Sharing a lunar eclipse

I had remembered that there was going to be a lunar eclipse and then forgot it again, when my daughter called unexpectedly last night.

"Quick, Mom," she said breathlessly, "go outside at look at the moon!"

I jumped up, phone in hand and went out on the deck. We both stood outside, looking up at the shadow of the earth creeping across a full moon, separated by thousands of miles, but sharing the same vision in the night sky.

I remembered the summer nights when she was small, glow-in-the-dark star charts in hand, picking out the constellations for her and telling stories about the birth and death of stars, the cold vacuum of space, the infinite distances in the universe. We'd snuggle under a blanket and talk about ancient times and ancient peoples, when humans watched the sky for their only entertainment, because they had no television or electric lights or books to read! Then we'd laugh and go inside for hot cocoa and bed when we were done looking and marvelling.

"I can still see a tiny glimmer on the edge," she said.

"It's completely covered, as far as I can tell," I replied, "but your eyes are younger than mine, so I'll trust your observation."

Maybe she was breathless because she was walking home from Trader Joe's with a bag of groceries, but I prefer to think that it was also an expression of long-ago, child-like wonder. Her impulsive phone call to share it with me was a surprising and precious gift.

Off to Yoder's

One of the very nicest things about living in this area is Yoder's Country Market. Run by Mennonites, Yoder's is a combination health-food store, country smokehouse outlet and the closest thing we have to a gourmet foodie-haven.

They cure country hams and bacon, and make the best butter I've ever tasted, rolled in 2 pound cylinders of parchment paper. They stock foods for special diets, odd cooking ingredients like Clear-Jel and walnut oil, dried fruits, nuts, baking chips and old-fashioned penny candies.

It's clean and friendly, with red-cheeked girls in white cloth caps cheerfully making sandwiches, and strong boys in suspenders packing groceries gently into sturdy boxes and carrying them out to your car. It's like walking backwards in time.

An outing to Yoder's is a treat I give myself about every other month. I usually have a long list of needed staples; today it's wild rice, wheat berries, rye berries, barley, flax seed, crystalized ginger, split peas, corn chips for my chili, pineapple jam and sweet pickles. I'll browse through the raw-milk cheeses, the bulk spices, the homemade baked and canned goods, and probably fill a whole basket with impulse items that catch my eye. It's both a splurge and a full morning's entertainment.

Tamoxifen Issues

I've been taking the tamoxifen, which has shown a 41% statistical improvement in preventing breast cancer recurrence, and I'm carefully monitoring my body for potential side effects, some of which can be profound: clots, stroke, endometrial or uterine cancer, and cataracts. The statistical benefits of taking it outweigh the statistical risks of the possible serious side effects, and my oncologist has recommended it, so I'm taking it.

I am careful to use the word "statistical," because no large-scale study can tell if tamoxifen will help me beat the cancer, or whether I will experience any of the problems associated with it. One encouraging bit of news came with the genomic testing, which showed that 2 of my 3 cytochrome P450 pathways used to metabolize the tamoxifen are functioning normally. I do have one "snip," a defect on 2C9, but 3A and 2D6 are fine. So the plan now is to take the drug, and be vigilant about any changes I experience.

I've noticed two new body-messages since starting the drug: I crave sweets constantly, (especially chocolate, of which I've never been fond, except in the week preceding my period), and the frequency of night sweats and daytime hot flashes is ramping up with a vengence.

I wake up each morning looking like I've spent the night in a sauna, hair damp and wild, pink limbs and blotchy face. I've also become very temperature-sensitive during the day, piling on layers one minute, then flinging them off in a panic as I perceive I am about to burst into spontaneous flames the next. I keep hoping that things will settle down and establish some pattern, but so far, whatever this estrogen-suppressor is doing, it's random and unpredictable.

The sweets thing is even harder--how do I follow the Prime Directive ("Don't gain weight!") and soothe the raging desire to consume every source of sugar in the house? I've tried eating an apple, letting one tiny, perfect chocolate chip melt in my mouth, and other intercessionary measures. I've resisted doing any baking at all, afraid that if I make a pan of brownies, I'll just wolf down the entire batch in one sitting. My days now are spent avoiding temptation, steeling myself against food, and downing big glasses of cold water as the sweat pours down my face.

Dark Matter and math confusion

Am I the last person on earth to find out about "dark matter?" I listened to a program about this recently (I hardly ever have the patience to actually sit and watch TV, but I do listen to it), and asked my son: "So do you understand the deal about dark matter?"

"Of course," he said. "What's the problem?" as if his mother was going suddenly dim. Apparently, all the space between matter in the universe is not empty, it's full of stuff (like the gunk the old Star Trek series called "anti-matter"). Scientists calculated how much actual matter was in the universe (by a mathematical process I missed, when I went to heat up a bowl of soup), and they came up way short, so they deduced that what they perceive as being empty space is actually invisible "dark matter." I'm still trying to comprehend this--is it like looking at a negative image or an optical illusion, where what you see is the stuff in-between the other stuff? They can't see dark matter, or prove that it exists, but mathematically, it has to be there. And don't even get me started on "dark energy," its evil twin. Concepts like this make me feel really inadequate, like my brain is stretching out as far as it can, and just isn't quite big enough to fold around the edges of an idea.

When I was 41, I went back to school because I was unhappy with my life and didn't want to take anti-depressants for it. I thought I wanted to go to Pharmacy school, so I started taking courses at the local community college, the pre-requisite math I couldn't pass in high school. Even though I never had made it through the second year of algebra or any trig at all, I signed up for pre-calculus, just to see what I could do. It was really hard. To get through just the first week of class, I had to re-learn what I hadn't used for 26 years, things like polynomials, quadratics and factoring equations. I did every nightly homework assignment twice. I attended every class, straining forward in my seat and listening with every fiber of my being, struggling to grasp the mystery.

In high school math classes, I had spent most of my time fuming about the dubious necessity of my knowing any of this "stupid stuff." At age 41, I knew that I was attempting to learn the foreign language of the universe, the absolute language of science. I was ignorant, but I had faith. Very occasionally, I would catch a brief glimpse of the immense world of mathematics. In a rare, breath-catching moment, the door would open, the light would shine through, the angels sang. I would sit very still, reaching out just a little further, brain cells curling like toes in sand, almost there...then a big, lunking, shadowy creature would barge into my brain, yelling "Hey! Who left this door open?" and kick it shut. Sigh.

But I persevered. I ended up with a B+ (which was a gift--I really only deserved a B- or a C+), mostly because the professor saw me right up front, everyday, trying so desperately. I gave it an all-out effort. It was a triumph of perspiration over inspiration. I moved on, changing my major to culinary arts, to everyone's relief, including my own.

I sort of "get" the dark matter thing, but I am also very comfortable letting the real mathematicians ponder it, just like I'm willing to let quadratic equations exist without me using them on a daily basis. I'm glad there are big mysteries in the universe, and I'm glad others are keeping tabs on them. I know if I work hard enough, repeat all the practice exercises, I might catch fleeting wisps of understanding, but that's as far as it will go with me. The big picture, as fascinating as it is, is something I want to be able to admire from a distance, like the immense beauty of the night sky.

Looking for honest work...

I don't know whether it's the tamoxifen I'm taking or just a natural "let-down" of recovery, but I have noticed more disturbing tendencies toward boredom and depression this last week.

The only antidote I know is to get busy. Since I seem incapable of doing that here at home, I brushed up a resume and applied for a part-time job, two days a week in Kingsport, supervising drug screenings. We shall see if I have any marketable skills that the local economy wants.

In the meantime, there are plenty of projects that need doing around here--and I'm just not doing them. Daily, I manage to walk the dog and feed & bathe myself, but I'm having a hard time rousing myself to enthusiasm about anything else. This is my personal "danger sign," one that I've learned signals a warning to snap out of it and get going before I degenerate into total sloth, and by extension, despair and depression.

The whole week looks like it's going to be heavy on the gloom and precipitation. The weather really does affect my mood, so I'd better buck myself up before the rain and snow begin.

Long-Distance Children

I miss my adult children. There's just no way around it, I wish I had them at the dinner table once a month, once a week, or better yet, every night, just to listen to what they did that day, what they think about everything.

The ultimate irony of parenting is that it seems interminable when you're going through it day-to-day, and it passes in what seems like a millisecond when viewed retrospectively. I berate myself for all the things I did wrong, and can't remember a single thing I did right, yet they turned out to be interesting and wonderful people. How did that happen?

I wanted them to grow into being smart and curious, caring and compassionate, responsible and independent. They did, and then they left, just as things were beginning to get interesting. I think it's terribly unfair.

Bad Night in Seattle

Daughter Juli was taken to the ER yesterday, and was admitted to the low-trauma ward of U-W's Harborview Hospital last night. It's been kind of frantic around here with the transcontinental phone calls and mother-worry, hence the late post today.

The good news is that she is now recovering--from severe dehydration brought on by nausea and inability to keep anything down, brought on by respiratory and ear infections. They may keep her another night, but she seems to have bounced back after they pumped 4+ litres of fluids and electrolytes into her. They are treating her for presumptive pneumonia, but the chest X-ray looks encouraging, with only minor problems and no TB.

I don't think there's anything that compares to the heart-clutch you feel when your child is really sick. Being far away and knowing she's an adult makes it worse...there really isn't anything I can do for her other than trust other people to take care of her. I hate it.

It gives me a renewed appreciation for what I just put my own mother through. Thanks, Mom, for just holding on, even though it made for many sleepless nights, I know.

Valentine's Day Oddities, Earthquakes & Witch Trials

Today is Valentine's Day, and such occasions always bring up memories for me. It is my mother's 81st birthday. It is Aunt Mary's and Jim's 26th wedding anniversary. Valentine is my mother-in-law's maiden name. In his twenties, my grandfather looked like Rudolph Valentino. What else can I beat this dead horse with....?

