About twenty minutes later we ended our afternoon and drove home. On the way, just around a blind curve, a little Yorky puppy stood in the middle of the road. We pulled over,  popped him in the back seat, made a pretty extensive seach of the surrounding neighborhood and found no clue to who the owners were. The dog had a purple harness but no collar or ID. We decided we would keep him overnight and call the MSPCA in the morning. About a quarter of a  mile down the road, we saw a couple walking their dog. I pulled over and asked if they knew this puppy.  “That’s Elvis!” the man said, “his owners are looking for him”. We said good bye to Elvis and to the beautiful gift of a late summer afternoon.

I live for times like these. I think we all do.

On Monday, my sister and I went to a very well know cancer center in Massachusetts. Since I have been dealing with cancer for a year and a half, this place has become a familiar yet fearful building of hope . That was not Mondays visit. Not the hope part.

Notice I didn’t say hope and promise. Because honestly there was never a promise of a cure with the kind of breast cancer I have (triple negative) and I don’t think promise is a word used in any type of treatment. I know as a nurse I never make promises. Well, that’s not really true, I used to promise moms while they were pushing that very soon they would meet their beautiful new baby. I promised.

My cancer made a promise. In looking up the definition of the word, it states that a promise is ” a declaration assuring that one will or will not do something”. My cancer fulfilled its promise and came back . It did something. It did something I wish it didn’t do.

So most of this week has been spent on the computer making decisions about further treatment to outsmart this unwanted visiter that has again taken up residence in my body. My search and resource team ( best friends and sister) have been checking out everything in both camps medical and holistic. As most people know, I am more holisitcally minded and since I gave the traditional  stuff a try you can already imagine where I am headed. I talked to a lovely brave women yesterday who made the decision to go with the natural treatment weeks after she brought home a newborn baby. I am with her. She actually wrote a book. The title is  You Did What? by Hollie Quinn. Check it out on Amazon.

 Just yesterday, on a beautiful August morning sitting on the edge while I drained the last of my orgainc Sumatra from a paper cup as my sister flipped frogs out of the pool drain, I decided to switch camps. With both feet in the water, I realized I needed to make a decision. I couldn’t be in two camps anymore. I choose life in the most healthy way for my body.

I promise.

My mother always made the biggest deal out of our birthdays (my sister and me) and I miss that. I miss the attention of having one special day of the  year to feel like I was born for a reason. Birthdays are not just for children so as I sit here with my ceramic mug of chilling coffee, I am trying to tap into that old magic that she created. It wasn’t just the birthday day itself, there was a lead-up starting weeks before the actual day. “Who has a birthday coming up in a few weeks?” And on it went until the night before when I would go to bed with excited anticipation. Sometimes I swear I would hear a choir of angels singing happy birthday in the thick fog of my brain in between the seconds of slumber and awake.

I loved that my birthday was just weeks before Christmas, that I shared the same birthday month as Jesus. I loved that this day would expand into the holiday season of people really trying to be of good cheer. It might snow on this day, there would be silver or colorful lights strung around the city.  Candles will light up and warm the facade of house fronts. My favorite tunes on the radio might be interrupted by a Christmas song. As I sit here writing this, Aimee Mann is on the radio singing a scratchy rendition of  River. It’s not really about Christmas and as I listen more closely it takes a moment to realize that she is trying to escape. “I wish I had a river so wide I could teach my feet to fly”. Credit to Joni Mitchell of course.

But we can’t escape. I can’t escape the loss of my beloved son. I couldn’t skate away from the same cancer that took my mother even in her resilient optimism. I have the scar that runs literally parallel to my heart down to the bone.

Today I pray to remember my blessings which are many. The pure unselfish love of family and friends. I hope to laugh. Last night I danced.

I didn’t hear the angels singing this morning before I woke but I feel the residual magic of birthdays past and although this day may be for me, my intention is to give back to others all I have received this year in any way that I can.

Thanks mom.

