most important people in your life die from an aggressive cancer while locked in a similar battle of your own.
Then, they are gone, and there is the relief in knowing there is no more suffering, while harboring the conflicting emotion of wanting them here. Time goes on. Those mixed up emotions are accumulated, and held tight, sometimes locked down, imprisoned. Coveted. Pulled out. Put away again. It is cyclic. No one knows when the pattern will break, become less regimented, less invasive. Everyone is different.
I haven’t written out here since August. Thinking back to that month and what was going on, I can only shake my head. The head shaking – it’s partly wonderment at how we got through it, and partly denial, the “I still can’t believe any of this happened,” way of thinking.
I’ve spent a lot of time these past months dwelling on 2019. From my mother’s, “I’m having trouble swallowing, it feels like a lump in my throat,” to everything that happened after. I have one word for it. Surreal.
It seemed before I knew it, I was having my final moment’s with her, she was taking that one final breath, I was speaking final words to her. They were, of course, “I love you. I love you so much.”
So many endings this year. After she passed, I spent weeks at her house, packing up her belongings. It was hard, yet cathartic, in a strange way. I was with her, felt closer to her among her things. Before I would move an item, I’d have the thought, she put this here, she folded this towel, she put this dish away, she used this soap, she, she, she . . .
I told a friend, “I feel like I’m packing up her life.”
We sold the house. No longer can I go and play Scrabble with her, drink coffee. Talk. Laugh. (and yes, work my fanny off ’cause mom always had a list. Any of you reading this who knew her, knew she liked things a “certain” way.)
I wish she was here to give me a list. I wish she was here so I could call her. I wish she was here so I could hear her laugh – in real time – because yes, I can still hear her in my mind. I wish.
She was sick in this picture – but still wanted to . . . well. You know. Beat the pants off me.
The pastor at Hospice House asked me when we first arrived if I had any regrets. At that time, I said “No.” Now that I’ve done all this thinking, I will change that to “yes.” I regret she had cancer. I regret she couldn’t fight it. I regret the treatments didn’t work. I regret knowing how badly she wanted to live, yet how badly she wanted to die. I regret she suffered in her final weeks. I regret denying her the ability to talk to me honestly about her fears, her awareness of what was happening to her. THIS ONE most of all.
I thought I was protecting her by not discussing the whys and whats of this decision she’d made. I thought by not talking about that gigantic, overwhelming, trumpeting ELEPHANT in the room, she would continue to hope, to believe. I wanted her to think she was going to be okay, and she would drift off into her permanent sleep believing that.
I know now this is not how she thought. My mother was secretive about certain things. Maybe (most likely) she thought she was protecting me. So we did this dance of denial with one another. I’m not dying. You’re not dying.
What I don’t regret, could never regret. Being with her, every single step of the way.
How I remember her. Vibrant. Well. Happy.
I know the tone of the post may seem heavy, laden with sadness, awash with forlorn sentiments, but it’s really about reflection. The year is almost over. And while all may not be bright, we are filled with hope 2020 will be kinder, gentler, in every way possible.
This was one of her favorite songs. Like Elvis’s mother, Mom loved roses, and grew them in her yard. Sleep peacefully among your angels, Mom.
For some time now, I’ve not lifted my head to see what’s around me, to notice much other than what needed to be done. I don’t need to tell any of you the past few weeks (months) have been hard, filled with sadness, and worry.
Many years ago, Blaine and I visited the Linville Caverns in the North Carolina mountains. It was beautiful. There were lights installed on the walls, showing us stalactites, stalagmites, and sparkling clear water with fish. There were ropes to guide us along to see all of these internal wonders of Mother Earth. Then, with a brief warning, the guide turned out the lights, plunging us into instant darkness. I couldn’t see Blaine beside me. I couldn’t make out one solitary object. I put my hand directly in front of my face. Blackness. The guide flipped the light back on, and the interior was once again illuminated.
Linville Caverns, NC Photo
Since my mother’s diagnosis and all that has transpired, there have been days when it was like being back in that cave with the lights out. I needed something to brighten my spirits, I needed a light switch flipped back on to show me how to move forward, how to get from Point A to Point B, and then to whatever point after that. Some way of feeling more myself, more lighthearted, more enlightened, the sense of waking up to a bright, sunny day after weeks of dreary rain.
