blog day 2007

Well, I was going to write about the day I met Elizabeth Edwards (prompted by this exchange from yesterday over at BlogHer) but it will have to wait.

Because today is Blog Day:

created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.
With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

I am choosing to interpret "previously unknown" to mean blogs that are new to me, as well as blogs I read but about which I have yet to write in my blog. Here are my recommendations for Blog Day 2007:

1. cmkl / Chris Lawson's personal web site. It lacks a catchy title but everything about this blog is wonderful. Chris is a friend of mine from way back and I have followed his blog through many life changes. He's a gifted writer, with a great, wry sense of humour. I love his entries about politics and his photos of his various forays into the Ontario's wilderness but my favourite posts are about his daughter Mallory and how it feels to be her very hands-on father.

2. Love Babz: A Life in Transition is a very recent discovery. This is how Babz describes herself in her profile:

"I am 44 years old. I am married with 4 children we adopted. My husband and I are separating after 11 years of marriage. I have a BS degree in Marketing and MPA-Masters in Public Administration. I was elected to local office twice. I am the oldest of 4 children. My life as I know it is changing. I am a convicted felon of a white collar crime, And yet I know my future is bright and full of possibilities. Ain't no place to go but UP!"

Babz, like me, is a glass is half-full kind of person. As she faces foreclosure on her house and a thirty-day prison sentence, she continuously reminds us about all the reasons life is worth living. Today's post is particularly moving.

3. I found Yarn-a-Go-Go through Mason-Dixon Knitting (the blog that led to my favourite knitting book ever). Rachael is a writer, an extremely talented knitter (and designer), a dog and cat lover, and absolutely charming. Even if you've never knit a stitch in your life, she's well worth reading. The story of Digit, the cat that came back, is worth the price of admission, all by itself.

4. Nordette Adams is a contributing editor at BlogHer, on the Mommy and Family beat. She's a single mom (to a teenage son and adult daughter) and I find her writing to be both lyrical and incisive. This is a strong woman with strong opinions and a fierce love of her kids. Two Miles from a Dive is her newest blog, started after relocating her family to her native New Orleans:

"That's two miles from diving into Lake Pontchartrain in the toes of the boot, southeastern Louisiana, land of bayous, gumbo, jazz, moss, ghosts, and Hurricane Katrina survivors. You may have read me when I lived in New Jersey at Confessions of a Jersey Goddess, but that was temporary. I'm back home for good."

5. Ok, so it's cheating a little bit to include the Junky's Wife in this list, as she has been on my blogroll (which I really need to update, there are some others to add, for sure) for some time. But I have never written about her before and she certainly fits the Blog Day criteria of featuring blogs that represent a range of life experiences and perspectives. The Junky's Wife is sexy, creative, literate, heartbreakingly honest and madly in love with her recovering junkie husband. I am addicted to this one.

Go check them out.

And let me know what you think.

chemo moments

Today, I distinctly remember dropping my keys in my bag as I left for my massage a few blocks away.
Except that I didn't do this. I arrived home to find that I was locked out, and, after my spouse cycled home to let me in, found my keys on the dining room table.

While I was out, I dropped into a neighbourhood health food store to buy the soy nut butter we like. They were out, so I bought some sunflower butter instead. I distinctly remember reading the label to see if the product contained traces of nuts and chose the organic kind because it did not have this warning.
Except that it did. When I showed it to T., he pointed out the warning, written in large, bold letters.

Scrabble, anyone? I think your odds of beating my ass are fairly good today.

a paler shade of green

Today was a chemo day.

It took exactly ten minutes to go from feeling terrific to feeling like crap.

Five good things about the last couple of days:

1. Yesterday, I did a purge of the junk in my linen closet and bathroom cabinets (and boy, was that overdue) (like, years overdue).
2. Afterwards, I went for a fast walk, the kind that really gets my heart rate up. It was a gorgeous day, in my favourite place. It was also fun watching my dog almost crash into trees as he tried to catch some pretty dopey squirrels.
   
3. We had an impromptu family dinner last night. My boys and my sweetie, his brother and my sister-in-law, my nieces and my mom-in-law. The best part of the meal was the tomatoes from our garden. And the lovely wine our guests had brought.
4. I had lunch today with one of my very best friends today, the kind of friend you want to talk to about everything. We ate at one of my favourite pre-chemo haunts, a vegetarian thai place (Sacred Garden, on Bank Street, if you live in Ottawa or ever come here), with a lovely, relaxing atmosphere.
5. As I type this in bed, my cat is curled up against my feet (sometimes, he can fool you into thinking he's a nice kind of kitty) and my dog is on his bed, snoring away. I love dog snores.

It's amazing how that little exercise always works.

I'm in a much better mood, now.

Oh and I should add that my white blood counts, and my neuts (the cells that fight infection) in particular are higher than they have been in a long time.

So, I'll spend the next couple of days in bed. And then, with renewed energy and no treatment until September 18th...