It seems we spend a lot of time either wishing things would start or be over. Some moms are glad that school is starting and can’t wait for that. I am counting the days until radiation is over (6 more) and then I get to begin a different phase in my life. I don’t really know how to do that. Once again I find myself  in uncharted waters. After losing Noah, I had to adjust to a completely different life. I couldn’t imagine waking up breathing with him gone.  Now that its been four years I can’t say it’s any easier it’s just different. He is still on my mind so much of the day and night. Especially since I have been home for eight months treating cancer and recovering from the chemical assault on my body.  Some people have success picturing lemonade or little white angels in their chemo drip, I wasn’t good with that visualization. It just felt really toxic.  Somehow I had to surrender to the process and try to see it in a postitive and healing way. I have made a decision to do that. I have the healing CD’s, Yoga, a much better diet and a less stressful daily routine. I am trying to stay positive and have promised my family and all of my amazing friends that I will give life another chance. I will take all the unknown again and start over.  But can I just say what the f*&#k?? Ok I said it.

I don’t really talk about my faith that much. I think that’s private and it usually gets me in trouble. Even with some of my favorite oldest friends. But I can say with conviction that although it has changed and molded and melded through the years, it’s what get’s me through. I almost don’t want to even be writing this because it sounds so cliche’ however, it’s true. God knows.

So next week I will look forward to an ending (radiation and cancer treatment) and a beginning ; the rest of my life.

First of all, radiation is right out of Star Wars with the big metal machine that circulates overhead and clicks and slowly twists around. But the really radical part is the perfect beams of red light that swoop across the ceiling and somehow find their trajectory onto the permanent black “tatoo” on your body. Mine is in the supraclavicular junction. I hope they are hitting it right on. Lots of math and degrees involved.

Life goes on. I was supposed to be orienting my way back around the recovery room but it was so busy, I was thrown to the wolves. Functioning right back at the level I left without missing a beat. Like riding a bike someone said but it felt more like a big wheel racing down a cement hill with no brakes. Most of it was ok and familiar and the other nurses are very helpful; so with cap over wig I took my position and did my old familiar job.

Now the weekend is here and my grandaughter is visiting. She’s eleven with a sweet go with the flow disposition and a good strong sense of herself. She is perfectly chunky beautiful with almond eyes (no she’s not asian) and a giggle that makes my troubles disappear. Today we are going out for a sail. Way out into Nantucket sound. We will tack and turn our course on the wavy sea to a place of blue skies with puffy clouds and a straight beam reach to peace in the heart and soul. That’s what it does out there, takes your thoughts and transforms them into a place of no worries. Just a saliboat on the slapping spraying ocean taking us where we direct it.

This is a mini cancer update because as promised I chose to deal with this quietly. My grief blog did not morph into a cancer blog although now the two are intertwined in my life.

The Readers Digest version takes me from my first chemo (which was a triple whammy cocktail that landed me in the hospital for ten days where I seriously thought I may not make it) to the decision to change oncologists and head to Dana Farber.  Now it is decided that chemo must be interrupted and surgery to get the cancer out should be top priority. A piece of medical advice that threw several docs into a tizzy such as my breast surgeon who thought we had this on hold for a couple of months. It was difficult for me to not feel like a failed science experiment with nobody really in charge. It’s ok leave it to me..I’ll make all the decisions and eventually have my personal assistant get back to you. No one was on the same page and at one point (swear to God) my surgeon had me calling this random plastics guy to book him for whatever day they were choosing my mastectomy. So it went something like this. Ring…”hello dr plastics office”  me…” hi I’m not a patient, have never actually seen dr plastics but I was wondering if I could get him to show up to put an implant in my carved out breast umm say next Wednesday or perhaps the Tuesday after? ” Honestly that happenned. They left that up to ME!..So the receptionist who was just as kind as could be says ” oh , well yes, dr plastics does know your surgeon so if you let us know the date he will be there.”  Really? He has nothing else booked? He’s just that available?Scary. “But he would like a quick visit with you  first if there is time.”  So that didn’t happen. No time after all. So I just showed up on the surgery date and they sliced and lopped and did whatever else they do when you are somewhere under deep ansthesia.

The third peice is boring cocktails of chemo that turned my entire alimentary tract into essentially one large chancre sore from stem to stern if you get the picture. I felt like a skinny hairless alien commited to a jello factory with tri-colored sherbert on the side. Bottles and bottles of drugs lined my once pristine medicine cabinet offering little or no relief. Well meaning friends brought buckets of chicken soup which I will never touch again.