I haven’t done an update on myself since June 17th, which was the day I began the first chemo treatment for this latest cancer diagnosis. Since that update, I’ve had three (hellish) months/rounds of chemo, through June/July and August. I was wearing my chemo pump when I gave my mother’s eulogy. That really felt like the darkest of dark days.
The final round, August 19th. Do you see determination? You betcha.
After the pump was unhooked August 23rd, I tried to not think about the CT scan for August 28th. When my oncologist called while I was still driving home, yep, I broke the law and answered my phone. I figured, get it over with, good or bad, you’ll figure it out.
I held my breathe, and he said,”Everything looks good. This is a good, clean scan.”
Whoosh. I resumed breathing and didn’t have a wreck. The new liver spots? Gone. The existing lung spots? Stable, no change since 2017. (they think these are scar tissue at this point) And even that pesky pelvic fracture that caused much anxiety in January and April has shown improvement and further healing.
This was the light I needed. I’m so grateful. ❤
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. John 1:5
Her birthday is today. It’s been eight days since she left. I miss her. I will miss her even more as time passes. I spoke at her funeral service and I want to share what I said. Many of you have seen some of the pictures on Facebook I posted of her, plus the obit, but there was so much more to Mom, and this is simply another small part of who she was. I could have said so much more, but the most important thing is she knew my heart, and I knew hers. That’s all that mattered.
The Valley
You were born in Lewiston, Maine, in the summer of ‘36, the only child of Mildred Foster Fournier and John Henry Fournier.
Virginia Marie Fournier Davis on left, with niece, Diana.
You lived in Auburn with five older brothers and two older sisters, so there’s a chance you might have been spoiled – just a little bit. You loved your home state, your parents and siblings, but you loved Dad more. While on a business trip to Maine, he met you, and married you fast – five weeks later, and then brought you to North Carolina, where you lived for over 62 years.
We took lots of family trips to Maine, ate lobster rolls, puzzled over the inability to swim in a too cold ocean while the sand and air were gently warm. There was none of this infamous Southern humidity, and we slept in your childhood home, the windows open at night, beds piled with quilts as the temperatures dropped into the 50s. Recently, you were able to return on two solo trips, and I think Dad would have been so proud and amazed at your independence.
Mom on first solo trip to Maine, July/August 2016
You made a home here, adjusted to grits, collards and sweet
tea, but you never learned to love hushpuppies or tripe. You were a hard
worker, and very fastidious about things.
From you I learned how to properly clean a house, how to do “hospital
corners,” while making up a bed, as well as the totally useless chore – ironing
pillow cases. You taught me to cook, to bake (and dare I say apple pies because
of a certain someone listening to me now), how to do laundry, and yet another
useless chore – folding underwear.
It was because of you, I learned to love reading. You used
to let me play hooky, well, you actually thought I was sick, and I faked it
because you’d buy me books. I once held the thermometer up to the lamp after
you’d popped it in my mouth and stepped out of the bedroom. My temperature was
a blistering 104 and climbing. You gave me a look. You know the one. You were
my first reader when I began writing my own stories. You came to my book
events, always smiling, always so proud.
You were an entrepreneur. You owned a licensed daycare
center and ran it for more than twenty years. We can never know the total
number of children you took care of, but many of them now have children of
their own. Many of the parents, and even the now adult children have stayed in
touch with you. This is a testament to the love and care you gave them.
After the daycare closed, you took in blind people for the
state of NC. You cared for those individuals with the same dedication you did
the children. You did this for several years, and you still are in touch with some
of the families.
You loved working in your backyard. You would rake, trim
bushes, fluff pine straw, and do your best to eliminate every square inch of
those doggone gumballs. You hated when the wind blew and knocked more out of
the trees, after you’d just “cleaned”
the yard. I joked you would vacuum the grass if you could. Well, doggone if
Blaine didn’t go out and get you and Dad a “sweeper” that hooked up to the back
of the lawnmower. How were you supposed to be able to get your exercise raking
if Dad could sweep the yard in five minutes? I bet that gift actually made you
mad – Dad too. I think you provided him a lot of entertainment.
You loved going to the spa at Rex Hospital. You spent at
least three mornings a week there, swimming, and doing water aerobics. You had
friends everywhere, the grocery store, up and down Avent Ferry Road and in
states beyond. You loved sending cards and letters to all of your relatives and
friends, always writing a personal note expressing your feelings of love and
care.
