Ocean or Mountains?

Which one do you prefer?  Which one rejuvenates you - replenishes your soul?

I ask because the answer is often not what I presumed.

I live on the coast.  I love it.  I can sit in the sand or in my car and watch the waves break for hours while I ponder God's awesome power, the immensity of the universe and my place in it.  The ocean fills me with wonder.  I revel in it's ever-changing beauty.  No two waves are alike.  No two sunsets the same color.  Foam patterns on the beach are different with each receding wave.  I meditate on infinite possibility. 

But it's the mountains that heal me. There's just something about being surrounded by trees that fills me with a serenity I cannot tap into elsewhere.

The sound of a creek waters flowing over rocks and swirling around a sandbar is soothing music to my ears.

I spent the day in the mountains yesterday.  I just drove by myself for five hours.  The higher the altitude became the lighter I felt.

I stopped by Burney Falls.  It was cold and damp from the mist and the late afternoon shadows.  But the smell was beyond Heavenly.  Pine.  Moss.  Damp earth.  Deep cleansing breaths.

Little traffic.  Fading sunlight.  Trees straight and tall on all sides.  Majesty above them.

Peace.  Completeness.  Inspiration.  Quiet.  Solitude.  Wellness.  Integrity.

All these words and more define the mountains for me.

I came home refreshed and ready for another round of parenting, working, struggling to survive. 

Which gives you that renewal?  Ocean or Mountains?

I love being right!!!

Pardon me while I gloat...  I do so love to be right. 

I've been telling all my Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) friends and myself that the current survival statistics don't apply to us (those diagnosed since 2001).  Why?  Well because back in the day the doctors used to treat IBC just like every other breast cancer out there instead of the nasty variety it really is.  Typical treatment used to be diagnosis, mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation.  All of this followed relatively quickly by recurrence.  Lovely. 

According to the National Cancer Institute, women diagnosed with IBC between 1998-2001had a 5-year relative survival rate of 40% (it used to be 25%!) compared to roughly 87% for other breast cancers.  But that was before neoadjuvant chemotherapy.  Neoadjuvant is chemo given before surgery.  This type of treatment makes all the difference in the world to an IBC patient! 

Inflammatory breast cancer's symptoms, which are listed below, cause the breast to grow really large, really quickly.  In my own experience my affected breast grew to near double the size of the other (which was no small size to begin with) within about 2 months time.  Also, it's quite the non-specific cancer cell - more of a general inflammation not an actual tumor.  All this makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to get clean borders during a mastectomy.  So the nasty little cells would come back to visit quickly and were not please about being uncerimoniously evicted in the first place.

Here are general symptoms of IBC:

• A breast that appears discolored (red, purple, pink or bruised);
• A tender, firm and enlarged breast (sometimes overnight);
• A warm feeling in the breast (or may feel hot/warm to the touch);
• Persistent itching of the breast (not relieved with cream or salve);
• Shooting or stabbing pain;
• Ridged or dimpled skin texture, similar to an orange peel;
• Thickened areas of breast tissue;
• Enlarged lymph nodes under the arm, above/below the collarbone;
• Flattening or retraction of the nipple;
• Swollen or crusted skin on the nipple;
• Change in color of the skin around the nipple (areola)

If you want a great visual go to Lemonland.

Good thing for us IBC patients that neoadjuvant treatment is the new and improved way of doing business because it has increased our 5 year survival rate.  This is where me being right comes in.  According to the Mayo Clinic neoadjuvant therapy combined with surgery, radiation and more chemotherapy has increased IBC survival to 50% at the five year mark.  Best of all, nearly 1/3 are alive 20 years after diagnosis!!!
Plus, general breast cancer mortality has dropped 2% a year since 1990. 

We are making strides, folks!!!  Large strides! 

I intend to be here twenty years from now, beating the internet-at-large about the head and neck until each and every one out there knows about Inflammatory Breast Cancer and why it's so insidious.  Or... until it's completely wiped out, which ever comes first!

Cross-posted to Mothers with Cancer

Danny's Song

Danny had a substitute aide at preschool last week.  Her name was Carrie, I think.  She certainly made an impression on him in that single day!  He talks about her all the time. 

When I dropped him off at preschool today his teacher gave me a piece of paper with notes that Carrie had taken while talking to my little man.  She titled it Danny's Song.  I should really take a cue from her and compile his ramblings on paper, too, lest they be lost forever. 

Here for your enjoyment and insight, I give you Danny's Song.

(While sitting on the couch in class)

I'm sitting on a sofa Sunday afternoon.

When the music is playing

That is why we are clapping

Because we love the music.

I just want to be where it sounds good.

Pickles are good for me.

They are good brain food.

I just caught one fish!

I want to get under the table

so I won't see you.

DREAMS

They are just good stuff.

They talk about happy things.

I like to think about dreams

It makes them come true.

My cross to bear...

Dr. Wendy Harpham of On Healthy Survivorship poses a great question to cancer survivors last week.  She wants to know which stage of cancer was the most challenging?  Diagnosis?  Beginning treatment?  Ending treatment?  Some time in the middle? 

For Dr. Harpham it was those limbo days between initial diagnosis and treatment beginning.  I know what she means.  For me, it seemed an exceptionally long time.  I was diagnosed on December 22, 2005 - the Thursday just before Christmas.  Most every healthcare professional was heading out of town.  Certainly no one wanted to take on a new patient over the holidays.  Consequently, I didn't meet with my new Oncologist until January 3, 2006 and began chemo the next day. 

