Laura's Landing Place

I've been dropping my DNA all over town, little bits of me separated away, strand by strand. It began with just a few, and has become handfuls of hair, so that now I have to wear it tied up to keep from leaving a trail everywhere I go.  My formerly substantial ponytail has dwindled to less than half its original diameter. The hair that still remains gets sparser by the day, and I'm at the point now that it's time to just cut it off. I'm ready. I have an appointment to get that done this week. I remind myself that with each strand of hair that I lose, I get closer to finishing this treatment and closer to well. It's all part of the trip down into the tunnel.  I haven't reached the deepest part yet, but I can tell you the descent has been getting steeper lately. So many changes with this body of mine.... nothing unmanageable, just uncomfortable - stuffy nose, sensitive gums, hoarseness of voice, low appetite, stomach pains, easily winded, head fog, intense fat...

When I learned that my cancer needed chemotherapy, I came to it with very strong ideas about how things were going to be: I will continue to work.  I will not allow this to dominate conversation. I will not feel sorry for myself. I will not complain. I will make sure my son and daughter are solid in their assurance that I'm fine and that I will be better than ever afterwards. And all that is well and good, except it didn't leave any wiggle room, it was too rigid. I realize now that I need more of a sliding scale, if for no other reason than to mitigate the guilt I feel when I'm not functioning at 100% and it affects others.  But I guess the biggest reason is that I need to acknowledge that this is a very unpredictable animal and I need to be prepared for that.  Because it doesn't matter how much research I do, or talking to others who've been through it, or having lived through it when it was my Dad - nothing could adequately prepare me to be in the center of this e...

It has finally sunk in that this process is going to take awhile.  In that mindset, it becomes even more important to make sure to have things to look forward to, to be careful not to put life on hold as much as I can help it. So, I already got myself a birthday present for NEXT August! Big Billy Joel fan I am. And he's coming to Boston the week after my birthday. Who was online one minute after the opening of ticket sales began? ME ME ME! It's the kind of splurge I'd not normally do.  I felt a little guilty about it. We got floor seats. 15th row. Center. Oopsie. Must have been my fat finger making a little mistake. Too late to fix it now. Go big or don't go, right? Other than Billy Joel, it's been an eventful week. I met the reconstructive surgeon who will put me back together after I say bye-bye to the boob. I went back to work (part time for now). I was accepted into the Livestrong Project at the YMCA. I had a wig fitting. And yesterday I had a port implante...

Hello! I want to say THANK YOU to all of you who have sent supportive messages to my husband and me. I do read them all. I'm very lucky to have the support that I do . I know that just about everyone has someone special to them who has experienced cancer, and some of you have experienced it personally. I watched my Dad die of lymphoma 16 years ago - absolutely heartbreaking.  But the way I see it, mine is not a sad story. My cancer is in a part of my body that is not a vital organ. These breasts did their job and fed my two kids and they're done now. At this point they're just ornamental. I have no emotional attachment to either one. It's like a relationship gone bad, time to cut it loose and don't look back. I feel absolutely certain that I will be cured once all this is done. And I will go on with my life like normal. I will someday be a Grandmother (the cool one), I will retire to someplace warm with Husband (yes, he knows), and we will live happily ever aft...

Hello! Welcome to my online living room, where I'll come to put my feet up and write about.... write about... write about - wow, I just discovered I don't even want to type the word. It's such a harsh sounding word. Cancer. An ugly word. When I see it written, I imagine it as a moving, growing, hideous looking organism. And I'm gonna kill it dead.  Not the other way around. I'm learning as I go. And I've learned that I need to put my energy into ME, and not worry about keeping up with phone calls and texts and visits and providing updates on demand. This is my solution. If those close to me would like to know where I'm at with this thing, here ya go! And it goes both ways - I write when I feel like it, and you read when/if you feel like it. Win win! Tomorrow is my first chemotherapy treatment.  I'll have it once a week for 12 weeks with the hard stuff, then it'll taper to once every 3 weeks for awhile. But I'm getting ahead.... and how in...