Here's something odd for you numerologists: My mother was born on 2/14. I was born on 3/15. My daughter was born on 4/16. Three generations, exactly a month and a day apart! How's that for weird and coincidental?

I remember traveling up I-55 from Louisiana to Illinois for Mary & Jim's wedding in 1982. I drove my van, Bill rode shotgun, and his dad perched on the ice chest between us. As we drove north, the early greening of the southern spring disappeared, replaced by the vestiges of the Midwestern winter. Dirty snowbanks edged the highway, growing higher with each stop. We took a break near Cape Girardoux, at the site of the New Madrid (pronounced "Madd-Rid") earthquakes.

Reading the plaques that told the story of the quakes was a revelation. I had never heard of the New Madrid events from 1811-1812, with the largest-ever recorded earthquake in the contiguous states occurring there on February 7, 1812. It was so violent that it made the Mississippi River flow backwards, and permanently changed its location and course to what we know today. The people who lived there at the time must have thought it was a Biblical apocalypse. Sinkholes, geysers, giant rifts swallowing up barns and livestock, along with unearthly noises and violent ground shakes. Who wouldn't think the world was ending in fire and brimstone?

Being from California, I thought I knew earthquakes. I had become accustomed to "little shakers" so much in my childhood that I hardly noticed them, other than remarking that the draperies were swaying or the water in the fish tank was sloshing back and forth. I had also been through a "big one," waking at 6 am on February 9, 1971, thrown out of bed to the floor, and rolling back and forth across the room for a minute or so during the Sylmar quake, epicentered 120 miles away. But here was a giant zero in my geologic knowledge! Missouri isn't anywhere near the "Ring of Fire" I learned about in school. Here was the physical evidence of the biggest cataclysmic rocker ever, laid out before me, complete with visual aids and historical markers, nowhere near California! I was stunned.

The wedding was lovely, the reception was friendly and tasty (though a little heavy on the Jell-O salads as I recall--it's a Midwest thing), but my mind kept creeping back to the rest stop at New Madrid. Since then, I've seen the National Geographic and History Channel specials on the New Madrid fault and the 1811-12 quakes, and read first-person accounts, all breathtakingly horrific in detail and stunning in ignorance of what was really going on underneath the ground.

How humbling it is to discover you don't know everything you think you know. And how arrogant it is to look back at historical events and laugh at the misperceptions of the people who lived through them. Context is everything. Salem was infested with "witches" in 1692, their distorted visions now believed to have been caused by a psychedelic mold similar to LSD on the rye crop that overly-wet year. The scientific facts may change with historical distance, but perceptions drive the reality of behavior in the time the events occur. That can't be changed.

I seem to have digressed. Happy Valentine's Day to all, whatever memories it brings to you.

On hold with the IRS...Strauss & Mozart

The Internal Revenue Service is trying mightily to woo the public, if my morning phone call is offered as evidence. The recorded messages were not too annoying. The hold music selections were The Blue Danube and Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (and don't I just feel so smug that I know that)! Everyone who answered the phone stated their full name and employee number first, and spoke in tones usually reserved for members of the mental health professions. They...were...all...so...calm.

As usual, the fates gave me an agent with an Indian accent, so I had to keep asking her to slow down and repeat everything, and I eventually got the information I needed. I don't owe extra tax, but I do have to file two more obnoxious and confusing forms.

It's starting to snow and I'll be losing my internet connection soon, so it's back to wrestling with the taxes.

Deep in the Heart of Taxes

It's time to stop procrastinating and get started on the dreaded income tax. I tried out a couple of software programs online this morning and picked one that doesn't frustrate me too much, meaning it doesn't make me actually yell out loud while I'm actively using it.

It will be complicated this year, as I took early IRA distributions to pay for the breathtaking medical expenses. Both calculations will require finding and deciphering head-spinning instructions, and then there are the usual business income and expenses, and Bill's overseas ship incidentals. I know that I could avoid the flying piles of paper and adding machine punching if I did all of this bookkeeping monthly, but I decided a few years back that I really would rather just do it in one all-out annual effort. Why should I get all fatoushed every month, when I could postpone it into just one giant two-week aggravation in February or March?

I'm one of those nuts that supports the Fair Tax (knowing of course, that it will never happen--I'm not that crazy). It's a national sales tax, and has the added benefit of abolishing payroll taxes, corporate income taxes, the IRS and the entire bureaucracy surrounding it. It taxes consumption, not production, which seems like a much better idea to me. It even encourages recycling and reselling, as goods are only taxed once, when they are new. Heck, I'd even go for a Flat Tax, if it just did away with all the paperwork. I realize there are problems with all systems of taxation, and though every politician promises "change," it only gets worse with a new crop of incremental tweeks each year. Around this time of year, I become a cranky anarchist, thinking that the only way to fix things like taxes (or education, or social security, or medical insurance, for that matter), is to abolish the whole system and start all over again.

When I was working for my accountant, there was a reproduction on the wall of the very first income tax form. On line 1, you wrote down your gross income. On line 2, you calculated 1% and sent it in (if you made more than $100,000 your tax was 2%). I'm sure in 1919, it must have seemed simple and innocuous, and not at all like the beastly monster it has become. Sometimes I think I would pay them whatever they wanted if they just sent me a bill instead of making me fill out all these blasted forms.

Biochem for Dummies

Looking over my genomics profiles, I wish I had paid more attention in Biology 1, 2, and 3, thirty years ago. Even if I had, would I remember any of it? Probably not. I've been re-introducing myself to the basics of biochemistry this weekend, with a little success.

At least I now have the ability to decode most of the information into plain English, and then confirm it with secondary and tertiary sources on the Internet. It is fascinating, if somewhat disconcerting, to read about the damage I've done to my body in the course of living almost 55 years. Considering how much "fun" I've had in that context, I'm actually in pretty good shape.

These "snips" (single nucleotide polymorphisms), are not inherited--they are identified mutations of the gene mitosis codes, theoretically due to exposure to pollution, pesticides, solvents, drugs, carcinogenic substances, heavy metals, toxins (biological and chemical), and free radicals circulating in the body. Then there are the enzymes that detoxify all the bad substances in the body, and how efficiently they are working. I now have a pretty accurate picture of what went wrong and what might have triggered my cancer, and what is going on now with my heart, bones, hormones, liver, and gut. Whether or not interventions can be made to slow any problems or even improve my overall health is still supposition, but I'm willing to give it a try.

The good news is that whatever the effects are of improved nutrition, dietary supplements, exercise and other lifestyle factors, they can be objectively monitored and measured via traditional scientific methods. The prior genetic damage can't be undone, but perhaps further damage on other pairs can be avoided. The enzymatic efficiency can be quantified to see if it's getting better or worse. Levels of "good" estrogen and "bad" estrogen can be compared to this baseline measurement in six months to see if they are getting better or worse.

This approach pleases me. It gives me the feeling of doing something positive towards improving my own health (other than just vague imprecations to "eat more fish and vegetables"), and it can be objectively verified to be working or not by real data. I can keep my inate skepticism at bay with a program like this, at least until I see the results.

********

For those who have asked: GENESIS is an acronym for Genes, Environment, Nutrition, Exercise, Stress, Inflammation/Immunity, & Spirituality. See? That's pretty benign, not quite a "Dr. Evil" scenario is it?

Long-distance marriage

We're almost midway through Bill's tour of duty. This is usually the point where I have adjusted to him being gone, where I am fully into the swing of activities that define my "woman alone" life, as opposed to my "wifely" life. I eat whatever I want and whenever I feel like it. I sleep on my own schedule. I do what I please, go where I want, run my own life without consultation with or consideration of another. Yes, it's really all about me right now, but I'm not entirely comfortable with it this time.

For many years when the kids were growing up, his schedule was 10 weeks home and 10 weeks away working. It would take about 3 weeks for everyone to settle down into the new routine when he left, and about 3 weeks more to adjust when he came home. Sometimes it was really hard. We worried about how it affected the kids, if they felt abandoned, or how I was by necessity always relegated to the status of disciplinarian parent, while Bill always got to be the indulgent dad, coming home with presents and no ongoing issues. We rationalized it by thinking that most dads only get to see their children for a few hours at night before bedtime, while Bill got to be a full-time dad on his 2 1/2 month vacations. In the end though, we weren't going to change our weird lifestyle. It was just what we did and how we lived.

I'm sure some people in our insular rural community suspected that the very existence of Bill was a myth, a pretend story to cover up some unimaginable tale of immorality or depravity. There were hints of that kind of gossip, that insidious fuel of small-town life. If anything, the kids were mortified at times that we were a committed couple, still married to each other, as if that made them objects of curiosity and derision in a population where multiple divorces and unmarried parenting was unfortunately all too common. I was dismayed about the local culture, seeing betrayed wives excoriating faithless husbands and their new floozy girlfriends in the local paper, and large families of siblings, each with a different father.

"Why can't you two just be normal?" I remember teenaged Juli wailing. "Why can't I just go live with my father on the weekends?"

Somehow we worked it out, I don't remember how. Some years I thought I simply couldn't do it anymore, that in order for our marriage to survive, Bill would have to find some other way of making a living, I would have to give up being a stay-at-home mom with part-time jobs and we would become a struggling two-career household instead. Other years, we just lived in 10-week chunks without thinking about it. Then sometime in the late 1990s, I just decided to stop mourning the loss of a "normal" life and embrace the opportunity that gave me a chance to live two different lives simultaneously.

About that time, I became the object of envy in my circle of friends. "I wish my husband would go away for 3 months so I could learn to like him again," one woman confided. "After 25 years, he's getting on my nerves!"

