Thanks

In the spirit of the season, and without getting too mushy on you, I should let you all know what I am most thankful for this year: my dad's margins were clean. His doctors were able to remove all of the cancer. We got the news the day before Thanksgiving, in the midst of a spectacularly chaotic week at my mother-in-law's house. I cried, of course, when I saw my dad's text: "They got it all - all the edges are clear." Suddenly it didn't matter that Quinn hadn't napped in five days or that I'd been tethered to my laptop attempting to work with a clingy toddler pulling the threads of my sweaters loose or that we were trying to prep the house for a 13-person dinner while keeping Quinn out of the pool and away from Grandma's feral cat. My dad was cancer-free. There is nothing like the sense of calm that news brings.

I am also thankful for all of you for reaching out to ask me about my dad, for supporting me when I'm exhausted and scared and running on fumes, for bringing me dinner or calling me to let me cry or texting me pictures of another successful pub crawl that raised more than $1200 for metastatic breast cancer research. I can't say it enough: you guys rock. Thank you.

And I am thankful that I can help answer questions for another young mom who sent me a message last week with the news that she'd been diagnosed with breast cancer. Her little boy is five months old; she had surgery today and will start chemo next month. I hate that anyone else has to go through this, has to cry into their pillow at two in the morning because cancer hit far earlier than it should, has to wonder if they'll get to watch their little boy grow up.

As Chris says anytime I get anxious about this: "You are watching him grow up."And so will this woman, who is also stronger than this damn disease.

Which brings me to what I'm continually thankful for - my boys. Quinn's arms wrapped tight around my neck as he says, "Rock, rock, rock" in the rocking chair before I put him to bed at night. Chris' arms wrapped around my waist in bed at night, as I cry over a woman I didn't know who died of lung cancer in a book I probably shouldn't be reading. Even when I'm at my worst (and holy cow does chemo give new meaning to that phrase: short-tempered, splotchy-faced, eyebrow-less), my boys keep me grounded - even if that means Quinn knocking me over and jumping on my back like I'm his personal trampoline - and remind me what this time of year is all about.

See? Only a little mushy.

Shaken

Sorry for the radio silence, guys. Just as I was hitting a happy plateau of life with a chronic illness, I got hit with a double whammy of news that shook me pretty hard. First, a member of my extended family was told she had ovarian cancer and a tumor that looked to be the size of a grapefruit. She had surgery and expected to undergo intense chemo, but got news this week that they were able to remove all of the cancer and she will just need to have her blood monitored for the indefinite future. All of us who know and love her are breathing huge sighs of relief tonight.

Then, last week, I got a phone call that felt nearly equivalent to the one I got last August telling me my cancer had spread - like I had been punched in the gut. My dad called to tell me that a mole he'd had removed from his chest was malignant, even though he'd been told repeatedly it was "probably nothing" - seriously, that phrase should be banned from doctors' offices. It turns out that the spot was melanoma, the most deadly form of skin cancer. 

Cancer couldn't just affect me - it had to come after my dad, too? 

Yesterday, my dad went in for surgery to have a wider swath of skin around the area removed; his doctors are confident it had not spread and the surgery was sufficient to call him cancer-free. The surgical pathology report in a week and a half will confirm this; I'm trying not to spend all of that time biting my nails.

In all honesty, my dad has probably taken this news better than I have, and I've spent the better part of this week trying to figure out exactly why it hit me so hard, when he has reassured me over and over that his doctors are confident. It isn't just the fear of losing him, but the news also shook up a hornet's nest of emotions I thought I'd laid to rest about my own mortality. I looked at Chris one night last weekend, tears streaming down my cheeks, and said, "I don't want to die of cancer." 

"I don't know why you'd think that," he said. "You've beaten this twice."

But my dad's news reminded me that we don't have much control over how or why or who this disease hits, or who will beat it. Now I just have to recalibrate how to be okay with that, but it might take some time for my dust to settle. Please bear with me in the meantime.

Making Strides

I spent all weekend recovering from a 3-mile walk. I napped when Quinn napped, went to bed at 9:15 Saturday night, and developed a spasm in my lower back that lasted for two days. At least I wasn't winded during the walk? It's little consolation for how old I'm apparently getting. Let me explain how a noncompetitive morning stroll turned into a total-body workout.

Quinn and I participated in the American Cancer Society's Making Strides 5K walk in Tempe on Saturday morning. My little - and I use the word "little" only because he's young - snuggle monkey insisted on being carried for the first half of the walk. Every time I tried to put him in his stroller, he'd arch his back like it was filled with snakes, or worse - broccoli. When I tried letting him walk beside me, knowing it would slow my pace but thinking it would at least give my upper body a break, he'd sit down in the middle of the road. Chris and I call this his "riot police" move - his whole body goes limp like he's protesting the 1% and resisting arrest. I'd bend down to pick him up again, apologizing to the walkers who almost tripped over us as we broke their strides. All the carrying, wrestling, and bending to pick up my wiggle monster took its toll.

My chest and shoulder muscles were on fire, but I couldn't resist his cheek on my shoulder, even if we were making awful time, even if I was spoiling him rotten. And then my hat blew off in the wind, but I didn't even mind displaying my bald head to the world. I was hugging my little boy - and we were at a cancer walk, after all.

A few coworkers and friends joined us, including Quinn's best friend from daycare, Sydney. We had to pause often for snack breaks. No joke, I think we walked at about a one mile-per-hour pace. 

Which was good, because the hour leading up to the walk was intense. Chris was out of town, I had to drop my best friend off at the airport for an early-morning flight prior to the walk, and it was also ASU's homecoming on Saturday, so traffic was a nightmare, even at 7 a.m. I was the team leader for my company's team, but showed up fifteen minutes late because I might have bitten off more than I can chew by promising to meet anywhere with a toddler at 7:30 a.m. 