So before this gets too dreary, I will spare the rest of the very gorey details and say that one more chemo in this interminable process and I will be done with the chemicals (I mean the lovely concoctions of healing elixer that are zapping the cancer cells) . Visualization is everthing:)

I will then be on to radiation for six weeks.. (think three mile island meets Hiroshima)..no don’t think that and I promise I won’t either.

Well it was a grief blog to begin with so I guess the theme still applies. The emotion. And I really don’t mean for the sarcasm to come through in my salutation. Well maybe just a little.  I feel like the student in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s class who didn’t get the lesson the first time. There are five stages of the grief process. If you mess up on one you go back to the beginning? I never read that and I was trying really hard to do all the “right ” things. I let it out I think. I talked about the pain of losing Noah, I cried about it, wrote about it, drank about it, and sang it at the top of my lungs! Every painful ballad ever written is on my i-pod and played religiously when I need a hard cry (ask my neighbors about summer nights through the open windows and off my deck) and yet here is another challenge for my battered little psyche.

I don’t feel sorry for myself , I just wonder what I have left to face this battle that lies ahead.  From what I understand so far I have three to four months of chemo followed by a bi-lateral mastectomy and then topped off with ten to twelve weeks of radiation. If there was ever a time for “one day at a time”  this is it..  “Without a noise; without my pride , I reach out from the inside” In your eyes. Peter Gabriel….. “I get so tired working so hard for my survivial: but all my instincts they return.”    Yes, I think I will handle this quietly. Those who know me well are snickering right now. I hear you. I admit, I have never done anything quietly in my entire life. I bust through full throttle loud and talking and completely unabashedly out there. Whether people want to hear it or not.   Why do I do this? I have no idea. My younger sister is very private and finds her peace inside. Her husband had a cancer scare last year and no one knew a hint of  it until six months later.  That’s her, this is me.

I actually started this yesterday and just picked it up cause the day got in the way. So since I lost my momentum and just took a xanax I will put this post to rest. Can’t sleep at all. I’m like a junkie gone cold turkey at night. My brain knows we are in for something different over here. Can’t quiet it down ; tossing turning up down, hot and cold. I read, turn on music shut it off turn off the light, watch tv shut it off, turn my i-pod off and on.  Phone my late night friends. It’s ridiculously comical. If I had one of those sleep cameras right now I would see that I get all of my excercise between midnight and five am. Then I go into a coma. Friends suggest meditation/medication. Can’t hurt.

For now, I’ll keep myself busy today with friends, lots of Starbucks coffee and preparation for the dinner party I decided to throw together for this evening with my ex and a few friends.

Updates will be coming next week. I have no idea what I’m in for.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. It’s a whole new world now in many respects and I find myself pushing along. This week the collective conciousness that fuels the holiday season is reminding me of former traditions in my life. All the transitions and changes have finally caught up to me I think. Most of my escape mechanisms are not workin much. You can’t distract yourself from something that is  heavily acknowledged and in your face. So, today as I was out doing some errands, I stopped by a couple of friends houses. Of course they were baking and getting ready for tomorrow. The atmosphere was light and jovial at both houses and I was pulled into the mood (albeit vicariously) and made a decision. If you can’t beat em….

After Fran’s I went to the fishmarket and bought a treat for my co-workers. I splurged on some really beautiful shrimp cocktail and sauce and after I finish writing, I will make a card to let everyone I work with tomorrow know how thankful I am that they have been my support and comfort during the last three plus years of grief.

On Friday, I will drive to Vermont  and spend the weekend celebrating my delayed day with my real family. My two older grandaughters will be in New Jersey and I will definetly see them before Christmas because they are close

 Norman Rockwell we are not, but my heart still beats and I know who I love. And I am very Thankful.

