Protected: Best of Blog: Patience, Persistence, Peace
You may have noticed that I’ve been re-posting old posts like there’s no tomorrow. I am fully expecting a tomorrow but there are some posts I wanted to get to reposting before my TRAM surgery and I am a stickler for keeping my “Best of Blogs” in chronological order. I’ve also discovered that I can write a post now and then schedule it to be posted later. How did I miss that little WordPress feature in my nine months of blogging?
Enjoy the “Best of Blog” Marathon!
This post is from 7/21/12.
I know a lot of people say that clowns are scary. I have never found clowns to be scary, generally speaking but I do have a bad experience with a Seafair clown. I was 14 years old and had just completed the 8th grade. I can’t remember which of the Seafair parades I was attending but it was my first Seafair parade. Unfortunately, this parade marked another first for me, my first kiss, given to me by a Seafair clown. He planted a wet one right on my lips when I least expected it. Imagine being a 14 year-old girl and getting your first kiss from a middle-aged Seafair clown. Yuck!
Fast forward thirty-one years a year or two later, to the summer of 2011. I was attending the Chinatown Parade, my first Seafair-clown attending event since my unfortunate teen-aged experience. I was approached by one of the clowns and my dad wanted to take our picture together. Honestly, my stomach lunged a little from anxiety. But he looked trust-worthy and I gave it a go. He was a gentlemanly clown and we took a nice, healing photo together.
I am hoping for some healing tomorrow, too. I am looking forward to just being a mom at a parade, cheering on her kid.
This post is from 7/18/12, the day of my second lumpectomy. I was already resting at home and had enough energy and adrenaline to write two posts! This is the second post. I have been very lucky to have such caring and competent medical care. Unfortunately, this surgery was not the end of cancer surgeries since the margins weren’t clear. I had multi-focal cancer, meaning that there were multiple tumors, which although tiny and relatively slow growing, were separate tumors. Consequently, I got another toe squeeze from Dr. Beatty after my mastectomy, which I would have three weeks after I wrote this post.
Surgery went well and I am resting at home. Dr. Beatty reassuringly squeezed my foot as he left after we had our pre-op talk. My first thought? “I have to tell my mom!”.
This is the email my mom sent to my last night after hearing about the clear PEM scan. (It still won’t make total sense so I’ll explain it later in the post.)
Hi Liz,
I was so relieved that I forgot to wish you well on the lumpectomy.Hope all goes well. We love you so much.All week I kept hoping that Dr. Clark would squeeze my footand tell me you’d be OK. I guess he did.
Protected: Synchronicity on Wheels
I’ve been debating about writing this post for nearly nine months now. I don’t want to make anyone feel bad or guilty. But the truth is that although the vast majority of people have been wonderfully supportive to me in respect to my breast cancer, there are a couple of people in my life who have stunned me with the unexpected ways they’ve responded.
Rule #1 If a friend tells you that she has cancer, it is best to respond right away if only to say something along the lines of “I’m so sorry to hear that. You are in my thoughts/prayers.”
I know it doesn’t sound like much but it means a lot to be acknowledged. I know you can’t take my disease away.
Rule #2
If you neglected to respond right away, respond right now with a communication along the lines of “I’m so sorry you have cancer. I’m also sorry for my delay in talking to you about it. You are in my thoughts/prayers.” Making excuses at this point is risky. Some excuses are totally understandable like my friend who lives in another state and unbeknownst to me, was sick for a few months and had to temporarily close down her business. That is a very very good excuse and by the way, friend who knows who she is, I am so sorry that you were sick but it was so great to talk to you recently. I am so glad that you are so far on the road to recovery. Other excuses like, “I’m sorry, I was too busy” is not an excuse that makes me feel better. It makes me feel worse, to tell you the truth. Maybe you did mean to respond sooner but thought you should do something fancier than the statement from rule #1. And then time got away from you.
Or perhaps the idea of cancer freaks you out because it is a very serious disease, that can happen to anyone, and can kill people. I understand your fear but it is not a good excuse. We live in a world of uncertainty. None of us know exactly when we will die. A compassionate statement goes a long way, even if it is short. Being seriously ill has some extremely isolating moments and for many people, the isolation is chronic.