As I was running down Mill Avenue with my bright green stroller and shoeless toddler, trying to catch up with my teammates before the start, a guy in a pink shirt asked me if I was okay. "Just running late," I said. "This'll probably be the most competitive part of my day."

I caught up with my team a couple of blocks up the road; we weren't late for the start, and it probably wouldn't have mattered much anyway, it was such a laid-back event. The guy in the pink shirt came up to me and handed me an extra t-shirt from his team. "Good luck to you," he said, a seriousness in his voice letting me know he wasn't just talking about the walk. This is the shirt he gave me; it was so perfect after the sprint of a morning I'd had...

Scanxiety

The period leading up to a PET scan and the time spent waiting for results are often fraught with what people in cancer-land dub "scanxiety." I don't really know how to describe the feeling except to say you try really hard not to get your hopes up, but there they go, imagining your future - one in which you have hair again and that new house you've been shopping for. One in which you've sat at a sidewalk cafe sipping red wine and fattening yourself up on freshly made pasta in Italy itself, maybe as the Mediterranean breeze blows through that new hair of yours. It's a future in which you teach your little boy how to tie his shoes and cheer him on at his first baseball game. Your hopes take on a mind of their own during this period, and you panic at every thought in which the outcome might not be what you want. I can go on and on about how none of us really knows our future and how important it is to live in the present, but when it's time again for my scans every third month, all those platitudes fly straight out the window.

Last week, as I drove to pick Quinn up from daycare the afternoon after my PET scan, I got a call from my oncologist's office confirming my appointment for the following day. No word about scan results, just a matter-of-fact, all-business call to confirm an appointment. Routine, I'm sure. But it set me off--my heart started racing, my palms got all sweaty on the steering wheel, and I convinced myself that it must mean bad news, since last December, when it had been good news, they'd called and told me over the phone. 

I immediately called Chris to see if he could calm me down. "They probably don't even have the results yet," he tried to comfort me. My throat was closing up and I was contemplating how I would pull over on the exit ramp leading from one freeway to another since I was not sure I could safely drive. "Worst case scenario, they've got lots of other drugs they can try," he said. He was right--as usual when it comes to these things--but rational thought isn't at the forefront of my head in the midst of a panic attack. 

So when we hung up, I called my oldest friend, Alana, who was in the middle of her own craze trying to pack for a weekend trip with twenty minutes until she had to leave for her flight. Her frenzy took my mind off my own stress and she even made me laugh a bit. I promised her I'd call as soon as I had any news. 

Less than a minute after our call ended, my phone rang. It was my oncologist, calling to tell me that my PET scan was completely clear. "They don't see anything," he said.

"Totally clear?" I asked. "There's nothing at all?" I checked again. I wanted to make absolutely certain I'd heard him correctly before I told anyone.

I hugged Quinn extra hard at pick-up that day. "We did it again," I whispered in his ear.

I still have another three months of this chemo cocktail, as my oncologist wants to be absolutely certain this time we knock out each and every one of these cells. But assuming another clean scan mid-January, he'll take me off the chemo component and leave me on the other two maintenance drugs. If our luck continues, this will put me into long-term remission. On the other hand, I'll continue to have scans every three months, so if anything does come up, we'll catch it early again and I'm confident I'll continue to respond well to treatment.

Chris and I celebrated our four-year wedding anniversary and my clean scan this weekend. And I feel like I have another lease on life, even if I have to renegotiate this contract every three months. Turns out, I'm a pretty good negotiator.

Enough

I had my fourth round of this new chemo a week ago today. After some adjustments to my side-effect medications - a little less steroid here, a little more anti-nausea there, taking Claritin the night before my Neulasta shot to minimize bone pain (which is apparently caused by a histamine reaction) - and I almost felt like a new person this time around. My side effects were very minimal; I just got hit with some bone pain and fatigue today, but I also went to bed late last night after chasing Quinn all around the train park yesterday so that might have contributed.

One of Chris' friends asked him how we were holding up lately, and I think Chris summed it up well: we're probably not any more tired than if we had a second child. I still have the energy to make it to yoga two or three times a week. I cook dinner about twice as often. I'm still working full-time, although it's nothing compared to Chris' full-time. We're both tired, so I'm not really sure I can blame cancer entirely.  

Quinn is nineteen months old now, and has learned how to tell us "no" - always twice, as in "No, no." He continues to be a perpetual motion machine, climbing everything - the back of the couch, the barstools that lead up to the kitchen counter, the higher the better - without fear or hesitation. At the park, only the highest, most-inaccessible-to-moms slides will do. Even better if they're connected by mesh-enclosed footbridges ten feet in the air. It's a good thing that kid's got coordination.

The truth is we're finding our groove in this new reality. Sure, I wish we could go back to the life we had before cancer, but that is not going to happen. We were given a monumental diagnosis that is not leaving our lives anytime soon. We are living with this beast, which doesn't seem like so much of a beast anymore as much as a pest problem. (I should know - I lived in DC for eight years. In one apartment, my cats literally chased the walls because they could hear the rats running around inside them. It's like I was being trained for life wih cancer.)

Soon after my recurrence, other women with Stage IV disease told me they lived their lives normally, pausing for treatment every few weeks and scans every few months. They didn't let cancer rule their lives, and I didn't quite believe them. I was puzzled at their responses to living with chronic illness. One friend said simply, "I've never felt sick." Luckily, neither have I.

Still, I didn't really think it was possible for cancer not to occupy the most space in my brain, but slowly, I've gotten to that point. I'd rather focus on Quinn's antics, meal planning, working on a book proposal, and our travel plans for the holidays. While I miss my hair, this new normal is okay. Today, I feel pretty great, and that's enough.