Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Winner Takes it All

Hi Darlings...

Well yesterday was a crappy day where I had a big day-long pity party for myself...

I was mad at the cancer and what it kept cancelling for me.

So tomorrow I have to go and face the poison again.

I get to have blood drawn that will tell my doctor if the chemo is working like it should...and then I get to see my doctor and she can tell me what the bloodwork says...and then...

then it's time for the poison...

I wish it got easier each time but it really doesn't...

it gets harder...

because each time wears the body down more than the time before and frankly I really want to get back to my living my life as a sassy lily and not as a droopy pansy...

Each time the nurse hangs the bag of Taxol on the little iv machine thing I say a prayer...

I ask God to make the poison work...

It's surreal each time it happens...

I freak out a little and usually cry...

Never in my life did I imagine that I would be sitting in a room with other cancer patients while we all received poison to save our lives.

I sit in my chair, with my little frozen headgear on (to keep the hair) and I feel the tubes running into my body.

I look up and see the bag with the "caution" stickers on it that indicate that what is inside that bag is some dangerous stuff...

the little machine that regulates the infusion starts to blink and words appear...

and I just want to curl into a ball and cry for my mommy...

I know that for the next 3 hours Taxol will course through my body and destroy cells (hopefully the uterine pappilary serous carcinoma cells) and it destroys other cells as well.  Then after that runs its course I get another hour of more poison.

The second poison is carboplatin and it has lovely side effects like neuropathy in my fingers and toes (possibly irreversible) and possible hearing loss...

lovely...

the first poison can make me lose all my hair and the second can make me lose feeling in my fingers...

they will save my life but might cost me other things...

And the poison continues to course through my body and the little IV machine thing whirrs and blinks and the stuff that I pray will save my life flows through my veins and goes to work to kill the bad stuff...

Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine that I am Snoopy sitting on top of my dog house but I'm Snoopy being the Red Baron and I am shooting at all the cancer cells...I am shooting to kill and get them all out of my body before they can spread and multiply...

I'm pretty convinced since Snoopy is my "go to" for this that I am still a child...

It's a scenerio I never imagined would ever be a reality for me...but then again who ever imagines that they will hear the words "you have cancer"?

I lay in the chair and as the drugs do their work I try my best to not just sit and cry and feel sorry for myself...my Aunt Jane or Twirler Girl help me change my cap and dry the tears I cry...I sleep because they give me Benadryl but I can only sleep in 25 minute increments because of the cold caps.

The steroid they give me before the chemo makes me hungry as a linebacker...and I turn into a complete sugar monster...

In my normal life cookies will go stale in my house...
ice cream turns to icy yuckiness because I usually only take a few spoonfuls and that's it...
cakes will mold...

I don't have a sweet tooth in my regular life...my vice is spice and cheese...

but now that I have the steroid in me suddenly there are not enough macarons or pound cake in this world to keep me happy...Whole Foods cheesecake and chocolate mousse are not safe around me...and I want entire pints of ice cream...

none of that is very good when you are a girl trying to lose the weight that has come onto your body since surgery and menopause and all the time before when no one could figure out why I couldn't lose weight...

It's more than just a war to stay alive...I have all these little battles to fight as well...

So all of this has me thinking about why I ended up with cancer...

and the answer is:

HELL IF I KNOW

But I can't help but think that maybe there is a reason that I am facing this war with my body...and the only thing I can come up with is that at some point someone will hear my story and it might save their life...

so maybe I am going through this so that someone else can live...

Thousands of women have gone before me to fight this same battle for their lives and due to them my doctor knows what drugs to give me and how to cure me...so maybe all the weirdness of my cancer hiding so well will help other doctors to order CA125 blood tests or just dig a little deeper when a woman says "I'm bleeding and I don't feel right".

And hopefully out there some of you might remember how they found my cancer and you might tell another woman "Go to the doctor!"

I'm no superhero but I hope I can do some good in this world because of all of this...

I thought I had my life pretty well figured out and then God said "not so fast there, Missy" and suddenly I am sitting in a room with other cancer patients getting chemotherapy...

So tomorrow will be #4 and I will finally have more treatments behind me than I have ahead of me...

I feel like a countdown can begin...

But first I have to get through #4 and all that comes with it...

I pray that the drugs kill the cancer cells and that I can return to life by the middle of next week...

I pray that I can return to blogging about fun and funny stuff and not all of this "sturm und drang" about the cancer...

Life is meant to be lived...and I want to live my life and not just exist between treatments...

Because right now I am basically existing and not getting to live and people: That ain't me!!!

I will survive
I will keep my hair
I will have a healthy body
I will get to go back to my spin and yoga
I will get to socialize and have fun

I say all of that because that's my mantra...it's what I tell myself each day to get through...

I won't let cancer beat me even if winning the battle means killing some things about myself...including good cells along with the bad...

I firmly believe that you have to be positive about these things to win...

Last year my son's football team was in the private school state championships.

They had to play a team that they lost to before....and the other team had beaten them badly and decisively...

Before the game many of us parents were discussing how to console our boys and hoped that the score would not be a runaway...

The boys hit the field and a miracle happened...

Our little team, with 3 starters (including my son) out with injuries, and a quarterback who was really a baseball player---started to win...

And despite the other team having bigger boys who were more talented...

we won...

our boys won the championship!

When I went down to the field and my son limped his way over to me (he had had ACL repair surgery) I could see the tears streaming down his face...I've never seen him look so happy...

I kissed him and hugged him and he told me it was the best night ever...

He told me that no one believed they could win...but that THEY believed they could...they never thought of losing as an option...their only option was to win...

and here we were as parents expecting a loss but our boys knew they could win and they did...

I learned a lot from that team of boys that night...and when I was told I had cancer I knew I had to be just like those boys...

losing could not be an option...

my only option is to WIN...

So tomorrow when those bags of poison are hung on that tree that holds them and that machine starts whirring and blinking I have to imagine I am Snoopy and those liquids are my bullets to destroy the cancer...

Because my only choice is to win...

there are no other options...

I play to win...and I plan to win big...

and I will take the prize at the end of this journey

and that prize is...

MY LIFE

Inspiration Song: "The Winner Takes it All" by ABBA...because it's ABBA!  And because I am gonna win this and take all that the rest of my life has to offer me...

Bye Darlings...play to win...live your life to be a winner and winning is not how much money or stuff you have but rather how much love you have in life...






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