You believed in angels. I counted how many you have at your
house in Dunn – twenty-nine. The part of me most like you insists there must be
one missing because it needs to be thirty. I bet you have thirty. Actually, I
think you have more because I believe I missed a room. You believed in Pennies
from Heaven. You have a small jar of them, and five of them you found and were
extra-special to you because they came after Dad passed.
You were a fierce Scrabble player. You loved beating the pants off me. You would laugh, and say “Thank you, Daddy!” insisting it was because of his heavenly help that you’d won.
Already plotting my loss.
You loved being around family. You dearly loved your grandchildren, Justin, Brooke, and Kyle, and your great grandchildren, Payton and Abigail.
Brooke, Mom and JustinMom and Abigail
When I was a single mother, it was because of you, I was able to make ends meet because you cared for Justin and Brooke in your daycare from the time they were only a few weeks old until they went to school. This allowed me peace of mind while I worked. When I met Blaine, you were so relieved and grateful I found someone who, in your words, “was so much like Dad” – particularly since my previous choices likely caused the both of you lot of raised eyebrows and worry. You often said Blaine was like your own child. The two of you liked to kid one another, always acting like you were giving each other a hard time, but there was a deep love there. He called you Grandma D, and Sweetie Petey, and loved to cook for you, especially after you got sick. You would always say, “Not too much!” when you came to eat at our house, insisting you ate “like a bird.” It was only years later, when you finally let us in on your little joke, when you finally admitted, “birds eat a lot!”
After Dad passed in March of 2015, you were lost. You had
met him when you were only 20, and he was 22. You had spent most of your lives
together, and now he was gone. I couldn’t imagine how you’d get by without him.
But you did. After two years of trying to keep up the house, and the yard, you
decided to sell and move closer to Blaine and me in Dunn. We were so happy and
relieved that you did. While you still missed “home,” you eventually told me
how safe you felt, and finally, how happy you were in your Ivy Glen community.
You loved your friends there, and spoke about how they welcomed you in, and
made you feel like you belonged. You also loved visiting Blaine’s family, and
told me time and again how much it meant to you, the way they embraced you, showering
you with love whenever we were all together.
In the end, your time here on earth was not easy. Your
diagnosis was horrific, turning your world, and ours, and everyone who knew
you, upside down. Life for you became much too difficult, much too complicated,
and truly painful. You withdrew from the things and those you loved. Your
favorite TV programs. Your phone calls to family and friends. Your walks in the
neighborhood. Your porch time. You were already leaving us then, but we didn’t
know it.
You were brave. You fought hard. You suffered. You endured. You said you felt like a burden and Mom, you never, ever were. I told you this, time and again, but I don’t know if you believed me. You worried about me, when you were the one dying. You were my mother, and a mother’s worry is never ending.
You stepped into the valley to begin your journey home.
Death trailed you as you descended into the darkest of its corners. I know you didn’t
want to go. I know you wanted to live. It’s why you went through the
treatments, filled with hope, and expectations. I remember you saying, “I’m
going to get through it, put it behind me, so I can live!”
You fought. You were always a fighter. You gave it your best. You were a true warrior through and through. You showed us your strength, and even in your moments of weakness, your courage pushed you out of those bleak and dreary corners into the light. You seemed to have waited until Allen and I could be with you. We’d been swapping time at the hospice, him at night, me during the day. On Sunday, August 18th, 14 days longer than you were given by the doctor there, you finally let Death come near, begin to embrace you, and in those final moments, you exhibited nothing but grace, dignity and bravery.
You have gone from us. You have finished your journey home. You
no longer walk this earth, you no longer belong to us in a physical sense. You
are exactly where you belong, at rest among your beloved Angels, with Dad, with
all those you loved who went before you. You are within the heavenly home that
is your just reward. You have earned peace, comfort and happiness.
I cannot express how much I loved you. How hard it will be not to spend any more time with you, to go on our little road trips, do what we called “cheating,” by eating junk food, the Monday’s I came to help, to play Scrabble, laugh with you, drink coffee with you, and to talk with you on the phone where I would say, “Hey, it’s me.” And you’d say, “Hey me!” I was blessed beyond measure, privileged to have had you as my mother.