In the other room as part of mine and Noahs book that I”m writing, are volumes of essays and jounals on Noah’s experience with these events. For a few years he followed the left-over mock Grateful Dead band around the country and back again. It wasn’t pretty. There are many young adults who may disagree; the ones who managed not to get pulled into the “family” of Phish. I’m sure there are those who were able to see these shows for what they were-a good time to get together with friends and get all f’d-up for a few days,return to your college or job, shake it off and go on with life. I actually know some of these people. There are the other ones however who didn’t fare as well “fare thee well” ..the ones who took it all a bit too seriously..the ones who lived as the followers of the band..the ones who drove for days to get there, slept in the mud, beg,borrowed and stole for tickets and drugs, walked around the festival completely gorked on  X and K and MJ and E and all the other alphebetical hallucinogins meant to provide a really good time. Until you fry your brain and forget who your friends are. That’s when it stops being fun. That’s when (as Noah details in his jounals) you lose yourself and wonder why it ever seemed like a good idea in the first place. When your monikor on the Phish website is “gratefulghost” because you’re really not exacly sure that the people you know are the real ones from your past. {We’ll save that one for the book but, it’s a real syndrome caused by the brain injury of massive quantities of mind-altering drugs.}

Do I love music???? Live for it really! Do I love a good concert especially after a couple glasses of wine? Damn straight! Was I just a bit of a hippy? Still am but…. that’s not Phish.

Phish concerts are a mini woodstock with minimal security; days of dirty hippy trippy kids hanging out in a sea of zoned-out stoners. But the name fits….as Noah would say when his jounals reflected more clarity (or as the shrinks would say “insight”). Noah was right about this though ..in his humorous way he said “mom, its an appropriate name for the band because they “reel” you in, put you in a “sea” of people, there are “waves” of mindlessness and they toss you back into your own world when they’re done with you.”

I came to know that the followers of phish are all really cool. These are the kids who got in touch with me after Noah drowned. They sent me threads from the phish website with Noah’s jaunty and intelligent e-mails, they collected $$ in his memory and wrote heartfelt beautiful poems, prayers and sentiments. I can see why he loved these people. I did too.

It just pisses me off that our culture supports millionare rock stars finding a place for these huge drug venues where thousands of kids will congregate and blow out their minds (hopefully not permanently).. whiney crappy music not-withstanding, and then the band will go back to their five star hotel a whole lot richer. Awesome!

With family like that..who needs friends?

My mother ( who I think about a lot ) was very funny. She had all of these quotes, and one-liners. They float around in the maze which is my brain and come out, for the most part, appropriately.  I miss my mother and the relationship we missed as adults. I was just thirty when she passed away from breast cancer. Back then, the medical community didn’t take a lump very seriously. She was told to come back in six months. Needless to say, she needed a more immediate intervention.

So, fourthofjulaborday  was her saying for how fast summer flies by. I thought is was just because I am older and everything seems to be in warp-speed the past few years.  However,even my grandchildren experience life as fast. They talk about how quickly the summer went and how they don’t much like the early back to school. I remember feeling that angst as I said goodby to the lazy hazy days of summer and picked out fall dresses and tights with my mom. It was always the warmest of days and I couldn’t imagine wearing all that clothing. Back when I started the school days, you had to wear your new outfits starting from the first day of school. It wasn’t as casual then;no shorts or t-shirts…sneakers were only for gym day. We would walk to school in plaid dresses, socks and new shoes,  and a new pencil case. It didn’t matter if it was 84 degrees on the way home. I remember peeling off my layers and jumping into “play clothes” for a quick snack of oreos and milk and then out the door into the neighborhood until the dinner call rang out. Life was so different then. You had to be formal about clothing, yet your children could play outside and ride their bikes all day (out of sight of the parents!) Now its the opposite. Kids can wear pretty much whatever they want to school but neighborhoods are a ghost-town. Kids are monitored under the careful watch of a parent every minute of the day. It’s not safe to let children out of your sight. Back then most mom’s were at home and kids ran from one house to the other. Now they have “play dates” and the parent STAYS..at your house…now you have a new “friend” too whether you want one or not. Very strange. Any way, I think I got off on a tangent. I basically want to just acknowledge my moms’ saying and the crazy world we live in.

I will try and think of a combo word that could describe this fast paced existence..how about just

strangebeautifulcomicalsadmysteriouslife?

 I’m a little rusty:)