It's true. If we had to be around each other continually, we probably would get fed up with each other's idiosyncracies. He gets impatient and stubborn. I get obsessive and have an extremely short attention-span. Luckily, I am also blessed with a selective short memory and general optimism, so every time he comes home, we get to begin again. It doesn't matter what arguments we had before he left, because I've already forgotten them. The excitement of the reunion and the strangeness of being around each other again after a long absence means we get to redefine the parameters of our interactions. There are many years of shared memories, but plenty of new information to share for the first time. It keeps me interested, because we've changed and yet, the bedrock of respect for and loyalty to each other in the relationship is still the same.

Of course, it's different now too, without the company of our kids to keep me interested and engaged. It is lonely at times, and I miss the dynamic of the family life, even with the inevitable drama and emotional uproar of all those personalities trying to coexist. But mostly, I miss my partner, for all his qualities and faults. We may be halfway through his absence, but I haven't found my rhythm yet, and I'm still fussing and fighting it.

Dogs as Reckless Teenagers

Sometimes I think my dog is a furry, retarded child. Dogs don't plan ahead, see danger or assess the consequences of their mindless, instinctual actions. Dogs just do whatever pops into their walnut-sized brains at the time.

Yesterday Echo and I were exploring up behind the house on our daily perambulation, and I decided to go up a trail I hadn't been on before. She bounded ahead, while I picked my way through the deep leaves and fallen trees on the seldom-traveled path. It got steeper and narrower as we climbed, and finally the path just got too difficult to continue, so I turned around and started down again. Echo, however, caught a scent and continued up the hillside above me, and when she was done sniffing, she decided to come straight down the steep slope to meet me.

I could see exactly what was about to happen--there was a sheer drop behind me, she would get going too fast on her four legs and start to slide, and inevitably shoot past me out of control and over the cliff! I lay down across the trail on my stomach, wrapped my legs around a tree, all the while talking to her in a calm voice "slow down, slow down," and as she shot towards me, I grabbed her collar, blocked her chest with my arm, spun her around and whumped her down beside me. I held her firmly around the neck while her dangling hind end scrambled back up onto the path.

Whew! The split second that had turned into a slow-motion movie resumed normal time. It worked perfectly, just as I had planned, and it was only afterwards that I realized I had only that one chance, and it could have gone much differently and ended badly. While I thought about that, I scolded her, and she leaped to her feet and wagged her tail triumphantly.

Now you're going to scold me, aren't you? But somehow, I knew exactly what to do without thinking about it, without having any time to think about it. I lowered my center of gravity, hugged the ground and secured myself first--there was never any chance that I was going to go over the precipice with her. I made the catch and it worked! Hooray for me! Is this what wide receivers experience in the Super Bowl? It was downright exhilarating.

But I don't think I'll take that particular path again, and certainly not with Echo. When I told Bill about it on the phone this morning, he knew exactly which place I was talking about--he sometimes sits out there waiting for deer to appear.

"Makes you wonder what she does when she's out by herself," he sighed. "I wonder if she'll ever grow up," sounding just like any father of a teenager.

Yoga & Bad Dreams

I actually hauled my sorry bod out to yoga class last night. My balance is terrible, I still wobble like a drunken, one-legged shore bird and I can't do what everyone else in the class seems to do with ease. But it wasn't really bad, in fact at times it felt good to just stretch. I was able to have a range of movement that is much improved from the last time I went to class. And I was able to support myself on my arms for the first time.

Once again though, the mental part escapes me. It's so very boring. I know, I know...I'm supposed to be concentrating on my breathing and quieting my mind. But the insipid music leads to wool-gathering leads to making lists of things that need to be done, leads to whatever needs to be worried about or figured out. I shake myself back into the zone, only to find a minute later I'm whirring around in my head again like a mindless hamster on an ever-spinning wheel. It's as bad as factory work for keeping the mind occupied.

Then for some reason I woke up at 2 am in a bad sweat, with pounding heart and one of those "chasing" dreams. This time I was chasing Alex, who was chasing Echo, though I was doing a bad job of it, with one shoe on and one shoe off, alternately loping and hopping madly through a parking lot in the rain, trying to get to a giant tour bus driven by my cousin, Francie. So what the heck is that all about? After an hour of tossing about, phoning my kids (it was 11 pm on the west coast, why not?) and thinking about getting up, I just gave up and got up.

I'll probably have to nap this afternoon to make up for it, but it was better than just lying there being as bored in bed as I am at yoga.

Spitting in tubes and resulting conundrums...

For the past month, I've been waking up, rinsing my mouth and spitting 3 ml. of saliva into test tubes for estrogen levels testing. Today, I collected the last sample, and am waiting for DHL to come and pick up my frozen spit for transport to the lab.

My first results from the genomic tests taken in January were emailed to me yesterday. It's going to take me awhile to digest this 56-page report (with even more accompanying detailed attachments), and the biochemist who has coordinated all of this testing will be calling me tomorrow morning to help explain what it all means.

I have not mentioned this before, because it all sounds so strange to me. It's either incredibly exciting or terribly embarrassing to be part of this project called GENESIS, suggested by my insurance provider back in December. Genomic testing could be either the cutting-edge future or the stupid nonsense of alternative-medicine pseudoscience. I have been highly skeptical through the whole process, monumentally nonplussed, waiting to see what the results are before committing myself to a plan of action that either embraces this newest "technology," or propels me screaming back into the arms of traditional medicine.

There are problems with both approaches. I have discovered that the practice of medicine, and specifically the business of cancer, is based on large-scale, statistical studies of groups of patients. Survival rates, treatment protocols and oncologists' recommendations are all predicated on the supposition that an individual cancer victim can play the percentages like a gambler in Vegas and have a probability of beating the reaper, at least for the first five years.

But then there's this genetic marker thing out there too, slowly gaining acceptance in the traditional medical environment, as seen in the new Oncotype DX test that my oncologist ordered that statistically predicted that I was at low-risk for recurrence.

GENESIS takes it even a couple of steps further, by mapping specific genes and identifying SNPs (pronounced "snips," which stands for "single nucleotide polymorphisms)." Those SNPs are variations in the genetic code that occur only at certain places on your chromosomes, and everyone has them--it's what makes us different from each other. Some SNPs have no effect on our health, but others can predispose us to disease or influence our response to a specific food or drug. Or so goes the argument.

It certainly sounds reasonable, but on the other hand, it also sounds like B.S. to someone accustomed to traditional scientific methodology. The objective truth is most likely somewhere in the grey area between so-called personalized treatment and statistical group probabilities. No one really knows where genetic research will lead. Will this infancy of genomic predictive factors become the standard norm in coming years as more is discovered and confirmed, or be discarded on the heap of plausible ideas that just didn't prove out?

By agreeing to be part of this project and having the initial testing done, I have willingly put myself in the position of having to eventually choose between an unproven new idea and a flawed-but-accepted treatment regimen. Either path could either extend my life or kill me anyway. I recognized that this was the danger when I first decided to be part of it.

I kept thinking throughout the process that I wouldn't be forced to choose, that I could walk between the new and the old and find a happy medium that would maximize the best aspects of both approaches. But now, looking at my test results at first glance, I realize that it was inevitable that I would eventually have to make a decision that comes down to literally betting my own life.

I'll continue to gather more information as the process unfolds. But I am no longer confident that I can play the odds at the same time I am exploring supposedly new frontiers. I'm going to have to decide what I believe and what I will do to take responsibility for my own future health. And back up that belief and responsibility with my own life on the line.

But what other choice would I have made? The person I am demanded that I at least question the status quo, and challenge the accepted, normal path. The optimist in me, the rebel in me, the faith-in-the-future me made it impossible to turn away from a possible opportunity that the new way might be a better way.

It's almost worthy of a classic tale of character flaws and hubris (or more realistically, a sappy mini-series about good intentions gone bad). I have a small amount of time in which to decide, and in the end, only the passage of more time will determine if I chose well or poorly.

Tornado in Tennessee, but not here

When we first moved to TN about 2 years ago, my mom would call whenever bad weather was in the news. To forestall any worry out there, we are fine this morning in the northeast corner of the state. It looks like those poor people out in western TN have a massive cleanup ahead of them though. The city of Jackson, between Memphis and Nashville, was hit very hard.

It does feel like "tornado weather" here -- unseasonably warm, very humid and low pressure on the barometer. Yesterday on my daily dog walk, I became so overheated I had to leave my hat, gloves and jacket on the trail to be picked up on my way back home. The thermometer said 70 at noon, and that was a new record high for early February in this area.

We don't have enough flat land around here for a tornado to really get going and pick up speed. Too many geographical features break up the formation of twisters, and we have the hills and mountain ridges here. If anything, we are more likely to have an earthquake here than a tornado. (I recently found out that this silly round house is built on a flexing earthquake "pad," as the man who built it was from California).

So, no worries here, just an unusual tropical heat wave.

Someone who agrees with me!

Finally, an explanation that makes sense!

The Kingsport plastic surgeon thinks the pain I am experiencing on the right side is a suture that either didn't dissolve, or was poorly placed where it pulls on the muscle whenever there is movement. He explained that these stitches are put in there to tack the alloderm (a mesh-like matrix to support the implant) to the chest wall muscle. My implants are actually under the muscles, in a "pocket" formed with the alloderm, not riding on top of the muscle as I had thought.

He was just as unhappy with the cosmetic results as I am (as opposed to UVA, who said "Well, most women would be happy with your result!)" Then he surprised me: "If I were you, if I were a woman, I'd be really upset with the way it looks here!" he sighed, referring to my cleavage. He thinks they didn't place the implant far enough to the center on the left, causing the "pooching out," and they sutured it too tight on the right, causing the "puckering in" there. He says this can be easily fixed. (UVA said the right could be fixed, but said nothing about the extra flappiness on the left).

