Juno's Dad Sums Up Love

"Look, in my opinion the best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what-have-you. The right person is still going to think the sun shines out of your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with."__Juno's dad, Mr. MacGuff

Changed

It's been a year since my last post.

Lots of change.

Ocho and I broke up last August. The breakup actually started the prior summer in 2007, a month after my first reconstruction. I was headed to the beach with the kids and called Ocho to see if he wanted to go surfing with us. He couldn't as his old girlfriend was coming over. They were hoping to find closure... It took me 12 more months to realize that his feelings for me had changed and that he didn't know how to end the relationship. We broke up in August 2008.

I miss Ocho. He was there for me in a significant way during my cancer year, for which I'll always be grateful. It was actually a magnificent year. Life was magnified; rich with meaning and full of love. Ocho would tell me over eggs and toast on foggy Saturday mornings why he loved me.

I had my second reconstruction in October 2008. The day after I got fired from my job. The reconstruction, done by a great surgeon in San Francisco, Loren Eskenazi, looks amazing. But the right side developed a low-grade infection that caused the stitches to pop open four separate times, requiring four mini-surgeries. In January of this year, my surgeon decided to redo the right side. It's been good since.

One last surgery: hysterectomy this past July, due to some funky side effeccts of Tamoxifen. That surgery was a piece of cake. Great surgeon from Portola Valley. I had a total laproscopic hysterectomy on a Tuesday. By Sunday I was digging up a tree root in my front yard.

2009 has also been full of good change.

I landed a new job in February, and I love it. The work is meaningful, the people are genuine, the atmosphere is fun, and my boss makes me feel valued. I feel blessed.

I've also immersed myself in AA: discovering the power of prayer and service. I'm still the same girl, full of the same fears and character flaws, but I have a new peace.

Love? I am happy to hold out for that person who just totally wags my tail. I've come close. But I want closer.

The past 12 months, I've hurt, I've healed, I've learned. Have I changed? Yes and no, but the point no longer is to become something different. The point is to go down the road with as much hope and grace and love as I can hold.

My love goes out to Jenni Ballantyne at www.thecomfyplace.blogspot.com. She recently entered hospice. And she still sees the good in the world.

Send Miss Katie, aka KT from www.ktscoop.blogspot.com, your e-love. She, too, is in hospice and loves connecting with friends. She is one totally good egg.

change

Ocho's out surfing.

I'm on his soft couch, my smelly dog by my side, looking at the fog.

This is beginning to sound like a haiku.

So, its July 4th, and I have the day off work. But instead of feeling a sense of freedom, I'm feeling a sense of ennui creep in. Like the heavy fog. Falling on wet leaves. Sitting there. Blankly.

Christ. I need a change.

Which was one of the topics of the political discussion I had last night with my brother and his wife, my Mom and my Dad: change.

My Dad an I often disagree on political topics. But on this topic, we are united: Change for change's sake is meaningless unless you know what it is you want to change, why you want to change it, how you're going to change it, and if the change makes sense.

So, for me to just say I need a change means nothing. What do I want to change, and why and how?

I love my life, actually. I have great kids. I have a partner who loves. me. I have friends who make me laugh and think. I have challenging, meaningful work. I have my evolving, growing faith. I'm happy. So why do I feel this new heaviness inside?

I think it's because I am weary. Weary of cancer. Weary of constantly thinking about it and its effects. So while I am honored to support my friends who have or who had cancer, and while I will continue to need their support in return, I need to redefine myself as something other than a previous cancer patient.

I was talking about this to my friend, Church. And she gave me some wise advice. I don't have her email available, so I won't be able to quote her directly, but she essentially told me that it's ok to move on from the healing part of my life and to move into the living part of my life. I'll never be who I was before cancer, and cancer will continue to change me in unexpected ways..

The title of this blog is "Reconstruct This..." But I'd like to think that at two years post-diagnosis that I've been reconstructed enough. Externally and internally.

So, I've decided that I'll continue to focus on cancer on Reconstruct This... until November. Then, if I decide it makes sense to continue the blog, I'll rename it and write about the whole of my life. That is, if the whole of my life proves to be interesting enough to share with the world. And if you've been reading for the past year, you know that my life's plenty titillating. That is if you like reading about the purple mums I planted or the purple fleece cancer hat I lost in Santa Cruz.

When Ocho and I first started dating, I sent him a text. He responded about half an hour later with this: Change is good... Change is good...

Change--moving from healing into living--sounds liberating to me on this foggy Fourth of July.

Chemo Curls

Enough said. Actually, if you have a minute, I have a short story (honest) about my hair.

Ocho, I, my brother and his cute wife went to the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss concert at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley last night. We had to park far away, and the air was smoky (from all the NorCal fires) and foggy. So foggy, in fact, that it was misting. After about three minutes, you could see my hair curling. Like slow-motion photography of a tender little shoot pushing through the earth and growing into a plant. Only faster. And curlier. By the time we got to the Greek, I was Linc (see Totally Mod).

Fortunately, Ocho thought it was cute. Yet another reason to love him.

The concert last night was stunningly beautiful. As I sat there in the dense fog, listening to the improbable but perfect duo of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant, feeling my hair curling and twisting, I felt a peace settle on me and sink into my soul.



PS: To my big sis: Jannie, doesn't my hair like this remind you of when I was in sixth grade--minus the wire-rimmed John Denver glasses?

Mothers with Cancer

I recently was asked to be part of a new blog called Mothers with Cancer. These women know how to deal with adversity with that perfect blend of intelligence, compassion, spunk and bite that just wags my tail!