...I'm already working on my to-do list.

favourites

Health Care's Tougher Problem--Solving the Access Problem Isn't Enough If We Don't Deal With Costs

Today we honored to have Brian Klepper post for the first time. Brian's posts have been appearing on some of the leading health care blogs and I finally pestered him long enough that he agreed to begin doing some here. Today, he reminds us that solving our health care access problem is far from enough if we don't get costs under control:Health Care's Tougher Problemby Brian KlepperHealth care

the hardest

This post is written as a response to the thoughts that have been knocking around in my head since reading Blondie's piece from yesterday.

I wrote last year after finishing chemo (the first six rounds, that were supposed to cure me) that it was the hardest thing I'd ever done.

But yesterday, Blondie reminded me that I was wrong.

The hardest thing that I have ever done was tell my oldest son that I have cancer.

And then that it had come back.

To knowingly inflict pain this way on my child. I don't really have the words to express how much this hurt.

Blondie and I met at the BlogHer conference. We had a conversation at the end of a wine-soaked evening, during which she told me about her mother's cancer and how Blondie would sneak into her mother's room and hold a mirror under her mother's mouth, just to make sure she was still breathing.

The very thought makes me gasp a little.

Like Blondie's mom (who is now healthy and who told me that we had at least one chemo drug in common, in yesterday's comments), I spent the days following each chemo (which were always over a week end), lying in the dark, unable to tolerate movement, sound or light. My spouse (as well as family and friends) would make sure these week ends were full of distractions for the boys but I know they found it confusing and frightening that their mother was unable to respond to their needs.

And then, last fall, I put chemo and radiation behind me and returned to work, only to find out within weeks that the cancer had spread to my liver.

When the oncologist confirmed this diagnosis, my first words were, "I have two beautiful children!" When I asked him how much time I had, he said, "Years. Not decades."

When we told S. about the recurrence, he was very stoic and calm. We explained that I would once again be in treatment but that I had very good doctors and that we were going to do everything we could to fight the cancer. This time, he didn't ask if I was going to die. I'm glad, because I didn't want to lie to him.

I was in so much pain during that time (and so swollen from fluid buildup on my liver).

And, then, like Blondie's mom, I found myself in hospital with an infection. S. did not have to step through an airlock when he visited me but he did have to wear a mask, due to a cough (one that started when he entered the hospital and disappeared as soon as he left).

Those first few weeks after the metastasis was diagnosed are very blurred in my memory, made hazy by shock, pain and the drugs used to relieve those things.

And through it all, S. did not talk about the cancer.

Then, one day, after the dust had settled and the benefits of (much gentler) chemo had begun to take effect, there was an incident at school that revealed how much anxiety he'd been bottling up inside.

I took him home, told him that the principal had told me what happened.

I told him that I wasn't angry.

I said that I loved him very much and that he could talk to me about anything.

I told him that I was already feeling much better (which was true) and that I wasn't going anywhere any time soon.

And I set about finding a therapist.

But S. balked at the idea of talking to a therapist.

And as the weeks, then months, passed and my health was obviously improving (and ultrasounds indicated that the tumours had stabilized), we saw him relax.

By the time we went to Florida in March, he was the happiest, most confident and most at ease that he had been, not just since the cancer, but since starting school, a couple of years previously.

He ended up having a great year at school and, in July, we were able to share the news with him that my latest CT scan had revealed that my "innumerable tumours" have disappeared.

So the therapist got put on the back-burner.

But Blondie has me thinking that it might be time to make finding a therapist a priority. Someone S. could meet and to whom he could turn should he need to talk.

Because who knows what the future will bring? I plan to continue to defy expectations but I need to make sure that my children are cared for, in every way, and no matter what.

I realize, too, that the impact of cancer could manifest itself months, years or even decades into the future.

Even little D., who seems oblivious (but who knows how much he is taking in?), will not remember a time when his mother did not have cancer.

Like Blondie, I've done a lot of work in therapy (and like her, it took some doing to find the right therapist), dealing with issues from my own childhood.

I need to trust that my kids will have the strength, the resources, the willingness and the courage to deal with their own cancer fallout, if and when they need to, just as Blondie is doing now.

This is not the most eloquent piece I have ever written.

But it was the hardest.

And it was important to me to write it.

oh my gosh, it goes by quickly

I have the house to myself this week end.

As I have written before, I love being alone (although I always have the animals for company). Having the house to myself is a delicious thing.

I always miss the boys, yet time flies by as I try to figure out how to use my time. Go for a walk? Do some exercises? Organize my house? Read my book (the Custodian of Paradise, by Wayne Johnston. It's brilliant)? Watch a movie? Write?

One of the things I have been doing is getting caught up on my daily blog reads.

And one of my favourites moved me to tears today. Go read Blondie over at Tales from Clark Street. Her mother had cancer when Blondie was a child and in today's post Blondie writes beautifully and heartbreakingly of dealing with the fallout from that time (I am happy to say that her mom is now a twenty year survivor).

Go read it.

I need to reflect a bit more before I put my own reactions into words.

Going to go get dressed now (yes, I do know that it is 2:00 in the afternoon), grab the leash and take the dog for a walk.