Although he seemed hesitant in "taking over" someone else's project, I told him that while I was happy that I had the reconstruction done at the time of the mastectomy, I really would rather have any "corrections" and the nipple reconstruction done locally, so that if there were problems and follow-up visits, I wouldn't have to travel 600 miles each time. Also, I was not comfortable with the attitude that I should be grateful that I look good in clothes (never mind how I look naked to myself), and was getting frustrated with the large-scale clinic atmosphere up there. The fact that I never see the same people when I go means I have to explain everything over and over again each time.

This doc took the time to explain things to me, agreed that it doesn't look good, and he can fix it so it looks pretty. "After what you've been through, you deserve for it to look good, not just okay," he said. I agree.

We decided to give it another month to let muscles loosen up and relax a bit. I can start to work out with weights now, (he assured me I won't damage anything), and if I'm still in pain then and want him to find that annoying stitch, loosen the encapsulated stiffness around the implants and fix the cleavage, we'll schedule an outpatient surgery then. Recovery would be about 2-3 days.

I also asked him about "what happens in 10-15 years when these implants fail? Am I going to have to go through all this again?" He said no, the hard part was over, it was just a matter of changing out the implants, like putting on a new set of tires. It's an analogy I can live with. I think I've found my guy.

***

For Judy in Texas: (and all others who wonder "Whatever happened to poor old Bill?)"

Bill is doing just fine, tooling around the ocean and exotic Oriental ports-of-call. He is almost half-done with his four-month tour of duty on his somewhat secret ship on their very secret mission. We email each other daily, and he calls whenever he is in port. By the time he gets home in mid-April, my "honey-do" list for him will probably run three pages!

Getting used to it?

While I'm not there yet, I can anticipate a time when this really will all be behind me. I am getting glimpses of a feeling of permanent change that maybe, someday, won't be so profound. The sheer shock of seeing myself in a mirror hasn't worn off yet, but the whole-ness of my body is starting to become real again in my head.

It's still weird, don't get me wrong. When I lie on my back my "breasts" point at the ceiling instead of falling into my armpits. I still feel like a Barbie doll in dress-up clothes (though, with a added middle-aged abdomen, unfortunately) when I think about it, but I am starting to think about it less. I am just a little less self-conscious in public, without constantly thinking that everyone can tell that I've been re-built. If it weren't for the fact that I anticipate and experience pain with each movement, there might be whole hours that don't involve self-absorbed rumination about how life will be from now on, what I am or am not capable of doing.

I guess what saying is that I don't feel so damaged, so mutilated anymore. I'm getting comfortable enough these days to stop dwelling on it, every minute of every day. I'm slowly assembling a new picture of myself, as I am now. I am starting to forget what was and how it used to be, and the comparisons are fading because I no longer trust my memory of the old body image. This is the vessel that is here and now, and it is starting to overtake what was.

This must be progress, yes?

Daily walking

Today, Echo and I climbed up to the western ridge of the property. Everytime I go up there, I want to build a house up on top of that hill. As I bushwack through the brambles, I'm searching for a way to build a road, looking at the steepness of my climb, trying to figure out how we would ever carve out a driveway that was navigable or practical. A drilled well and the septic system would probably cost as much as a house, and the cost of grading a road up that hillside would probably exceed both.

Coming down the path this morning though, for the first time I considered siting a house tucked into the hillside itself, overlooking the back of the pond. Having walked all over this up and down property of ours (except for the places where I'd need climbing gear, ropes and a belay), I realize that there is a reason people choose to live in the "hollers." Up on the ridges, I can hear the noise of the highway, three miles away. Snuggled in the notches, it's markedly quieter. Maybe a house could be built halfway up the ridge, to take advantage of the quiet and the view?

Winter is coming to an end, I can breathe it in. The woodpeckers are out making a racket in the trees, tiny bits of green are poking out of the dead leaves at my feet, getting ready to explode into renewed growth. Along the road the past two days, new baby calves are appearing, peeking out from under their mothers udders, staring curiously at the strange creatures striding by, woman and dog.

It is supposed to get warmer and rain this week, which will put a damper on our long daily walks. Tomorrow's routine will have to be short and early in any case--I have an eye exam and finally a consult with the plastic surgeon who can hopefully tell me why I am still in constant pain. If there is no reasonable explanation or quick fix, I think I will ask for a referral for physical therapy, to see if that might give me some relief.

I'm glad I have the excuse of the dog to walk each day. It's undoubtedly good for my body and spirit to be huffing and puffing up these hills in the clean mountain air, and it's a daily "chore" that gives discipline and structure to each day. If I didn't have Echo "nagging" me every morning, I might not drag myself out there to see and feel the changes each day. As it is, once I get moving, I'm glad to be outside, senses aware and alive.

Where did that 10 pounds come from???

The last thing my surgeon said to me at my exit appointment in November was "Don't gain weight!" Not only is obesity a risk factor for breast cancer, but gaining weight after having breast cancer increases the chance of recurrence by some exponential percentage. No problem, I thought. I've got this down. I lost 30 pounds last spring, I am a fat-burning machine, I exercise daily. I can go and sin no more.

Today, 3 months after my mastectomy, all of a sudden there's an extra 10 pounds on my scale. I'm walking 1-2 miles a day, doing my stretching exercises, eating small portions. What happened here? My metabolism has ground down to a crawl, I'm craving sweets and starting to pack on the pounds again. I've developed those floppy "wing things" under my arms (how attractive, and just in time for those summer fashions)! I keep thinking if I could work out with my weights I could get this under control again.

Whatever it is, it's annoying and it can't be allowed to continue. I'm making a big pot of skinny chili today and going into Zen-mode again. Don't tempt me with your Super Bowl snacks, your Valentine's Day bon-bons, your Easter jelly beans.

I am a fat-burning machine...I am a fat-burning machine...

An "L" Day

It's a laundry, library, lawyers, and "life is good" day.

The laundry will be able to be done at home, for the first time in many months. Our well now has sufficient water, thanks to the rain we've gotten, and the septic drain is clear, thanks to the emergency excavation and unclogging in December. No more trips to the laundromat!

The library trip will signify that I am ready to commit to a regular schedule of visits again, ready to assume an obligation, a two-week chunk of reading that has to be returned on time.

I woke up this morning thinking I need a different lawyer. The one I spoke to in September is dismal at returning my calls, I still don't know if that firm will actually take on my litigation, and it's time to either get going on this or find another attorney to represent my case.

"Life is good" is just that. I'm feeling the fog of ennui lifting, I'm getting a little more motivated. Today is the first day of a new month, which means administering dog meds, furnace & septic maintenance, checking the house systems and other regular homeowner chores.

Moving forward again...

Anxiety at the card rack...

I find it so stressful to shop for birthday cards. Standing there, perusing rows of sentiment, sarcasm and scatalogical un-funny jokes, I am overwhelmingly flumoxed. Where to begin? What's appropriate? Who am I shopping for again? Why does this card cost so much?

There are a score of birthdays coming up--friends, nieces, in-laws, children, more friends. I suddenly realize that almost everyone I know has a birthday this spring (does that signify June weddings? I'm not sure). I've seem to have surrounded myself with people who were born in February and March. I married someone whose relatives were all born in February and March. And then there's April and May too. I hadn't even gotten through the list when I started thinking about those birthdays added in as well. Then there's Mother's Day and Father's Day and graduations and weddings. The year, marching onward in my head, cards and more cards, raining down from the sky in my head, like leaflets dropped from a plane.

I've tried the email cards, without success. It's just as annoying to sit at the computer searching for the right tone, the right greeting, as it is to stand in the aisles at the drugstore, physically opening and refiling paper cards for an entire afternoon.

Some of my friends have embraced the hobby of making their own cards. They are singular works of art, handmade paper art. I am impressed and more than a little intimidated by the thought of setting out to create my own cards. It makes me tired just contemplating the angst and effort it would require to start still another creative activity, complete with stampers and foil embossers and glitter powder and ink pads, all which would need to be bought and organized and stored somewhere, refusing to be found whenever there was a birthday coming up.

When we were kids, my brother and I would walk up the hill to the neighborhood drug store and sift through the racks looking for the perfect card together. One year we chose one for my father that we thought was oddly funny, something with a dog and a fire hydrant I recall, that we didn't really understand. My mom made us take it back and exchange it for something more appropriate. We were confused because we really didn't understand why (until she explained it), and then we were just appalled at our own ignorance. I remember being completely embarrassed by my lack of knowledge about the symbolism, and horrified that my father would have thought that the card (and by extension, his children) were stupid.

So, I stand there for hours, seeking the cards that not only carry the burden of a sincere, thoughtful birthday wish, but the cards that also say something about me, the sincere, thoughtful, (intelligent!) person who sends it.

If that's not the ultimate in self-absorbed behavior, I don't know what is. Sheesh. Maybe I should get a grip--sometimes a birthday card is just a birthday card, right?

Healthy Anger?

Several "alert readers" (a nod to Mr. Funny, Dave Berry) have told me that I sound depressed. On the contrary, I think I'm in a mental state of fire-breathing, nail-spitting anger these days. I do not feel sorry for myself, wallow in woe or weep at no provocation anymore. I'm just irate that I can't do what I want to do--prune trees, lug boxes, toss a saute pan, for example.

A shrink once told me that depression is just anger turned inward. I'm all about anger expressed outwardly, stomping through the house, muttering and sputtering as I attempt simple tasks and then am forced to abandon them. Is that healthier? The only witness to my irritation is the dog, and she's secure enough to realize it's not directed at her. Maybe if I can vent with abandon before Bill comes home, I won't feel the need to pick a fight with him when he does reappear.

I prefer to think of this irate frustration as a positive step toward reclaiming my life, the same kind of impulse that rouses us from our beds after 3 days of flu, to go take a shower, change the sheets and eat a steak instead of a bowl of soup. Enough! Shake off the blahs, get back to business!