There will always be a link between me, you, and all those
you loved, and who loved you. It extends beyond this earth, like the umbilical
cord that once attached me to you, it will always be there. That link is never
ending love. As we always said to one another, “I love you SO much,” and I know
you carried this with you as you left that dark valley and entered your
brilliant, heavenly home.
All my love, Mom,
Me.
Early days at the Hospice House, Smithfield, NC
Us“For Mom, a warrior – battle on”Lit in honor of her passing, SECU Hospice House, Smithfield, NC
I’ve hesitated giving everyone an update, but I know many of you are perhaps wondering what’s going on.
Here is some GREAT news! Mom left the hospital on May 8th, went into a physical rehabilitation center, left that on May 28th, and has been at home recuperating to the best of her ability. She FINISHED her radiation treatments this past Friday, June 14th, and now she is through, the next step for her will be an endoscopy – probably within the next month – to see how they worked. The hope is, obviously, the cancer is gone, or at least shrunk small enough she can be monitored.
I wish I’d taken a picture of her beautiful baldness, but I have yet to do that. She might appreciate that I haven’t – yet. 😉
As her chapter closes, mine begins – again. The hope for a “simple ablation” isn’t possible. Strangely, because of just how small those little spots are, they can’t do a biopsy, and they’re not operable, per the liver specialist. He lobbed it back to the bone doctor, and I, instead of waiting on them, went to see my medical oncologist, Dr. Smith. He’s been treating me for the past two years, and I trust him.
That conversation went something like this:
“Well, as you know, there are two spots, and they’re too small to operate on, and too small to biopsy. So, we don’t know what they are.”
“Right. We could wait and see.”
“We could, we could.”
“If we did that, how risky is it?”
“Well, there could be more we don’t know about.”
“Oh. And I guess it could metastasize, or they could grow quicker.”
“It could. Your cancer markers aren’t high, so I don’t expect they would grow too quick, but it could change.”
“What do you think they are?”
“I think they’re cancer.”
Decision made.
Today at 10:00 a.m. I will be at Duke Raleigh Hospital to start chemotherapy again. It will be a visit with my old friend, Fluorouracil (also known as 5 FU – interpret THAT acronym as you wish), and a new drug, Cisplatin. I will have this old friend again too:
Remember “pump’kin?” Called that because last time I was getting infused Sept/Oct timeframe.
This will happen – again:
Goodbye, lovely THICKER hair.
My taste will change, my sense of smell – I remember this vividly. My coffee, I LOVE my coffee, and it has become a new habit for me to swing by McDonald’s for a cup on my way to visit Mom. I’ve been SO tired from everything going on, it was the pick me up I needed. But, last time? Ick. I wasn’t able to drink it for a couple months.
Buh bye, Joe. I will see you in a few months.
I don’t know what all else might occur since I’m not familiar with Cisplatin, but some of the common side effects are, of course, low blood counts, etc.
My hope is this; I won’t feel as miserable because I’m not having radiation at the same time. I read somewhere in my many visits to Dr. Google that radiation intensifies the effects of chemo.
This go around there might be 4-6 treatments instead of 2, like in 2017. Dr. Smith said we’ll do 2, then do another liver MRI and see how they “spots” are responding.
I’m back to that Lady Macbeth saying, “Out, damned spot.”
So, this is what has been going on. I really appreciate all of the support, prayers, thoughts, and essentially all the good vibes from everyone! I have SO much to look forward to, and while I navigate this latest setback, I’m focused on getting through it, and passed it!
If I’m able, I’ll post updates, when I can! Thank you all for reading along, and supporting me!
Not too long ago . . . a rainbow came down from the heavens.
The beat of this drum has become somewhat tiresome, if I’m being truthful. Tiresome in that I don’t want the only thing I ever talk about is “it.” (reminds me of that fantastic book by Stephen King, read oh so many years ago.)
“It” is an appropriate name for the burden that is cancer. It’s one thing to deal with my own health, but we have Mom added into the mix now. This makes for dual roles – battling my own health issues, while trying to be caregiver to her. The complexities of this simply mean – I’m tired.
People ask, “How are you?”
I say, “I’m good, tired, but good.”
And you know what keeps me sane? Feeling good? Book events! I forget about “it.” I’m in the moment, I’m having fun, I’m laughing, discussing my books, discussing other books. Life seems normal.