Those 13 days were beyond horrible.  There was a cancer inside me thriving at my expense.  It seemed to grow bigger every day!  I could feel it.  I swear, I could hear it whisper dark promises of an early death and motherless children.

What bittersweet Holidays that year.  Daddy-O and I had agreed not to tell anyone about my diagnosis until after New Year's.  Why ruin everyone's Christmas?  The end result, however, was a great burden on our hearts that we couldn't share with our friends and family.  Each seasonal tradition was painful beyond belief.  Who would search with loving dedication for just the right gift from Santa?  Who would listen to their babbling, aimless words and sift from them their heart's desire?  Would I ever read The Night Before Christmas to my little boys again?  Would I ever see their eyes alight with the wonder that is Christmas morning ever again? 

The day I began chemotherapy was the. best. day. of the next 10 months.  No more being hostage to fate!  No more victim!  At last I was fighting back! 

Still, I don't think that was the most trying time for me...  My toughest day was the day I truly started losing my hair and made the decision to shave the rest off.  Until that day I had not really felt ill despite my first round of chemo.  Until that day cancer had seemed vague and ephemeral; death had been theoretical. 

Roughly two weeks after my first chemotherapy treatment my hair began coming loose from my scalp.  Initially, it was funny.  It's really the strangest thing.  It doesn't fall out all over the place.  I didn't wake up with a scalp on my pillow.  All the hairs still look firmly attached but they're not.  It's like they're all held on with Post-It glue.  One little tug and it comes away in your fingers without so much as a "pip" to indicate the separation.  It's kind of amusing in a hey-look-at-my-cool-new-party-trick sort of way.  A couple of mornings later and it's not so funny anymore.  I won't bore you with the details again. 

Losing my hair took me out of the closet.  I became a walking Poster Girl for chemotherapy.  Every time I looked in the mirror I was confronted with my mortality.  The baldness literally stripped me bare.  I couldn't walk through the store without drawing stares.  My son would beg me to take off my hat to show his friends my bald head. 

With my hair went my vanity, my anonimity and my delusion that I would live forever.  Looking back I feel very, very blessed.

Cross-posted to Mothers with Cancer.

Semantics

It has been a momentus week so far.  Yesterday I finally reached the end of my third year of Cancer Freedom!  That's just an awkward way of saying it's been three years since I finished treatment for Inflammatory Breast Cancer.  Today I had my Well-Check with my Oncologist and was given a Clean Bill of Health.  Bloodwork results are normal.  My overall health is normal.  I am hideously normal - probably the only one in my family that is - and couldn't be happier about it!!!

These checkup visits are becoming rather mundane these days.  Dr. Villa walks into the exam room.  We hug.  She gives me my lab results before we even sit down just to get it out of the way.  Then she asks after the kids and Daddy-O before we get on to how I've been feeling.  Ultimately, we always manage to fit in some sort of small philosophical discussion in.  Today's topic was Remission.

This word has been bothering me for quite a while now.  Every time I read WhyMommy's posts on Mothers With Cancer or Toddler Planet I cringe at the mention of her being in "remission".  I've asked WhyMommy before why it is she refers to herself that way.  Wouldn't you know it...  It's because that's what her doctor told her. 

Here is my problem with remission - it sounds like a temporary state of affairs.  Remission makes me feel like the other shoe could drop at any moment.  It feels like a close cousin to that other re word - recurrence.
So I brought up WhyMommy and her annoying status of "in remission".  Turns out I am "in remission", too!
And here I thought I was "cancer-free."  Surprise! Surprise!  And not the good kind either.

After a moment or two of discussion I realized that it all comes down to semantics.

Dr. Villa glanced at me out of the corner of her eye, head cocked to the side.  "You don't think you're cured, do you?"

Uh... not anymore...  Actually, I've never thought I was.  I've always referred to myself as Cancer-Free and didn't delve any deeper than that.  Turns out that no doctor (the "worth their salt" was implied) would ever mention cured until the 5 year mark.  Yeah.  I knew that.

So, just to be clear, here is the definition of Remission as taken straight from Dictionary.com.

Medicine/Medical.

a.	a temporary or permanent decrease or subsidence of manifestations of a disease.

b.	a period during which such a decrease or subsidence occurs: The patient's leukemia was in remission.

Note: The term remission is often used in speaking of sufferers from leukemia or other cancers whose symptoms lessen or disappear. In such a case, the disease is said to be “in remission.” The period of remission may last only briefly or may extend over several months or years.

 I still think it sounds pretty ominous to me!  But I guess I'll forgive all doctors in general - just this once.

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In other completely unrelated news, Ben sent his first love letter over the weekend.  Via email.  (It's the wave of the future, folks.  I hear it's really catching on!) 

He is only nine. years. old!  We're talking about a single digit age!  Sheesh!  I thought I had at least another year or two. 

At the risk of completely alienating him in the future, I am sharing his email with you because I am so touched by the damned sweetness of the whole thing.  And also the horror!

''Hay Olivia,don't tell anybody this it's a seacret'',Ok here i go ''i LOVE YOU Olivia''.

Plus, did you notice there were not boxes to check?  No question of reciprocation?  Just a lot of putting himself out there like that.  Wow! Times sure have changed since I was a kid!