If there's anything that this experience has taught me (please note that I am symbolically rolling my eyes here, touting "life-lessons gleaned from catastrophic brush-with-death-and-despair, how droll"), it is that the physical adjustment and the mental acceptance leap-frog each other throughout each stage of the process. The old Two Steps Forward, One Step Back. I just never know whether I'm taking the forward or backward steps while I'm doing it.

For the moment, I'm going to embrace the anger and enjoy it. (And heaven help anybody who gets in my way today).

Dreams

I am not a big dreamer. Whether I wake instantly or drowsily, I rarely remember dreaming, although people who have an active subconscious in their slumber-lives assure me that of course I'm dreaming, I just must not be aware of it. I think I've trained myself out of it.

I was tortured with nightmares in my late teens and early twenties. Never so much that I became an insomniac, but just enough that I must have told my brain to shut up, to delete those files before I awoke in the morning. Instead, I wake up with ideas. Presumably, they are fueled by whatever dreams I had, I just don't have the original source to refer back to.

But this morning, I woke remembering the outlines of a narrative story, complete with a title: "The Fraternal Order of..." (a one-syllable name, that now I can't recall). Upon regaining full consciousness, the characters and story were gone, leaving only the knowledge that I did indeed have a full-on, clever drama playing in my head last night.

Pruning Trees & Politics

I woke up this morning thinking about pruning the apple trees down by the pond. Yes, mom, I know that no one over the age of fifty has any business being on a ladder, and of course I don't have the strength to wield saws or pruning shears yet. Maybe next month.

Last January, Alex and I started what I had thought would be a 3-year plan on getting those old trees back into shape. As I walk down each morning, the branches that should be taken off this year glare at me accusingly. I itch to remove them. Cut out the deadwood and crossing limbs. Give the tree light and room to grow. Eat big, juicy apples next summer.

I feel the same about politics. I know I said I was just going to go do my civic duty and forget about it, but I'm still sighing and shaking my head over the absurdity of it all, just like the apple trees. I spent last evening catching up on the news and commentary, and trying to rekindle some interest at least in the process and the unique tenor of this ka-razy presidential race.

Instead, I found the best piece I've read lately on the subject, by one of my very favorite authors, Andrew Ferguson. If you'd like a little history and a little chagrin over what our political process has become, as well as seeing some of the best writing ever done, you can view it at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/014/649xhmla.asp.

And so, on to more doable tasks...

Wake up late, behind all day

I slept way late this morning, and now I'm late walking the dog too. Lunch will be late, because my stomach won't wake up until this afternoon, the sun will go down before I'm ready, and I'll go to bed too late to get up early tomorrow morning. My circadian rhythm is all discombobulated. I'm stuck in alternating diurnal and nocturnal sleep patterns, without any structure to regulate my life. Without outside influences like a job to go to or a husband who expects meals at regular intervals, I am sliding into a hermit-like, selfish, drifting bliss of "whenever." This can't be healthy.

MaryAnn brought Jacob over last night and he moved boxes and bins that are too heavy for me upstairs and downstairs. Now I no longer have to trip over tool boxes in the living room or trek down to the basement for things that are needed in the loft! I am so grateful to him for doing this, and so resentful that I cannot do it myself--I was the one who put all these things there in the first place, and now I can't even shove them around with my feet, let alone my useless arms.

One of the reasons I opted for implant surgery rather than an autologous reconstruction (using the muscles and fat of my own body to form new "breasts"), was the lengthier recovery time and the fact that I would need those core muscles to continue to have what they called "an active lifestyle." Unfortunately, it's not turning out the way I expected, and I still don't have any physical strength to do the things I consider to be normal in the way of daily function.

Without the body working at what I consider to be even a minimal level, I can do nothing but read and sleep. And the more I read and sleep, the less energy I have, hence the more reading and sleeping I do, etc. A vicious cycle of sloth. Yes, just listen to me whine.

Thank heavens that I have a demanding dog who needs to be walked everyday! She's nosing my hand as I type, so I'd better go try to be the person my dog thinks I am, instead of sitting here blubbering about things I cannot change.

Mother Worry

Having come this far and resolving my immediate crisis, I now have the time to actively worry about how this will affect my children.

A mother who has had breast cancer now impacts their lives in a way that no mother would ever want. Though it's no fault of my own, I still feel guilty that I have passed along a curse that will hang over their lives. They are now both at increased statistical risk for developing reproductive organ cancers during their lifetimes, but they could also be denied future health or life insurance, just based on my history.

Juli has an appointment at the University of Washington next week, for a risk-assessment workup. She has no health insurance (nor does Alex, for that matter), but Bill & I think it is imperative that we try to protect her from whatever impact my disease will have on her life. If she is indeed at higher risk, there is a possibility that she might be able to become part of a study to track young women with a similar profile, and her ongoing care might be paid for. If not, we will pay for it, and do it gladly. It almost feels like a penance.

We have been told that young women don't get breast cancer, or if they do, it is extremely rare. But the evidence is mounting that this just isn't true anymore. The research shows that the fastest-growing group of breast cancer patients is in women between 30-40. One could argue that better detection methods are responsible for this demographic, but the fact is that mammogram screening doesn't work in women under 40--their tissues are too dense to see anything. Ultrasounds and MRIs can sometimes detect problems in young women's breasts that mammography cannot. But they are expensive, and not practical as a wide-net screening tool. Perhaps Juli can be more closely monitored as part of a study, or perhaps there are other things they can do to help her.

Then there's the gene research. The horrifying statistic is that 90% of women with the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genetic mutation will develop breast cancer, and many of those women are in their 20s. Those gene mutations kick in at puberty, and a decade later, these women end up with aggressive, mostly metastatic tumors when they are in their 20s. The numbers of them are no longer rare, they are increasing. And if you have the mutation, does that mean that you have a pre-existing condition that no insurance will cover? There's another terror.

Men get breast cancer too. This is extremely rare (about 1600 cases per year in the U.S.), but Alex is now assumed to be at double the normal risk for developing prostate cancer, simply because I had breast cancer. Where the lifetime risk for women getting breast cancer is currently 1 in 8 (or 1 in 7 in some studies), men in general have a 1 in 4 chance of getting prostate cancer.

The research money for breast cancer has increased exponentially over the last decade, thanks to the incredible fund-raising efforts of organizations such as the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the corporate sponsorships flouting pink ribbons on everything from M&Ms to yogurt. Not so for prostate cancer, which affects twice as many men. Anyone who doubts the power of women roused by anger and spurred to community action should look at that discrepancy. When you have men holding nationwide "Walks for the Cure" and sporting logo pins (I'm thinking of several possibilities for an eye-catching symbol here), then maybe you'll see some increase on that funding. So far, most of the research money for men goes towards curing ED, not reproductive cancer. How's that for irony? But we women have sons (and fathers and husbands), and shouldn't we be advocating for them as well? If all these increasing number of women who have had breast cancer have now passed this legacy on to their sons, I suspect that this is the next population that will start showing leaping increases in cancer rates.

The kicker is that all the medical community can offer us is early and earlier detection methods--no one is talking about what is causing it. I read an article the other day about cancer prevention ("30 Cancer-Proofing Tips!") and snorted in disgust. Everyone thinks they know a little piece of the puzzle (diet, exercise, environmental toxins, etc.), but right now it's all just a Vegas dice game of chance and probability.

No one really knows what is causing it, and more disturbingly, no one on the treatment side of medicine is posing the question. Maybe it's just because I've spent the last 4 months talking to the "after" guys (the doctors you see after you've already got the disease). But for my children, I want them seeing people who are looking at the "before" side of the equation.

I was born in 1953, the year that Jonas Salk developed his polio vaccine. I have to think that there are researchers out there, working their guts out, trying to find the answer. I pray they find it in time to spare all our children.

Stories

A few recent emails have reminded me that I'm supposed to be writing about my breast cancer here. I don't think I've been consciously avoiding the subject, it's just that there is not much more to tell.

My attitude lately has been: I didn't have cancer, then I did, now I don't anymore. (And thanks to friend Joann for letting me borrow that very matter-of-fact phrase). It's strange to think of it that way, even stranger to integrate it into daily life. I've figuratively been handed my hat and coat and been told the party's over. Some party, I think ruefully, but there it is.

After the initial elation of being told "no chemo for you," and the subsequent let-down of "what'll I do now?," I sleep too much, do too little and eat probably a little more than I should. I feel like I've been gradually crawling out of a foggy miasma similar to a post-concussion recovery. Life does indeed just move on and keeps going, with or without me. I just glide through the days, listening to whatever the internal dialogue between mind and body wants to tell me.

In the meantime, I've enjoyed writing a little piece of my world each day. Memories, tickled by the weather ("Ice!") or by the anniversary of an event ("Thanksgiving Day") provide an opportunity to look at and express a retrospective view of the experiences that brought me to this point. If seems like an appropriate time for reflection on the past.

Perhaps I should be more focused on the future, but I don't feel ready to do that yet. Hauling out the old-hat boxes of what came before is entertaining to me. I get to savor the sensory feelings and reach deep for the details as I write. I have so far resisted the temptation to go back to the journals I wrote at the time these events actually happened, because I want to have the voice of perspective rather than the immediacy of original-source facts. The important part of these stories for me is what I remember as being significant, not necessarily the journalistic narrative itself. And, the discipline of daily writing provides the structure that I crave so badly while I wait patiently to regain my balance.

So I guess I'll just continue to write about whatever the spirit moves me to write about, and trust that the process of getting on with it is indeed taking place.

Seasons

It's a snow-globe out there right now. I was going to do my errands in town this morning before it was supposed to start, but my 15% chance of snow flurries just turned into 100% reality.