Hooked On Books Book Club, Southport NC
Yesterday I was talking to a writer friend, and said battling my own cancer is like playing whack-a-mole. She didn’t know what that was. *You know who you are! It has truly become just like this arcade game – wherever it “pops” up, my doctors kill it. That’s the hope, anyway.
I had the liver MRI on Saturday. Sometimes you just know – it’s a feeling and it’s a bit of knowledge. 50-60% of people with this type of cancer see it metastasize to their livers. Those odds are pretty high, so it came as no surprise, really, when my oncologist called me yesterday at 8:00 a.m. and said, “There are two spots, relatively small, but they’re there.”
1.2 cm and 1.4 cm., each is about the size of a pea and they’re close together. Knowing those small details about them is helpful in an oddly, non-useful way. They are there, hidden away, causing me no pain, no sense of them at all. Like I’ve said before, cancer is sneaky. This is why so many people are late stage by the time they’re diagnosed.
What is tentatively planned, a possible needle biopsy, and then a simple ablation, a technique some of you may have heard of with regard to heart trouble, where they go in and burn the connections within the heart to get it back in rhythm. It’s similar with this for the tumors in my liver, but the expectation is to kill them off.
Changes are constant in fighting cancer, and while the recurrences are certainly disheartening, and may appear to offer a poor prognosis, there are still many options available to keep me filled with hope that there will always be an answer to the problems that seem to keep – ha – popping up.
John Hiatt’s CD, The Eclipse Sessions is a favorite I listen to while traveling to book events, or while running errands. Well, that, and Radney Foster’s, For You To See The Stars.
I chose this one for today, because the lyrics really fit. “Get up, get knocked down again, I ask for five, and you give me ten.”
I think I’ve said this before, and if I haven’t, I’ll say it now.
Cancer sure is sneaky.
Before I was diagnosed, I was sick for years and didn’t know it until a couple of persistent symptoms cropped up. One I ignored for some time because it mimicked another common health problem. One I didn’t because, OMG, LUMP! Right? What I thought was an enlarged “lymph node,” turned out to be a tumor, metastasized from the original. Because of that, I presented as a Stage IIIB right off the bat, and went on to the illustrious Stage IV.
Sneaky. Without a doubt.
February 19th was another day of reckoning.
That’s when my mother and I received the news of her own cancer diagnosis at age eighty-two.
It began simply enough. Some pain when swallowing that seemed to come out of nowhere in early January. She already had an appointment set up with her regular doctor for January 30th.
She said, “I’ll tell him about the pain then, if I even still have it. I probably just need my esophagus stretched. You know, so and so, and so and so have had theirs done.”
I thought, well, okay, maybe that’s it. I also thought her symptoms mimicked my husband’s. He has acid reflux, but, as long as he takes Nexium, he’s fine, otherwise swallowing dense food, like meat, potatoes bread, i.e., it’s the same as what she’d been having.
So, I bought her some of the over the counter stuff, and after a few days, she thought it might be working. Then, it wasn’t. By then, she wasn’t too far from her appointment, so she managed by finding things that were easier to eat. Finally, I took her to the doctor appointment, and she told him what was going on. Two days later, she was getting x-rays – which showed nothing. From there, he referred her to a gastroenterologist who ordered an endoscopy for February 19th.
The day of that procedure Mom was in good spirits, ready to get everything over with. It was all done pretty quick. The doctor walked into the recovery room while she was eating ice chips and I was dithering around on my phone.
He said, “Well, I know what’s wrong.”
I glanced up, and before I could ask him any questions, he said, “It’s a large mass growing into her esophagus. Cancer.”
Oh, how everything instantly changes when you hear that word. Every single thing about the way you think, the way you feel, the way you live from that moment on is altered. You know it, but none of it is solidified yet. The reality of it is still melding with you, and while you’re trying to cope with the word, physiologically your body reacts on its own. You were warm, and now you’re cold. You could breath and now you can’t. Your heart beats too quick, and tears fall, but neither of you notice any of these things.
Shocked, we could only listen to his next words carefully.
“We will wait on the biopsy, but I’ve seen plenty of these, and it doesn’t look good.”
What a sad ride home that was.
