Monthly Archives: October 2008

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Turning the corner – One Month after Surgery

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“The Longest Month Ever”

I gave my wife a kiss and told her it has been a crazy month since her surgery and she looked at me and said, “Its only been a month?  Wow, it is the longest month ever!”  I agree that it seems like we have come so far in a month.

Things continue to evolve emotionally and physically.  Yesterday while at the clinic she ran into an old co-worker.  They hugged and sobbed as soon as they saw each other there.  They hadn’t seen each other in 7 years, but they had a new bond and have already shared their stories with each other as well as numerous emails.  Having someone she personally knows going through it with her at the same age is a comforting thing for her.  It’s all the little things now.  Even yesterday when the Plastic Surgeon stood back, took a look and said, “I think it will all come out nice”, she took a mental note.  “Nice” isn’t always the most glamorous of words to describe something in a positive manner, but it worked for her.

Today was also a day we had been waiting for.  She finally heard an indication of what the test results said about her chance of recurrence for cancer.  This is an important outcome as it indicated the type of treatment plan you should follow with your oncologist.  When she called me at work, I picked up the phone with trepidation.  It was like the day she called to tell me she had cancer and I rushed home.   Those aren’t fun calls.  The day she called to tell me that my dad wasn’t breathing was just the same.  As I picked up the phone she said, “I hope you are free on Saturday as you and your son qualified for the Northern CA Family golf tourney in the 2nd flight!”  It was good news!  Not the news I was expecting but it was great and our son was going to be happy.  We talked for a few more minutes and then she continued, “Oh and the Dr. wrote me an email saying my scores came back low for recurrence”.

First I was  happy and could feel her smiling through the phone.  Then the psychologist in me said, “Wait, she gave you news about a golf tournament before she told you about her breast cancer”  I asked her if everything was alright and she said she felt like she was turning a corner and ready to get through this thing.

We watched a 45 minute video tonight to help us with her decisions she is going to have to make regarding her treatments.  Is it hormonal therapy, chemotherapy, both, or none? The clinic is pretty hands off and likes to let each person make their own decision so it is good to get educated. I told her that I was pro-choice on this and I didn’t want my own feeling to get in the way if she wanted to make the decision alone, but it is hard to look at your own health as one big statistic.  We haven’t made many decisions without each other for 22 years and she wasn’t about to start now.

So the oncology meeting is in a couple days.  We think they are going to tell her chemo is not really going to be beneficial and that Tamoxifen a hormonal therapy treatment with side effects will be her best plan, but who knows.  It is more of a sit and wait game again, but this time the wait is going to not be so stressful and the next month will go even faster.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

We’re a Family Again – The Highway of Life

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“Let’s keep our batteries charged as things usually get worse before they get better”

Almost a month since surgery and we seem and more importantly, feel, like we can do some normal things again.  As we had no appointments this past week, there was nothing to break up our schedule and we had what we might term to be a “normal family weekend”.  As we sat around the table at our favorite sushi restaurant on Sunday night, we had our team meeting about what we had going on this week (playdates, practices, appointments, etc.) we reviewed the past week with our children to ask them how they were doing and what they enjoyed.  Our son said he enjoyed playing in his first golf tournament.  Our daughter said that she enjoyed “being a family again”.  When we asked what that meant she said she enjoyed going out to dinner, going to her soccer game, and even playing a family board game  with all of us present.

She was right.  It was the first time we had energy to do things together rather than split up or outsource parenting to our friends and family.  We were smiling and laughing again.  The sushi dinner was never mentioned as such, but it was our first real time we had gone out together in a month for a meal and thus served as a bit of a celebration.  We needed the break, the laughs, the down time and I think we really needed to lavish our children with much needed attention.

They have seen and heard so much and partly because of their naivety and partly because they are mature for their age, they were able to process their feelings. Unfortunately, I think it wore on them to see their parents not having the fun they used to have and seeing their mom’s sunny disposition remain sunny, but at a cost of her strength.  Our daughter’s comment raised some flags for us to make sure we focused on them during the coming weeks especially if chemo becomes part of the equation.

Today marked the third of 5 appointments with the plastic surgeon post-surgery.  He says she is progressing okay but we’ll have to see how things are going with chemo to know our full schedule.  We have our 1st appointment with the oncologist on Thursday morning so we are a bit nervous.  I just wish we’d know a little more before we go in the first time to meet with her.  She’ll definitely tell us about the Tamoxifin (sp?) but all we are worried nabout now is the Oncotype score reading.  We are bracing for her to tell us she will need chemo and agreed that we just need to get our batteries charged and braced for the coming months ahead.   It is just natural to assume things will get worse before they get beetter.  In a peverse way we both agreed that everything so far has actually not been as bad as we thought it would be, but we have run across some things we never thought we’d encounter.

On this highway of life, cancer has been more than a bump in the road, but  a very windy detour that we hope leads back to the main road and let’s us get back to destinations unknown with many life adventures to discover.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight, Route 53 - Life is A Highway

Life is A Highway

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“Today almost felt normal”

This morning raindrops turned to sunshine and we all got up and packed for a morning at the soccer field for our daughter.  Everything worked well as we got a good parking space in a difficult area, our daughter scored two goals, and we had a good time with the other parents.  Afterwards we came home, washed up and changed, and then went to the baptism of our friend’s adopted beautiful daughter.  Of course the usual questions came up about how we are doing and some of my best friends finally had the chance to see us for the first time in weeks.  It was good to just see them and say hello rather than talk to them on the phone.

Our life really had taken a detour.

We didn’t stay at the party long in order to conserve energy.  We both needed it as we fell asleep with afternoon naps before I had to gt up to get a long-needed haircut. 