I'm astonished to discover that after 16 years in the Adirondacks, snow still surprises me, even in January. Growing up in Southern California gave me a particularly warped view of what weather was all about on the rest of the planet. As a child, sayings like "March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb," and "April showers bring May flowers," made no sense at all in a place that was generally 70 degrees and sunshine year round.

In my world there, January was generally sunny and cool, June was overcast and foggy, October was hot and smoky (late-summer fires are a normal part of the eco-system). And sometimes, the Santa Ana winds would blow in from the desert and I'd be shopping for Christmas trees in 90+ degree weather, or swimming in February.

One of my earliest memories as a child is of making a calendar in Sunday School. The idea was to paste square stickers of the months around the perimeter of a clock-face, grouping the winter months on top arc, the summer on the bottom, spring on the left and fall on the right. Because I had no concept of months of snow, or leaves falling off deciduous trees, I just stuck all the stickers in random places--it was all the same weather, as far as I could see. One of the more patient ladies must have explained the sequence to me, because I was given a new sheet and eventually got it right. To this day, whenever I think of a year as a whole, trying to plan things out, I see a version of that graphic calendar in my mind--January in the top left, September on the bottom right. Tennessee is just about right, very much like that calendar, with about 3 months each of Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.

It's easing off now, and the sky is lightening up. This weather front is moving on to the east. This little reminder that it is indeed winter gives me a structure and rhythm that is reassuring.

Ice!

We had ice yesterday, or maybe it was just sleet or freezing rain, I still can't remember the difference. My mountain aerie was coated with a thin film of slipperiness. An indoor day then, and duck-walking carefully whenever venturing outside with Echo. Every plant and surface was encased in a shell of clear frozen water.

The first ice storm I ever saw was in Louisiana in January of 1982. Bill and I were living in my van in a campground off the "four-lane" in Broussard, between Lafayette and New Iberia. It's not really as bad as it sounds--there was simply no housing available for the swarm of northern workers fleeing the factory shut-downs in the Iron Belt. The license plates on the roads told the story of the Carter-years migration: Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania...

Bill had come from Illinois to New Iberia in the fall, close to desperation for a job advertised in the Armed Forces News. "If you come down, I'll talk to you, but that's all I can promise," the man said when Bill called. "I've got a guy who says he's coming from New York, but I ain't seen him yet." Bill took a chance, borrowed traveling money from his mom, and upon arriving, was immediately hired as the helicopter avionics mechanic, for a helo outfit servicing oil rigs in the Gulf. (His only other job that fall had been a one-day roustabout gig with a traveling circus in Southern Illinois. When he saw that the "meals included" caloric intake wouldn't begin to provide enough energy to do the physical work involved, he quit and hitchhiked back to his parents' house).

Once he was employed, he wrote to me and asked me to come and share his life. I was on my way back to the U.S. after spending months batting around New Zealand, Australia, Fiji and the Hawaiian Islands. I loved the man and thought we had a future together, but I hesitated once I was back in California. "I have people to see and things to do, " I said, "I've been gone for most of the past year." (I am scared to make the leap, I thought).

We negotiated on the phone for a few days. Finally exasperated, Bill told me "if you're not in Houston by the end of next week, I'm flying out to get you, I can't live without you anymore." I talked it over at dinner with my old housemates from college. "Are you KIDDING?" said Rich Rohan. "Do you know how rare and wonderful that is? If anyone had the courage to say that to me, I'd already be gone!" I loaded up my worldly goods the next day and drove east.

There really was no housing available, but there were jobs aplenty. One of Bill's co-workers referred to his abode out in the parking lot of the old WWII airstrip as the "Hotel Oldsmobile." Campgrounds were stuffed to double capacity by nightfall, emptying completely during the day when everyone commuted to work. One hardy soul in our park drove 2 x 4s into the ground, wrapped black plastic around the perimeter, and crawled inside to sleep on the ground at night.

The ice came in the night, the second week in January. By morning, the landscape was turned into a fairyland of sparkling crystal, every tree branch and blade of grass coated in clear ice, each one reflecting the stark winter sunlight like a prism. I was enchanted, spending the day shooting rolls of film, recording the marvel. By the third day, it wasn't so much novel as tedious. There wasn't a plow or salt-truck in the state, driving was a life-threatening terror and I was tired of burning my fingers with the Bic lighter, trying to defrost my door locks. All those northern vehicles came prepared with an ice scraper stashed under the seat--I had never seen one--and our neighbors taught me how to use it. In the evenings, passels of children streaked through the campground playing barefoot in the icy puddles, men huddled around campfires to keep warm, women with wet, stringy hair trudged and labored and cooked. It looked like a scene out of Grapes of Wrath.

Eventually, the ice wonderland melted, and life went back to our daily routine. While Bill worked during the day, I drove the back roads of the countryside looking for a more civilized place to live than my car. We were in the odd position of having money but being homeless. Bill took a one-day job on the weekend moving hospital beds, while I cooked dinner on the Coleman stove in the hospital parking lot. Apartments had 6-month waiting lists. I stopped in a country roadhouse one night to make a phone call to a realtor who was rumored to be renting houses short-term between the sale and closing. I left the bar without finding a place to live, but with a bartending job instead.

The next day, I decided that I would start talking to small-town librarians--who else would know people in town who owned property and might be willing to rent it out? I hit the jackpot on my first trip into the tiny town of St. Martinville, and within an hour, I was washing my hair in cold water at my own kitchen sink, getting ready for my first day at work. It was a dumpy, 2nd-floor apartment on the "wrong" side of town, but it would have heat and space and we wouldn't have to stand in line to use the bathroom. I felt like we had been delivered out of the 1930s Depression, and our life could begin at last.

Ruminations on my son's writing and gender differences

I must be "getting back to normal," as my old sleep pattern is starting to reassert itself. I am staying up later in the night and sleeping later in the morning, arising this morning at a decadent 9:30.

It might have something to do with staying up too late to finish reading. How I love being so gripped by the story that my eyes race over the pages to find out what happens next! Very few authors have the knack to keep me from my beloved snoozing.

My son's writing has it, the voice and pace that makes me itch to turn the page, but I don't know if he continues to write his marvelous stories, or his eerie, dark poetry. I hope so, it was singularly thrilling to read.

Of course, every mother thinks her child is a unique talent, but I have outside confirmation--the school was so moved by the power of his writings, they called us in to discuss his so-called "cry for help," presumably revealed by his dark themes. We laugh at this now (and what did Stephen King's teachers think of his imagination, I thought?), but at the time, I was outraged and Bill was nonplussed. After a half-hour of blathering and dismay about Alex's frank descriptions of violent, bloody sword battles ("But he's a boy!" I argued, "and shouldn't we be thankful that he's also literate!"), Bill stood and asked the assembled team of principal, teacher and psychologist, "Are we done here?" and stalked out the door. "Thank you Bill, well said, just like a man-in-charge to cut through the B-S," I thought, and I followed him out of that ridiculous meeting gratefully.

I should have known something was up years earlier, when his kindergarten teacher despaired at Alex refusing to have anything to do with the unit on Teddy Bears, but worked his heart out on Spiders. I wonder how many little girls exhibited the opposite reaction in the Spiders vs. Teddy Bears controversy? Would that be a reason for concern?

Boys are different, and thank the heavens for that, I say. Before I had children, I bought all that 1970s nonsense about so-called gender conditioning, the theory being there was no great difference between the sexes save anatomy and biology. Having the real laboratory of observing and participating in child-rearing for a couple of decades, I was so glad when science stubbornly reasserted itself later and confirmed what our mothers and grandmothers already knew instinctively--there really is a brain-chemistry difference between "sugar and spice" and "snails and puppy-dog tails." Stereotyping genders in groups isn't productive when applied to individuals (as in "but that's a man's job!"), but trying to societally-condition children into exhibiting only traits that adult females find "nice," is a really bad idea. For men and women. For civilization. For survival.

My son, with his vivid imagination and visceral imagery talents is now an adult male. He writes (still, I hope) of the darkness and violence that is a deep, primal part of the male species. Yet, he continually strives for honor and responsibility, which is really the only desirable societal conditioning needed for males, I think.

Well, that and personal hygiene, with maybe some table manners thrown in...

MLK Day, 1988

I didn't realize until this morning that today was the official Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Bill mentioned in his daily email that they were paid overtime today.

The only prior MLK day I can remember with significance was in 1988. It probably had nothing to do with Dr. King, but the "festivities" actually lasted the whole week. Bill had just left that weekend on his last 3-month training cruise before graduation, I was home in Vallejo taking care of Juli (4), and Alex (19 mos), and working nights as a waitress.

On my way to the store that Monday, I discovered that my car's brakes weren't working well at all, mushy and squealing, and not stopping fast enough! I spent the morning creeping cautiously to various repair shops, only to find that they had all closed in honor of the holiday. Rats. I carefully drove back home, cursing the fates and wondering why I didn't realize it was MLK day.

Tuesday, I carefully drove to a brake shop, where they told me that my front calipers had "fallen off," I entertained the kids while they fixed the problem, then drove home feeling smug that I had taken care of car business without too much inconvenience or expense. About 2 blocks from the house though, I had to pull over because of a flat rear tire! Leaving children in car seats, I wrestled with the spare, and sweating and swearing, changed the tire. I drove back to the shop and spent the rest of the afternoon keeping kids occupied and waiting for the flat to be fixed. There now I thought, nothing else will go wrong, it's not really Martin Luther King's fault, it's just happening because Bill left, and now things will settle down again.

On Wednesday, the lawn mower quit. I suspected a fouled spark plug, and when I went to the garage to get a wrench to pull it and clean it, I discovered Bill had taken all the tools with him. I left the dead lawn mower where it stood, and huffed into the house. What else could go wrong this week?