The next steps were to get a stent placed into her esophagus so she could eat. The gastro doctor was about to go out of the country for three weeks, so, on February 22nd, three days after the endoscopy, that was done. What followed was a rough, rough two weeks. The pain was intense as her body adjusted to this foreign tube stuck right into the middle of her esophagus and the tumor – which the doctor said looked pretty “angry.”
Somewhere between that, and the following weeks came a CT scan, a PET scan, meeting her oncologist, her mapping/planning with radiation oncology and the planning with her medical oncologist.
The surreal part of this? Her radiation oncologist is the same one I had, the same nurses – you remember these gals, right? I called them my angels back then and they haven’t lost those wings.
They’re still there, helping people fight.
Her battle begins tomorrow, April 4th at 10:00 o’clock a.m. when the ladies above will guide her through the treatments with expertise, care, and compassion, just like they did me. Directly after, she will walk across the hall to the medical oncology offices, where she will begin her chemotherapy at 10:45 .am.
She is receiving her chemo differently, and by that I mean once a week for six to seven weeks. I had the “pump”kin for a week at a time, twice. Remember it?
The “pump”kin. Ten days of hell, dosed out five days at a time.
She will have twenty-eight rounds of radiation.
Her attitude?
“I’m going to kick this thing of the way so I can keep going, so I can live! I’m going to fight like hell.”
Taken Monday at her house where she beat me twice in Scrabble.
We’re called warriors. That word and others like fighting, survivor, and journey, are used to describe this experience and never before did I fully grasp it until that day in 2017.
We are battle scarred. In my case, I’ve been tattooed, four permanent little bluish dots which pinpointed where the radiation machine would target. That’s another word to add to the repertoire – target. Like throwing darts, we wanted those beams to hit the bullseye and kill the cancer. Kill it, not me.
I have scars from the radiation burns, from lung surgery, and now I have this one from the skin cancer recently removed. In the grand scheme of things, this was easy-peasy.
“Oh, this little ole basal cell skin cancer? That’s nothing,” I declared to the dermatologist as he stitched up my leg. (I tell you though, skin cancer is nothing to fool with. What I had was literally about this size –> O, if that. That turned into taking out that chunk of my leg like what you see below and eleven stitches.)
That “dip” will go away – eventually. Hopefully before shorts season!
The longer you talk cancer, experience cancer, deal with cancer, the more you realize you are in a war zone, albeit self-contained. There are the inner scars too. These are memory scars, the ones formed over PET scans with outcomes we don’t want, the idea it could resurrect it’s ugly little presence any old doggone time it wants. Our future is at stake until we pass the magic time of two years and five years. At five years cancer free, none of us have any more chance of getting it again than the rest of the population who’ve never had it.
I do my best to ignore it. I’ve gotten pretty good at it too, as these pictures show.
Attended the Women’s National Book Association BibliofeastHonored a cherished friend . . .Accepted this award at the SELA/SCLA Annual Yearly Conference Thanksgiving at our house with familyDecorated the tree . . .Somebody doesn’t like their reindeer horns . . .
You get the idea!
I have concluded I am proud of my battle scars. I am glad I have them. The fight is over for now. I am completely cancer free – again. I will get through PET scans, and continue to look forward, never backward.
A friend of mine wrote a comment on my last post, and in reading it, I looked at the date and realized it had been a while since I wrote anything about what’s going on. To be honest with you, I guess you could say when it comes to that, picture my face like this:
Enough already.
It’s been almost three weeks since the surgery which went as expected. No surprises. Wedge resection was done, wore a chest tube for about a day, and was quite (very) happy sitting propped up in my hospital bed, with a morphine pump and other opiods dripping into the IV. It was like a trip back to the 70’s, all psychedelic and woo woo.
The nurses asked, “What’s your pain level, zero to ten?”
“Zzzzzeeeerrrrooooo,” said I, with a loopy grin.
I checked out the next day, and since then have been at home, recovering. Actually to say recovering is a stretch because the overall effects of the actual surgery weren’t too bad. The worst came the first two days after as the general anesthesia wore off. I drifted about the house feeling zoned, out of it, really. Then, for the following week I prayed I wouldn’t need to sneeze, or cough. Beyond some oddball annoying muscle spasm that created a sharp pain when I breathed in too deep, and what I’ve called the mad itch from adhesives on the dressing, I have felt pretty good.