Rule #3
Please do not skip over the fact that I am dealing with a scary and serious illness and act as if nothing is wrong. I am still your friend and I offer you whatever friendship and support that I can. I know you have your own troubles. It helps me to know that there are things I can still offer my friends. But please don’t skip over my cancer and then ask me for help with something in your life.
Rule #4
If you think you messed up with a friend in need, please don’t spend your time guilting yourself out about it. Simply apologize and again, be careful with the excuses. I recently received apologies from some good friends. It meant a great deal to me. They didn’t make excuses even though in reality, they have some pretty good ones.
Rule #5
If you at a loss of what to do and your friend keeps a blog, you can help by reading the blog. I love for people to read my blog and press “like” from time to time. (Oops, you have to have a WordPress account to “like” a post. I had forgotten that when I originally wrote this.) Then I know they are thinking about me. A supportive comment is a cherry on top of the sundae. (No WordPress account is necessary for posting a comment.)
Rule #6
If you are at a loss of what to do, live close to your friend, and like to cook, bringing food is a lovely concrete nurturing act.
Rule #7
Convalescing gets really boring, especially for an extrovert such as myself. Visitors, emails, texts, and phone calls can be really nice. If the time is not good, I will tell you.
There are so many things that we can do for our “friends in need.” Even the tiniest acknowledgement helps. The time to do it is now.
Protected: Back on Track for Go Go Boots
An explanation of benefits form arrived today from my insurance. It included the medical center’s fees for my medical oncology visit on 1/24. The total charges? $15,725, discounted to $8,628 via the contract with my insurance. This does not include the physician’s office charges. This is the medical center fee. I looked at the itemized list of services. The line, “Drugs—$14,365.00” caught my eye right away. The line above that read, “chemotherapy”.
Since I have not gotten chemotherapy, I assumed that someone else’s claim had been submitted with my name on it. Then I thought, “Wow, it could be the Lupron injection I get every three months.”
Being the Google Queen that I am, I searched “Lupron injection cost.” It looked like it costs several thousand dollars when used for other purposes. Even though the examples I saw were not for three month lupron to treat breast cancer, I thought the $15K was too high to be for the Lupron.
I called the medical center as well as my doctor’s office.
Lupron makes some extremely expensive hot flashes. I will be sure to put on a pair of fancier underwear on the day of my next injection.
I can imagine scenarios where it would truly cost that much money but wow, that’s a lot. What do people who don’t have insurance do? I already know what they do. They get substandard treatment and that’s just sad.
My daughter just told me that she’s been asked to sing a solo with her high school jazz band! I’m so proud! I sure hope I can make it to the concert. It’s about 1 1/2 weeks after my surgery. I’ll find a way, even if I need to be in a wheelchair!
Just as in the commercials for Eggo waffles, someone keeps trying to take something that’s mine. That someone is cancer stress of course. Stress has taken my “ergo”. As I told my husband yesterday, my brain still holds facts (not as many as before) but what is a bigger loss is that I am so infrequently unable to integrate the facts into a conclusion.
Here’s a fictional example to illustrate my point:
“Hmm, I have a patient tomorrow from 1:30 to 2:30 in my office. I have another meeting at 2:30 at Random Elementary School. Since Random Elementary is not my office and I can’t be in two places at the same time, I need to reschedule one of my meetings.”
Here’s how it goes now:
“Hmm, I have a patient tomorrow from 1:30 to 2:30 in my office. I have another meeting at 2:30 at Random Elementary School. I wonder if I have any new email?”
Yes, fortunately, the above was a fictional example. I did not actually schedule myself this way. But I have a jumble of facts in my head at any one time and they are just noise when I can’t make meaning from them. I’ve made lots of other mistakes. With friends and family, I make a lot of comments along the lines of, “Oh yeah” but several minutes to days after I should have made the connection. A couple of weekends ago, my mom mentioned that she was going to go visit her friend at a rehab facility. I understood what she said. I was even aware that the rehab facility is not only in my city but about two miles from my house. I even understood that my parents live in another town. I like my parents. A few days later I told my mom, “Oh yeah, when you were visiting June, I should have invited you over for a visit afterwards.”
Yes, I should have but stupid cancer took my ergo.
L’eggo my ergo!
My Eyes Are Up Here 