On Thursday, the toaster oven caught fire. I put it out with the Halon extinguisher, and threw the offending appliance in the garbage when it cooled. Certainly the Curse of Bill's Departure was lifted now?

On Friday afternoon, I was running late on picking up Juli at school. I scooped up Alex and ran out to buckle him into his car seat. I ran back into the house to grab my keys and a bag of toys I needed to deliver, and made a mad dash out the door. I tripped on the welcome mat, slammed against the side of the stucco-finished entryway and fell on the shallow step, breaking my left ankle and cracking my head on the concrete. Fighting to stay conscious (yes, you really do see stars when you hit your head, I remember thinking), I lay on the step pondering my options. I think I yelled "help" a couple of times.

Is there anything quieter than a suburban California neighborhood at 1 pm? Everyone was at work, the meter-reader I had seen canvassing the area earlier was gone, no one was coming. I had a baby in his car seat, getting hot and fussy. I hauled myself up on my hands and knees, crawled that way out to the driveway, heaved myself into the car and drove to the hospital. (Thank heavens for automatic transmission, I didn't have to use my left foot on a clutch).

They put me in a wheelchair and plopped Alex on my lap as they rolled me in, a nurse called the school and asked them to keep Juli a bit longer (Resa, the Montessori school's director, brought her to me in the ER, about an hour later), and Dr. Goldberg (yep, same guy), tucked Alex on his hip while they did X-rays of my ankle and then handed him back so he could put me in a soft cast and dress the scrapes from my violent contact with the stucco. Someone drove me, my children and my car home.

The next 8 weeks were kind of a blur, but I do remember occasionally tethering one kid to each crutch for neighborhood walks, whizzing about in motorized shopping carts at the supermarket with both kids in the basket, and my brother coming up from Stanford on weekends to cook, clean and help. He also bought me a new toaster oven and revived the lawn mower. Bill's parents came out for a week and took care of the kids when I flew to Mazatlan to meet Bill's ship to spend his shore leave with him there in March.

It's now twenty years later and MLK day again. Not to be too superstitious, I think I'll just stay home and be careful for the rest of the week, if you all don't mind.

Storm Fizzle & Politics

Well, Terry and MaryAnn were right--the predicted snowstorm was a big, fat fizzle. I feel cheated, and let-down. I was so prepared to do all the right things, and then...nothing. Yes, all sorts of metaphors could be reached for here, but the one that springs to mind this morning is the political fooferah we are being forced to witness this year.

I take my citizen duties seriously. I read from all sides of the political spectrum and try to stay informed (http://www.realclearpolitics.com/ ). I vote. I write letters (now emails, thank you Internet!) to my elected representatives. I try to balance cynicism and criticism about government with an optimistic, idealistic outlook. But this "Election Season" is beginning to try my patience. What a big, fat mess. An empty promise. All show and no go.

I had great hopes this year for a rousing public discussion of issues and ideologies. With so many personalities in the mix, there was the potential for some spirited national dialogue about what the future economic and foreign policies of our country should be. The first presidential election in many decades with no incumbent or natural successor meant that we'd have a slew of new faces and new ideas. Instead, the cat-fight of who wants more "change" on the left and the spate of old (even if they are young) white men on the right has left me weary and discouraged. John McCain? Hillary Clinton? Huckabee, Obama, Romney, Thompson, Edwards, Giuliani? Oh for crying out loud, give me a break! It looks like a pack of miscreants squabbling for possession of the ball on the playground. The ones who aren't outright ideologues, wanting to be crowned monarch or slimy populists, are either inarticulate (like we need more of that?) or deemed "unelectable."

If I can't find anyone in the pack I can stomach listening to for the next 4 years, should I just put on my foil pyramid hat and go vote for Ron Paul, as my children are threatening to do? Yeah, there's some "change," right back atcha.

People keep telling me that at least it will be interesting at the conventions this summer. Oh really? They put Vick in jail for arranging dog fights, when are they going to do the same to the media, the RNC and the DNC? Shame on them all.

I suppose I will trudge down to the courthouse on February 5 and do my duty. But I'll be holding my nose when I punch the touch-screen.

Going "Dark"

I am waiting for this promised snowstorm. When it does begin to precipitate, the Internet will go down and I will be incommunicado for the duration.

I warn of this because I've gotten into a daily habit of writing this "Dear Diary", and apparently, so have many of you in reading it. If I don't post on a daily basis, someone invariably thinks I fell down on the mountain or have taken to my bed in despair. So, rest easy. The satellite just doesn't like moisture in the sky.

It is good to get away from the computer once in a great while. It's kind of like unplugging the TV during snow days and making the kids play board games instead. Or sending them outside during school vacations. A rest from the press of the tyranny of outside communication.

Dave tells me that this is what the kids call "going dark." My daughter does it all the time. She doesn't read or reply to emails, forgets where she put her cell phone or turns it off, and takes a break from all of it. I don't like it, but I sure do understand it.

Hope the sun is shining out there for the rest of you. I'll be back when the storm abates.

Hunker-Down Time

After a brief 24-hour respite of rain, another big storm is on the way. Time to get cars moved around, candles and flashlights ready, house systems geared up.

I plan to be snowed in for a few days, and that suits me fine. The house holds heat well, so even if we lose power, it will stay warm for quite a long time. I have plenty of food, new books and a warm dog, so life is good.

Snow Day Cancels Appointment

Rats. The snow last night was big, wet and sloppy. By the time I needed to leave for my appointment in Kingsport, it was sleeting on top of 3 inches of white stuff. Since I got a call late yesterday saying my records from UVA still hadn't appeared on the Kingsport fax machine, there seemed little point in risking the unplowed Tennessee highways to see Dr. Huddleston, who would need those records to figure out why I'm still having post-op pain. So, it wasn't meant to be, at least not today.

It's hard work trudging through that snow! Echo and I walked as usual, but it took twice as long. She had to sniff all the rabbit tracks, I had to concentrate on keeping my balance. A walking stick helps, turning my bipedal body into a tripod.

It's all melting now, and hopefully, this will be the extent of our winter. A little is nice. More than this is just annoying.

Enough!

I woke up this morning, determined to do something about this constant, nagging, annoying pain. My left side is benignly quiet, just sitting there, waiting to become part of my new persona. My right is still a major obstacle to feeling well and strong. Each day I wait for the aches and cramps to lessen or abate--I've tried anti-inflammatory drugs, ice packs and breathing, and nothing works. I don't have confidence in UVA's pinched nerve theory, even though the injection of local anesthetic relieved the pain temporarily. It feels deeply muscular, and for my own peace of mind, I at least need to know that something isn't horribly wrong going on in there. And I need some relief, even if it's just something that needs more time to heal.

I can't chop with a knife, open a jar, tighten a screw or move my right arm with any strength or flexibility without problems. I find myself trying to do things with my left hand (brush teeth, slice cheese), and I'm a miserable failure at these ambidextrous attempts. Time for a second opinion from someone local.

I have an appointment in Kingsport with a turkey-hunting plastic surgeon (Bill would be so pleased) on Thursday morning. I managed to get all my records from UVA faxed, so he'll know what he's dealing with. Enough waiting already! Let's DO something!

Winter Woods

Echo and I went further afield today than we've been in a long time, up behind the house and to the base of Devil's Nose. Actually, the "base" of Devil's Nose is down by the road at about 900 ft. elevation. The house is set into one slope at about 1200 or 1300 ft. The peak of the mountain is near 2300, and today Echo and I climbed and dipped along an old trail, out to a view overlooking a development in a valley to the southeast, and then hiked (she ran) up a steep slope to a clearing I don't remember seeing before. I stood in the clearing at the bottom of the last dip and looked up. The trail was at an end and it looked like the mountain filled the frame of the sky. From that point on, there was only an infinite up. We probably were only at about 1600 ft. of elevation, and that last 700 feet will have to wait for another day, another person. I like to walk, but I'm no mountain climber.

I love walking in these woods in the winter. It may look brown and grey and drab, but I revel that there are no bugs, no thickets, no leafy or thorny foliage to impede progress. No poison ivy! No sounds except the crunch of leaves and the snap of twigs, the fluttering of small birds' wings as they flush out of brush piles and distant avian calls in the far-off sky. I hear my own huffing and puffing as I trudge up the steep slopes, the pounding of my exerting heartbeat in my ears, and the distant thumpeta-thump of Echo's four feet, as she races over ground and leaps over fallen logs, just out of my sight range.

It is cold enough that the heat generated by physical exertion feels good instead of sweaty and uncomfortable. Every deep breath is dry and cool and invigorating, and the smells of the damp winter woods are clean and astringent, rather than the fecund and green smells of summer.

The house feels stifflingly close and warm at first when we return, but gradually, as the layers of coat, hat, gloves, sweatshirt come off, it feels cozy and comforting.

Time for breakfast and chores, a good start on another good day.

Why do I balk?

I have been invited to a "Survivor's Banquet," on March 11. My first gut impulse is to say "Thanks, but no thanks." Why do I balk at this identification with other women who have been through this disease, with women who have the confidence to celebrate their status as survivors?

I don't even like the word "survivor" in this context. It sounds so wimpy, so passive to me. As if something bad happened and all I did was persevere--but isn't that exactly what happened? And, I'm not sure this is something I can celebrate, embrace or otherwise share with a whole group of people. I don't feel triumphant yet, I still feel abused.

Am I suffering under the illusion that I am special, that somehow my experience is different? Am I just shy about publicly coming out of the metaphorical breast cancer closet? Is it just that I have learned to be distrustful of groups in general, after small town politics in NY? Am I feeling a bit guilty because I got off easy, and my experience seems so less traumatic than what it could have been, than what others have gone through? I examine all my feelings and don't think it's any of these things.

I rationalize. I might meet some interesting people. This might be a means to get to know people in a new town that I otherwise might never encounter. Get a grip Pam, it could be fun!