I saw the surgeon October 9th and got the stitches out. That was when I heard about the pathology of what they removed. A bunch of staining was done to try and identify cells, some squamous, some with basaloid features, but as seems to be the case with the metastases I get, a hodge-podge of crap that is poorly differentiated, and morphing into unknown . . . cancerous stuff.
Ick.
Here’s what I’ve learned. When you have cancer, you tend to listen very carefully for the positive news while analyzing every word coming out of a doctor’s mouth.
So, while I heard about all those nasty cells, I also heard him say something about Stage I.
I said, “So this is Stage I.”
I think he misunderstood my question. I was trying to understand if my lung cancer was Stage I while I realized my original cancer was Stage IIIB.
He said, “Oh no. You’re Stage IV because of the metastasis to the lung.”
Then he followed up with a couple of comments that sounded encouraging. One was it was better for me to come in with this now versus having had it when the original, primary cancer showed up. The second thing he asked was how long it had been since I was diagnosed.
I said, “Fourteen months.”
He said, “Well this may be it. The longer you go without anything else showing up, the better.”
I got to thinking about those other little spots, and we discussed them too. He showed me they are in both lungs. (refer again to that girl pictured above).
He said, “I would get another PET in three, no longer than four months. And we can always go back in and remove that left lobe, if they’ve changed.”
“What about the right lung?”
“Well, you have enough lung function we could remove some of it, or it could be treated systemically with more chemo. But I’d not recommend that for a few weeks, until you recover fully from your lung surgery, and that’s really Dr. Smith’s call.”
I went home and got to thinking about the doggone spots. For some reason, I thought he was the first person to bring them up, but then I recalled I’d started off with “nodules” already on my lungs (and liver) when I was first diagnosed last year. That’s why I was sent to an oncologist, pronto, and with everything going on, I had not thought to look back at my previous scans.
I went into the Duke portal and checked. Sure enough, all the way back to the original PET scan from August 2017 there is a mention of nodules in both right and left lungs. This is good news! (strangely) Why? Because I’ve had these spots he’s pointing out all along, and I’ve had a total of three more PET scans, and the spots haven’t changed. The one they took out was new as of the June 2018 scan, hence his comment, “This may be it.”
Let’s hope and pray it is!
In other news – remember my title on the last post? (Running with Lung Cancer)
Weeellll, I won’t be able to do that anytime soon. I suppose that’s what I get for thumbing my nose at the Universe.
Getting radiation to the hip/pelvic area can cause weakened bones. This was a risk, but I suppose it’s hard to really know you’re at risk without going through yet another scan for bone density. So, I was out on a run and immediately felt pain and in hindsight, I should’ve stopped right then. I didn’t. My thinking was I could run through it because over the course of the years I’ve been doing this, I know that weird pains show up at the beginning of a run, and most go away within half a mile or so. So, I kept on. It stayed with me the entire time, which should’ve been a big red flag. Once I finally did stop, I knew I’d made a mistake. So, I’m sidelined with a pelvic fracture, the type that needs nothing but time. It’s going on six weeks this coming Tuesday, and while there is still pain, it’s much better.
But – I’m not done YET. (!!!)
Let’s add some icing to the “what else could go wrong” cake.
A week ago today, I went to a dermatologist for a possible . . . skin cancer. We’ve all heard the saying “it comes in threes,” right? Is “it” karma? IDK, but whatever “it” is, mine apparently comes in fours.
I’ve had a “funny” area on my lower right leg since chemo ended last year. Actually, I thought this tiny wound was some odd thing my skin was doing because of the chemo since it showed up right after I was done with that treatment. It’s been there changing, doing it’s thing, bleeding now and then. Since my Dad had skin cancer, and I inherited his olive complexion, I thought, the way my luck is going . . .
I went to see a dermatologist a week ago. They took a biopsy, and the pathology on it will be back in about two weeks, so that was a Charlie Brown moment, as in good grief!
Let’s see, what else . . . kidding! Because, yeah, that’s enough, already, isn’t it?
Despite all this, you wanna know exactly how I feel?
Those of you who live in my neighborhood, yes, that certainly has been me you’ve seen jogging along the streets recently. You might have thought, but, wait. Didn’t I hear she now has . . . lung cancer?
That would be right too.
I asked my oncologist about running weeks ago, and his answer was “Yes, you can run!” That made me really happy. So, that’s what I’ve been doing. I figure if I’m in as good a shape as I can be – considering – I will recover faster after surgery.