While dinner seemed normal, it was anything but normal.  It was the first time she had made a meal in a month.  It cost her a lot of energy, but she did it (I did the dishes) and she was very happy to contribute to our daily life,  Tonight before going to bed with her normal dose of pain medication she said, “Today almost felt like a normal day”.  I couldn’t have agreed more.  I still feel like I’m tip-toeing and walking on eggshells to make sure she doesn’t get hurt or fall down, but we are slowly building back up to a comfort level.

We have three more consecutive Monday meetings with the plastic surgeon as well as our first meeting with the oncologist coming this week.  We are both a little nervous about that as we still haven’t heard how our oncotype scores have come out.

Right now the pain comes when she has been upright too long.  I don’t think this is going to change until she gets swapped out with implants.  It looks like we will be living with Vicodin and Adavan for a couple more months.  Hopefully we can both find more distractions to keep our minds busy over the next couple weeks.

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight

Think , Laugh & Cry – A Loving Fight against Breast Cancer

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“Don’t forget to think, laugh and cry everyday.”

 

(note, wrote this on the way down to LA this morning).

 

Those famous words from Jim Valvano came to mind as I watched Oprah’s episode with Christina Applegate and breast cancer last night.  I cried not just for our situation, not just for Christina, but for all people suffering from any kind of cancer.

 

Today as I make (made) one of my day-long trips down to Hollywood for business, I just find myself wrapped in thought and emotion.  This is a trip I was supposed to make weeks ago, but everyone delayed the meeting mostly because I couldn’t make it because of my wife’s surgery.  Short plane rides, showers and bathroom stalls are just some of those places where time stands still and all my emotions come flooding in.  Sitting on a plane and just starting to cry is a weird thing.  I think of those times with my dad in the hospital, then my mom in the hospital and now with my wife’s visits to the hospital and think how lucky I am to still have two of those three people left in my life.

 

This morning was the first day I ever recall walking as a family to school.  You see it on TV where the family unit of four walks to school together down a tree-lined street.  We held hands said hello to other kids and parents we met.  It felt so normal.  We kissed our kids, sending them off with a hearty “Take care of your body” and my wife and I walked back to our car holding hands.  We never hold hands.  Is this the new us?  I don’t know if we can do that forever, but it sure felt nice.

 

Although I’ll be back tonight, I am still concerned for my wife, wanting to make sure she is okay.  She promised that she’d take it easy as long as I made sure to immerse myself back in my work and stop worrying just a little.  I can try that.  I reminded her that I just have a whole new appreciation for how much it means for her to still be with me.

 

One of the movies showing on the plane in October is “The Bucket List” starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson.  It’s about two guys with terminal cancer who have a list of things to do before they “kick the bucket”.  We wanted to see that movie before she was diagnosed.  I think we need a good laugh now and will watch it this weekend.  We might also find it inspiring.

 

Yes, definitely doing a little laughing, thinking and crying today.  It does feel good to let those emotions out. It feels real human.  The words my wife took from Oprah’s show with Christina Applegate were those words that Melissa Etheridge gave her, “This is a blessing and you now can live your life the way you want to”  or something like that.  Well blessing isn’t really the right word here.  A wake up call?  Maybe that is it.  We had definitely started doing that and my wife was onboard with that mentality, but we had forgotten it.  She told me this morning before I left, ” I need to put the past behind and start living.”

 

Amen

Breast Cancer - A Loving Fight

3 weeks post-surgery – A Loving Fight Against Breast Cancer

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“Keep resting, take your chances to rest.”

Well we are now 3 weeks post-surgery and we are slowly moving back to normal.  We both have finally gotten rid of our coughs which both hit us around the time that she was diagnosed.  I’m thinking it was a bit psychosematic (sp?) but either way, it’s all done. 

I’m still dropping off the kids and preparing everyone’s breakfast and lunch as she is still weak in the mornings and has not regained her stamina.  Picking up the kids in the afternoons and helping them go to their activities is exhausting and I see the weakness in her.  We had a long discussion to remind her to her rest when she can.  She has resumed light work which again is a good distraction for her, but she can barely stay awake at the end of the day.  She has also been going on walks with friends so I think that is helping to both get her out, but also take a lot of her energy away.

We did watch Christina Applegate on Oprah today.  Yes, I watched Oprah.  It was good for her to see Christina Applegate and her diagnosis.  They are very similar in age and diagnosis as well as surgery and timing.  I don’t think we learned anything new but I could see my wife breath just a sigh of relief.  It is the sigh of knowing that she has more people like her.  She is not alone and not left wondering why her as opposed to someone else.

It is still hard to leave her alone.  As someone recently said to me, men just want to fix things.  I do.  I want to make her feel better.  Traveling again for work is difficult to do.  Leaving her and not being close to help is so hard.  It is good though to get immersed in work again for one week (before next week’s oncologist appointment). 

At dinner though our son did ask us about the other mother of a classmate in his school who died of breast cancer.  We had to remind him that her case was different and that there are all kinds of situations.  He was also under the impression she passed after visiting the hospital again.  This explains a little why he is worried each time we go to the hospital.  Hopefully he understands a little better now.   It is best to remind our children to ask us every time they have a new question.

As a funny aside, today I met Kathy Ireland!  Wow, pretty amazing.  I was speaking at a Social Media Marketing Sunmmit and walked in to the Speakers Area before the conference and there she was.  it was like the episode od Friends where Chandler gets caught in a banking vestibule with Jill Goodacre.  Kathy even knew my name which left me feeling like I was 15 again.  My wife had a good laugh when I Tweeted her and told her I was sitting next to Kathy Ireland.  She knew at least it was relieving the tension of giving my speech.  It went well by the way.