Maybe it's just still too fresh, too raw. Maybe it's just that I want to look forward, not back. Maybe I'm still pretending that this doesn't have to be what my life is about anymore, and I can go back to the way things were. Maybe I just don't want to be one of "them," I want to be "normal."

So, you see, I'm still working on the last of my five stages, acceptance of what is, of what has happened to me. I still don't accept this at all.

Hmmmm.....

Adrenaline Letdown

It has been a little more than a week since I saw my oncologist and received the news that I do not have to have chemotherapy. Indeed, chemotherapy's risks outweigh any benefits I might receive from the treatment, and statistically, I am at a very low risk for recurrence of the cancer that upended my life and smacked me around for 4 months last year.

I'm still having a hard time believing this. (Heck, I'm still having a hard time believing that this cancer happened to me at all)! I have been feeling completely exhausted this week, wondering why I am so tired, so unmotivated, unable to rouse myself to any significant activity or interest. Today, I woke up thinking that I must be suffering from the mental equivalent of the physical lethargy that comes after a spurt of adrenaline has been expended.

I've been at what daughter Juli calls "DEFCON ONE" for months, functioning robotically in a state of near-panic, going from one appointment to the next, psyching myself up for every next step, juggling logistics of the future like balls in the air, trying to keep calm and centered in the midst of mental and physical turmoil. No wonder I'm tired.

Thankfully, I have the time and permission I need to just let it all down. No one to take care of except myself and Echo (who, as a dog, will take any care or attention with unconditional tail-wagging joy). Bill is out working and enjoying it. I am home, I will get my energy back, there is time now for me to do nothing until I'm ready again.

I'm going to be all right. I'm going to be okay. Breathe.

After the storm...

It's a big blustery day, cold and clear. It rained all day and all night yesterday, a drenching pelting rain, and I can't wait to see how much water is in the pond and stream today.

Rainy days make me tired. I just couldn't rouse myself at all yesterday. I missed a second attempt at Yoga, (or as I think of it, "stork-standing"), just couldn't get enough energy to get in the car and go. Echo couldn't go out for her morning run and exploration without being drowned, and was restless and fussy as a result.

Today, I'll bundle up and trudge down to see what the world looks like after 24 hours of deluge.

First Yoga Class

In my continuing quest to quiet my mind and heal my body, I went to my first Yoga class last night. Other than a few moves I could not do at all, it went pretty well, I think. I am no stiffer or sorer than usual upon arising this morning.

Picture a wobbly flamingo, that's me. No vision of grace, no smooth transitions of peaceful, flowing, supple body (more of a grunt, stretch, ouch, stretch again), but it was a start. I am hoping for a gradual return to strength and flexibility, and a better awareness of my body's capability and utility in its new form. Yoga apparently is also all about the breathing, and I hope to do better at that too. Last night, I was just trying to get through the hour without disgracing or hurting myself, and I don't remember breathing at all!

I'll try again tomorrow night and see if this is something I can do on a regular basis. At this point, I'm willing to try anything to get my sense of balance back, even if it means feeling ridiculous and awkward at first.

Home again, hippity-hop

I had an interesting appointment yesterday with Dr. Lin and the "Plastics Crew." The source of my constant pain appears to be a nerve that got nicked, pinched or otherwise outraged during the reconstruction surgery, underneath the right breast. After locating the offending spot where it hurt the most, they injected a local anesthetic, and wow! Instant relief!

We also had a serious discussion about aesthetics. While I am happy with the way everything looks in clothes, in the naked light of day, I'm still pretty grossed-out. I don't know what I expected, but this isn't it. Dr. Lin assured me that the parts I am most concerned with, the morphed, "melty" appearance of my cleavage where one flops and pooches out and the other puckers and sucks inward, can be corrected easily, and at the same time they slap on some fake nipples. It was at this point that I realized that I am just plain tired of having things "done" to me. I feel like I've been in the outer reaches of a whirlwind, and I need some time in the eye of the storm to calm down, get used to the way things are going to be from now on. I'm still working on the "mental game," trying to find some balance and peace, now that the worst parts appear to be "over." I asked if we could just postpone any further intervention for six months or so, and deal with this later. Much later.

"Absolutely," was his reply. "Take all the time you need."

"I just want to get my strength back and give myself some time to heal in body and mind, before doing surgery again," I found myself saying to them. I was surprised at my own reaction, but that's really how I feel. I want some time to get used to the idea that this will be my spirit's vessel from now on, and I want to know how I'll feel when the constant pain of these artificial parts abates. Right now, they are just "add-ons," not part of my consciousness, other than a source of annoyance and inconvenience and visual cringing.

Let's just chill out for awhile, is my thinking. Let me get used to the idea that this experience is going to be part of my past instead of a constant present worry that has to be dealt with right now, today!

The drive home was easy, without the nagging ache under my right side. This morning, the pain is back, but not as pronounced. My mental anguish is calming down too. I don't have to DO anything now except heal and be well, and show up again in late March. That, in itself, is a relief and a blessing.

OK, Over That

Busy, busy, busy day. I guess I'm over being stunned.

Keith & I fixed the floor at Ray's house this morning. I'd say I helped, but mostly I just hovered and provided tools. I did try sawing the threshold bar with the hacksaw while he was stapling down the flooring, but that was definitely not something I can do yet. I could push the saw back and forth for the next year, but I have no strength to apply any pressure to make it cut through.
This is really going to put a cramp in the home improvement projects if this keeps up!

So I went to Walmart to pick up my tamoxifen Rx. That was a non-starter too. The insurance won't pay it without prior authorization from my physician (and just what is a prescription anyway, if not a physician's authorization to dispense drugs???), so that's all on hold until Monday.

Instead, I bought organizational shelving units for the closets--racks & drawers, for all the things I've been meaning to put away and had no place to put them away! The cost of the units about equalled all the money I got back from the latest batch of bras I returned. Perfect!

I'm off to Virginia in the morning with Echo. (She doesn't know we're going yet). I'm looking forward to a roadtrip, it's been almost 5 weeks since I've had "play-group" with the Plastic Surgery crew. Just another Monday spent with my shirt off in front of strangers. Onward.

I still can't quite believe it...

I feel like I've been in a daze since yesterday's news. I don't know how to react. It's almost as if I'm afraid to feel unrestrained joy for fear someone will call and tell me it's been a mistake and snatch it all away again. Is this it? Could this possibly be the end to this nightmare?

So I guess I get to go through all 5 stages AGAIN, this time with GOOD news? I must be in denial, I still can't believe it.

And strangely, I feel a twinge of guilt--what did I do to deserve this reprieve? There is no reason to this, nothing but a spin on the wheel of chance, a blessing of Grace that I know I did not earn by faith or works. Why do I get off with just a warning, while others get the full ticket and worse? Or is it my bonus, my consolation prize for being a cheerful contestant, a hale and hearty "what does she get to take home with her today, Johnny?"

It's very weird. After being dragged, weeping and wailing into this alternate universe, finding my way around the underworld of Cancer, learning the geography and living with demons behind my thoughts in every waking hour for 4 months--now, suddenly I've been paroled and told to go away.

Now what do I do?

No Chemo For Me!

I am stunned and humbled with good news. Oncotype testing came back with the number "6," when I wasn't even daring to hope that it would be less than 18! The results have spared me the decision about chemotherapy, as the risks of the treatment are now known to be greater than any possible benefit.

This now places me at a statistical probability of recurrence of 3-7% over the next ten years. Hormonal therapy, in the form of a daily pill of tamoxifen, is the next and last defense I will require, other than check-ups for the rest of my life.

Six months ago, without this test being available, I would have been given 3-6 months of chemo as a precaution.

Dr. DaSilva said "Go, live a happy and long life. It is not often I get to tell patients GOOD news!"

Brrrr....

Very, VERY cold (for Tennessee!) here, temperature in the single digits this morning. It will warm up this weekend, but for now, it's just bitter and windy and snowy outside.

I'm off to walk the dog early this morning, then a quick shower and trip to Kingsport. First, the oncologist's report and hopefully, recommendations at last. Then lunch with Val Donna. Then Fedex, Lowes, Walmart, etc.

Many errands to run, it will be a busy day. (All the better to keep from fretting, my dears).

SNOW!

An evil-wind was brewing last night, just when I was thinking of going into town and checking out the Yoga class. I decided to curl up with a book instead. By 10, there was an inch of snow on the ground and it's still here this morning, blowing around and giving us a little spate of winter.

People don't go anywhere when it snows here in Tennessee. When the first flurry falls, everyone goes home and waits until it melts. It's just as well they do, as no one knows how to drive in snow here. Even with just a 1/4 inch on the roads, people do crazy things and end up in the ditches. So we stay home, make popcorn and put our Netflix DVDs in the player.

I was going to take the garbage to the dump and run errands. Now, I'll just hunker down instead. Time enough to do that tomorrow when I go to the oncologist's in Kingsport.

2008

I called Genomics Health in Redwood City, CA yesterday. My test results should be in Dr. DaSilva's hands by tomorrow. That means that I will know on Thursday what the numbers say, and whether chemotherapy is probably necessary, an optional possibility, or probably not going to be helpful. It pervades my every waking moment. Despite my self-imposed non-speculation caveat, I suspect that like everything else, I will fall into the no-woman's-land of "medium-maybe." I'll just have to wait and see.

The only antidote to worry and wondering is activity. I have plenty to do, so here's my list for 2008:

Clean out the basement
Finish all the started but unfinished scrapbooks
Write down my recipes
Sell all the extemporaneous STUFF!
Get the taxes done EARLY!
Spend part of everyday outside, breathing fresh air and exerting myself
Lose that last 20 extra pounds I'm hauling around
Be cheerful
Be grateful
Be happy