Go read what these 17 women have to say, including the creator of the site, the brilliant Susan (really, she's a NASA scientist), who also blogs at Toddler Planet.

Another of the 17 is Andrea of Punk Rock Mommy. This articulate, feisty mom of six was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer the day after she got her college degree. She's fighting the good fight, but she needs love and prayers now. Send yours her way, if you would.

Also read Jenni Ballantyne of The Comfy Place. She's just gorgeous. Inside and out.

Heck, take the rest of the day off and read them all. They're all truly amazing.

Love to you.

Succulent

Ocho and I drove to the City this afternoon, hoping to get into the Dale Chihuly exhibit at the De Young. It was sold out. So instead we ambled through Golden Gate Park and into the botanical garden cactus sale, where Ocho bought seven vibrant green succulents.

The stress of selecting only seven of those luscious plants must have exhausted the guy, because it’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday night and Ocho’s in bed sleeping like a rugby player.

No worries. That means I can stay up late and write about a topic that is difficult to write about—my changing body.

I was extraordinarily proud of myself after going through chemo without gaining a pound. In fact, looking back, that was a sweet time. I was flat, and I was bald. But I was loved. And I knew I wasn’t always going to be flat and bald. Those were temporary experiences.

Then I went through 28 sessions of radiation. I would arrive at the Dorothy B. Schneider Cancer Center at 8 a.m., have Tony or Wayne radiate me, apply anti-burn gel to my radiated side, and go to work. Other than getting a rockin’ good burn, the whole thing was not horrible, just fatiguing. About halfway through, I found myself falling asleep at 8 p.m. every night after work.

In the six months between radiation and reconstruction I gained 18 pounds.

I quit drinking. I buy healthy, organic foods. I eat more vegetables and fiber. I avoid the Red Vines at work. I go to 5:30 a.m. spin classes. I ride my mountain bike up, well, mountains. I do my own yard work and home repairs. One would think I would have lost those 18 pounds. The digital scale says I’ve lost three.

I put on a pair of pants for work the other day. The black capris, to my horror, looked like leggings. So, I took off the leggings and put on a skirt, the one that used to ride loosely on my hips and that now cuts deeply into my gut.

Nora Ephron wrote a great book, called “I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman.” It helped. But only a little. It may have helped more if the title had been, "I Feel Bad about My Gut: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman."

Here’s what—finally—has helped me: a sentence in an article on post-chemo weight gain on the American Cancer Society website.

Dr. Wendy Demark-Wahnefried, RD, an associate research professor at Duke University Medical Center said, “It’s not necessarily the weight gain, but the change in body composition that is worrisome.” The change in body composition is characteristic of the normal aging process. “If you look at these women in the year after diagnosis, the chemotherapy patient ages 10 years over the course of a year. Although you might think a change in body fat of 2% is not much, indeed it is. The time clock is sped up.”

Finally. Validation.

I thought it was the Tamoxifen, but my oncologist and others say that Tamoxifen does not cause weight gain. That made me a little crazy. And a little pissed off. It helps to know that chemo and chemo-induced menopause can cause dramatic changes in your body. It helps to know that chemo takes the pause out of menopause. This was no gradual menopause; this was the entire process, which usually takes 10 years, in one year.

So here’s the new plan, and it’s a simple one: I’m going to work out more and eat less. I’m going to give losing this 15 pounds extraordinary effort. And in the meantime, I’m going to try to love this new, succulent body.

Here.

I’ve been gone. I took a break from my blog to tend to my kids, my job, my man, my house, my health, my spirit.

I’ve also been tending to my sobriety.

I quit drinking five months ago. Not a long time in recovery circles, but long enough to know that this has been a life-changing decision for me.

On December 23, I came home from work. I opened a bottle of chardonnay and poured a glass while I cooked dinner. Such a civil way to end the day, to take the edge off. I stirred the spaghetti sauce and poured another glass.

An hour later, I went out to the garage to put the empty green wine bottle in the recycling bin with the other empty green wine bottles.

There have been times in my life when I took my recycling down to The Recyclery so that my empty green wine bottles wouldn’t be exposed out there in the bin on the curb, clearly visible to my neighbors. Fourteen wine bottles in the recycling bin looks like you had a party. Unless you have fourteen wine bottles in your recycling bin every two weeks.

I’ve played my cancer card exactly once: to get out of a ticket for not wearing a seat belt ("Sorry officer, I just had reconstruction and it hurts," I lied.) But I don’t intend to use it to explain the alarming increase in my alcohol use. Yes, I went through a debilitating depression last Fall after my reconstruction. But my drinking had been progressing way before then.

I quit for these reasons:

I quit because I was drinking too much.

I quit because I discovered that moderation was not an option for me.

I quit because chemo threw me into complete menopause in 12 months, causing me to gain 20 pounds, upon which working out like a triathlete has had little effect.

But the main reason I quit was because of a conversation I had with my 15-year-old son about drinking and driving. “Mom, don’t you think it’s kind of ironic that you’re telling me to not drink and drive when you had two glasses of wine at home, you’re drinking a beer here at Jersey Joe’s, and then you’re going to get in the van and drive us both home?”

At that moment, I knew I was going to quit drinking. It took another couple of weeks. But on Christmas Eve, I walked into my first AA meeting.

It actually feels amazingly good and freeing to not drink. I find that keeping things simple works. I find that a ride on my mountain bike with Ocho works. I find that a steaming bowl of chicken and vegetables over rice works. I find that music works. I find that being here for my kids works. I find that God works. But keeping things simple is not simple for me. I’ve actually had to check out so I could check back in; I’ve had to focus on only the most essential priorities.

So, I’ve been gone. But I’ve been here. Where I intend to stay.