Which is what I’m here to talk about, recovering from the surgery I mentioned in my last post. I went to see a thoracic surgeon yesterday.
By the way, in case you missed that Instagram post I did on Monday, here’s the picture I sent out.
Talk about timing. These two pieces of mail arrived together. This actually made me giggle but maybe I have a weird sense of humor. (French Sojourn, you can see I took your advice – thank you)
Back to the surgery visit. It was really enlightening and what I hopedand prayed for will happen. The doctor is David White, and while I was having a pulmonary test, the nurse said, “If I had to have any sort of surgery on my lungs, Dr. White is who I would want. He’s the best and I’ve worked all over the place.”
I love it when nurses volunteer tidbits like that. Either way, even after meeting him I was still curious so I Googled his name. Here’s a short video taken about three years ago where he introduces himself:
I really like him. Like my oncologist, he was thoughtful and caring. It showed in how he talked, explained things, and the time he and his PA took.
We started off by comparing our fitness watches. Ha! We had very similar looking running watches – same color – black/lime green. Then we looked at the PET scans I’ve had. He can’t be 100% sure of what type of cancer it is until they biopsy it. At this time however, because of the characteristics (round), he believes it’s actually a recurrent cancer and that the original cancer metastasized to the lung. My oncologist has said this would be a highly “unusual pattern.” (I’ve always joked how I can’t ever just have a common cold. If you knew my entire medical history, you’d understand what I mean.)
Dr. White said, “I bet when we look at the PET from January, we’ll see it.”
He flipped to that scan and scrolled through, but, we didn’t see anything.
He said, “Huh, that’s interesting.”
At any rate given the placement, back of the lower left lobe, (he placed his hand on my back midway to indicate about where it is, whereas all along I’ve been thinking it’s up front) he still thinks it’s recurrent. He also talked about the shape – round – and said other lung cancers tend to not be that shape, meaning the shape points to recurrent.
He scrolled through the scan and showed me other “spots.” I’d not heard about other “spots.” I honestly can’t recall how many there were, but I’d say 2-3. His PA said, “these are so small we wouldn’t be able to find them (during surgery), but we need to watch them, and see if they grow.” The watching will come from PET scans.
For the surgery it will be laparoscopic (so relieved), and he will do a “wedge resection.” This will mean cutting out the nodule, and some of the good tissue. He said they literally cut it like a wedge. I like pictures, so I went out and found one. Like this, but in that lower part of the lung.
There will be a tube in my chest for about a day – and that will be removed before I leave. This is the best surgery for maintaining most of the lung tissue. Regardless, your body has to adjust to less lung capacity, but this is the optimum for keeping the most of the lung.
He said I shouldn’t have to stay more than a night, maybe two depending on how things go with the chest tube and its removal. At home, recovery beyond that is about ten to fourteen days. He said one of the hardest things is getting over the anesthesia, and the pain. Still, all this was right in line with what I’d been hoping for – minimal hospital stay, and a pretty quick recovery.
He then said, “Once I’m in there, if I find out it’s actually a primary cancer, that will mean a larger incision (still laparoscopic) and a lobectomy, where we would remove the lower lobe entirely.” It means a longer hospital stay – maybe an extra day, and a few more days tacked onto recovery.
So, that’s the deal. The surgery is September 24th. This was the date I was hoping for because of the SIBA Tradeshow in Florida, and the Stanly County Library Annual Friends of the Library meeting where they’ve sent out 250 invitations.
Not having it ASAP doesn’t mean increased risks. It was sort of funny because when I asked about that, and I was prepared to start emailing people to say, “I’m real sorry, but I won’t be able to make it,” he said, “No. It doesn’t make a difference. If it grows, it will only make it easier to find.”
It still sounds encouraging and hopeful despite hearing about the other spots. We’ll just have to keep the faith they won’t grow, and hope from this point on I’ll get clean scans.
As always, I find myself listening to certain songs, and the lyrics to Seals and Crofts’ We May Never Pass This Way Again, are fitting.
“Cast away our fears, and all the years, will come and go, and take us up, always up. . .”
This actually made me giggle but maybe I have a weird sense of humor. (French Sojourn, you can see I took your advice – thank you)
DEAR CANCER 