A flashing life

That old saying about when you are on the verge of death your life flashes before your eyes.  Although I am not yet there, but in the process of dying (unless science changes in the next several years), it will be a long slow process.  On Thanksgiving I took out my charm bracelet to wear for the day, to remind me of the life I've lived, good and bad, and think about it all.  The bracelet came from one grandmother and several of the charms from the other.  The dog to show my love of animals.  The schoolhouse representing my love of learning and reading.  The figure skates for all the years I spent as a rink rat.  The piano for the years I spent playing and my love of music.  There is nothing for gymnastics but it was a shorter period of my life, but no less important.  My scales of justice representing my love of law and the practice of it.  The best highs of my life will always be times spent in courtroom battle, the experiences needed so I could get to the win.  My baby boy charm representing my son's birth and the demise of my first marriage, the difficulty in even convincing my ex-husband to purchase the charm for me on mother's day after my son's birth.  A sad time in my life.  A vintage puffy heart from my second husband representing true love, my soul mate, someone who brought joy and laughter back into my life at a time I thought it wasn't possible and perhaps would never find it again.  The Eiffel Tower representing our love of travel and everything French.  Although I dislike flying, it is a necessary evil of modern society to achieve my goal of getting to Europe and other places.  How I wish I was healthy enough to return to China, to see Hong Kong harbor at night again, to see Shanghai, Beijing and more. Now I just focus on making the most of time I have left and traveling when I have the energy to do it.

A lighter driving foot

Having cancer doesn't necessarily make one loose weight, especially with steroids in the mix, but it does change other aspects of who we are.  Since I was age 17 and driving, I always had the family heredity lead-foot meaning I like to drive fast.  Always preferred driving sports cars, especially manual transmission and will always treasure my memories of driving cross-country in my 3.2 litre six cylinder car with the stick, Ford Probe, with the liquid crystal display dash.  Still love cars, but now don't drive much anymore, especially on a chemo week.  It requires too much energy and focus.  But I do notice that when I do drive it is much slower, and much less aggressively.  The lead-foot has disappeared with the BRCA gene showing up.  Oh well.

Can't they find a cure that involves chocolate?

For several days this week I was craving chocolate layer cake.  Of course that craving got satisfied.  But got me to thinking that when the researchers do find a cure some year, it absolutely must include large quantities of chocolate, especially chocolate cake. Luxurious, smooth chocolate cake with chocolate icing.  It doesn't need to have flowers on it or anything special, just nice dark chocolate.  

killing me slower

Keep thinking about the Roberta Flack song "killing me softly" .  Can't say that cancer is killing me softly in any way, but it will kill me eventually.  On the current drugs, it is just killing me slower, like the doctor said this week, instead of cruising down the highway at 80, it is now going 5mph in my driveway.  Depressing but true.

the sisterhood of the traveling scarf spreads across the world

Having started spreading happy and color through my scarves here in NJ, the sisterhood is continuing to spread across the world. As my son says, I have friends all over the world. Sometimes I don't realize it, but it is true. So scarves will be going through NJ, to NY, are already in Arizona and California with more to go there. To Texas and Florida. To France, to Finland, to Hong Kong, it is really quite subversive, to know that scarves are being worn all over the world that I have made, due to cancer, but still spreading positive energy, spreading happy and color, spreading good works wherever those scarves and women go. D. asked me how many scarves I had made. I was thinking about 30, but now, after counting the number is closer to 50 and keeps growing. An umbrella of color and scarves across the world.

the wildness of hair

I spent so many years trying to tame my hair, style to look professional, blow it, iron it, clip it, tie it, always a battle but still knowing that I was lucky to have thick beautiful hair, lion hair as my husband called it. Like every woman who is told they have cancer I cried about my hair, cried when I cut it off, mourned it, bought a wig and expected it to fall out. As we know now, mine thinned but never fell out completely, waiting for me like a tease, teasing me about what it was and what it would be again if I lived long enough. Now, it keeps growing and keeps trying to fill in and it is wilder then ever, not really curly in the way it used to be when I was younger the beautiful soft healthy curls, but it is grey and wild, in a way that seems it can't be tamed, when I try to straighten it, it refuses to cooperate as if to say I've had enough, give it up and let me be, let me be free as I have suffered to through your illness. Forget taming me, like you can forget taming cancer, it can't be done. So I let it be wild and free, with a little hair spray and it is what it is, like me.

Still living by the numbers

numbers - was always not very good at math thanks to a form of dyslexia which caused me to reverse numbers and wasn't diagnosed until I was 30. Once I realized the problem I found ways to work around it and wasn't so afraid of math and numbers anymore but know I can't think numbers when I am tired or distracted, but love numbers to break things down, to really present things in a way that matters. So here are today's numbers: 29 - my CA 125 - at 29 back in normal range again after five treatments, pretty amazing. 24 - how many chemotherapy treatments I have had during the last 18 months 58 - how many times they have stuck me (through the power port) for blood, chemo, ct scans and so on. Thank goodness for the port so I don't look like a junkie with track marks in my arms and collapsed veins. 3 - haircuts since diagnosis. 1 to cut my hair off thinking it would fall out and 2 to shape it while it grows back 0 - times I have colored my hair since this odyssey began 31 - that is the median number of months for overall survival of stage 3c ovarian cancer. at 18 months I am well past half way, but not really believing that I could be dead in 12 or 13 months. that doesn't seem real to me since I look good (as everyone tells me) and I feel reasonably well in spite of exhaustion etc. 20 the number of years I practiced law until diagnosis but that is finished now, over and done. maintaining my licenses but definitely too sick to work.
50 the number of scarves i have made since diagnosis.
3 the number of blankets I have made since diagnosis.
4 the number of needlepoint pillows I have made since diagnosis.
will have to come up with some new numbers soon as these evolve and change.