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Posts Tagged ‘help’

Blind Spots

Posted in Cancer, chemotherapy, Denial, family, hair, tagged , , , , , , , on August 25, 2012| 10 Comments »

The other night my friend Herb told me about his recent trip to Florida and how surprised he was at how much his ailing father had changed. His mother hasn’t been straight with him on the phone and has been continuing to basically live their lives the same without accommodating for the changes in her husband. As I listened, it occurred to me that it has nothing to do with his mother being mean, neglectful or not loving his father. It’s BECAUSE she loves him so much that she just doesn’t want to face it. She doesn’t want to see how he’s changing and how frail he is, how much help he needs. She wants him to be the same man she fell in love with, the same man she married. Maybe she really can’t see the changes. It is her blind spot  – don’t they say love is blind?

Then I realized: that’s how a few people are with me. It’s not that they don’t love or care about me that they completely ignore the fact that anything is different about me, maybe it’s that they do love me that it hurts them to see me this way and just refuse to face and deal with it. I am still hurt by how they now treat me, but this new perspective helps me understand them a little bit more, and at least makes me feel like maybe I do matter to them.

And then I had another revelation: that’s actually what I am doing to myself. I still get shocked when I look in the mirror. I still cringe when I see pictures of myself bald. I just went for a run (if you can even call what I’m doing running) and got frustrated with myself that I couldn’t even do the whole 3 miles of one minute run and one minute walk – sometimes I had to walk for two or three minutes before doing another minute of running. I don’t want to face that I don’t have hair any more. I don’t want to see that the steroids and eating to ease the nausea are making me pack back on the pounds. I don’t want to be tired after a few minutes running. I want to be the me I was in February…

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Five months?!?!

Posted in Boston, Cancer, chemotherapy, connections, Discovery, Fundraising, prayer, recovery, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

I honestly cannot believe it: today is five months since I was sitting in my office and got the call from my doctor saying “you have breast cancer.” In some ways, it feels like a lifetime – I hardly remember a time when cancer wasn’t consuming my life. In other ways, I don’t know where these last five months have gone – I feel like it was just February, we were finishing the shutdown and celebrating my 38th birthday. (What a dud 38 has turned out to be – bring on 39!!!!)

But as much of a nightmare as this has all been, anyone who knows me knows that I am a firm believer that everything happens for a reason. I refuse to curl up in a ball and cry endlessly (although I let myself for a few minutes every now and then…), become useless or a burden and just accept my fate. I am not going to over-analyze this and whine ‘why me’ over and over, either. In fact, I don’t think I have to – I think now maybe I know why me…

Just as I sat down to write this, my phone rang. I was so relieved to see my friend’s name. It was only a month ago that she told me the horrific news that she’d found a lump. I refered her to my fabulous dream team at Dana-Farber and it was confirmed as breast cancer. And today she was having a lumpectomy. While I’d heard she made it through fine, I was excited to hear her voice and know it for sure. I exclaimed my relief over the news that the doctors said all went well and they believe they caught it early and it’s all gone. And she said, “It’s thanks to you. You reminding everyone to check.” And that’s it. Maybe that is why. Maybe I needed to go through this so others can catch it early enough and stop it. Words can’t express how thankful I am that she found that lump and stopped it. That makes every second of this journey worth it.

So please – do your self-checks. And tell your sisters, mothers, wives, lovers, friends, daughters, everyone, to do their checks, too. But it’s not enough. We have to stop the damn c-word completely! As some of you know, I am excited to have two opportunities to help in the collective fight against cancer:

  • Tomorrow (Tuesday, August 21) at 1:15 p.m. I will be interviewed live on the 11thAnnual WEEI / NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon – Events – The Jimmy Fund. (WEEI is Boston’s sports radio station – 93.7 FM and 850 AM and you can listen live online at www.weei.com; It may also be simulcast on TV (NESN), but that’s TBD.) They are going to interview me about my personal cancer experience, my interactions at Dana-Farber, etc. Hopefully I’ll be able to help some cancer survivors know they are not alone in their experiences and inspire some people to donate and help conquer cancer. (And hopefully I won’t embarrass myself on live radio/TV…)
  • I’m also honored that my childhood friend Heather Forbes started a team for me in the Jimmy Fund Boston Marathon Walk on September 9. I am thrilled to be feeling healthy enough to walk the last three miles with the team, so have registered. Our team is still looking for walkers (and supporters), so if you are able, please join us – there are multiple legs, you don’t have to do the whole 26.2 miles! For more information on walking or donating: Amy’s Jimmy Fund Walk Page.

Thank you: every prayer, every self-check, every step walked, every penny donated: together we really can make a difference in this fight!

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Wishes

Posted in Boston, Cancer, chemotherapy, Denial, Dreams, family, hair, London, prayer, recovery, work, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I am making a wish on each eyelash that I catch as it falls out. All those wishes have to add up, right? I refuse to waste a wish on anything pointless, like wishing that my eyelashes and eyebrows wouldn’t fall out, although I really don’t want them to. So what am I wishing for? Like birthday wishes, I don’t think you’re supposed to tell or they won’t come true. But I bet you can guess – they’re pretty much the same things that I pray for…

So I guess I can tell you more of the things that I wish but don’t waste the eyelash wishes on:

  • I wish the hair on my head would either all grow or not grow at all – it is so annoying having these patches of hair growing on my head! I really feel like a chia pet. Luckily, Nick is home from London and offered to shave my head again. I think I will be taking him up on that…
  • I wish people wouldn’t worry about me so much. Tonight I told Nick I was going for a run and he looked all serious and said “Really? Ok, but be careful. What time will you be back?” It is sweet. But I really do feel fine, these in-between weeks, after the initial week of hell and the next infusion. I can run, I can babysit, I can work, I can drive. I am good. And I feel bad wishing this – I am so, so thankful so many people care about me. I just wish they wouldn’t worry so much… 🙂 And yes, I am blocking out the incident at Training Camp, but that was also because I was stupid and rushed being better – I was still in that first week post-chemo. I will try to be smarter this next round…
  • I wish I could go to my cheap nail salon and get my regular mani/pedi’s again. Oh how I (and my hands and my feet) miss them…
  • I wish I didn’t have chemo brain. I hate it when I am not at the top of my game. And according to Sue, chemo brain lasts for months and months after the chemo stops. So I won’t be back 100% until well into 2013. Ugh. Good excuse for why I won’t be winning at trivia though. 🙂
  • I wish I had unlimited funds so I could buy more wigs. Now that I’ve started wearing them, they’re not so bad. But I don’t like to wear the same one all the time, I like to mix it up between wigs and hats just to try to have fun with it. Now to buy the electric blue one…
  • And then the most pointless wish of all: I wish I wasn’t sick! I know, as people keep reminding me, I am officially cancer free since the surgery, but the fact is the chemo makes me more sick than I ever felt with the cancer! I do understand why it had to be cut out and why I now have to go through all this chemo to kill all the cancer cells (especially after talking to my friend Laura who had it come back again, even after having a mastectomy!), but it doesn’t mean I have to like it.

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