Tag Archives: cancer diagnosis

Roar

Adrenal Cancer, Cancer, Family October 24, 2013 Comments: 3

CHaD performing Katie Perry’s “Roar”

If you haven’t seen the video of the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth (CHaD) patients lip-syncing Katie Perry’s “Roar” it’s worth your time to watch it. (Not sure how you could have missed it—it has over a million views on YouTube!)

Every time I watch it—or visit CHaD–I am reminded how fortunate I am that I was blessed with a full life, children, grandchildren, career, a long and happy marriage, before my cancer diagnosis. Not all of the kids who are admitted to CHaD have that to look forward to.

Our niece, Meghan Richardson, is one of the “stars” of the video. She has cystic fibrosis and gets admitted to “Hotel” CHaD a couple of times a year when her lung functions drop. She’s been going there sixteen years now—they actually saved her life when she was four months old. When we visit Meghan at CHaD, we see how much of a second home it is to her. Over the years she’s taken more control of her medical care—and I imagine there are times some of the staff wish she were less assertive, that she “roared” less.

I wish I had known how to roar over a year ago when I was first experiencing symptoms of my adrenal cancer. Granted, my treatment and outcome may not have been any different if I had been diagnosed three months earlier but I might not have felt so powerless during the time while I waited for my diagnosis. It helps to be reminded that I still need to be in charge of my health care.

Yesterday was my quarterly CT scan. The preliminary reading is that everything is stable. And now we can breathe. For another three months.

After my appointment we were going to hang around for the filming of the Piers Morgan/CNN interview with Meghan, Maggie, and Holly from the video but it wasn’t scheduled until 8:30 p.m. and we decided that watching the interview from the couch in our jammies was more appealing. Not to mention that we would be able to see the Red Sox play (WIN!!) the first game of the World Series.

There are no coincidences, we like to say around here. (Frannie, my nurse yesterday in the oncology department, happens to be in the video!) Meghan would not have been in that video if her lung functions hadn’t dropped. It was filmed on the first day she was admitted to CHaD but you would never know she was as sick as she was. That’s the spirit of the patients at CHaD—and their parents, health care providers, and staff. They are amazing. Inspiring.

It’s okay to sweat the small stuff

Adrenal Cancer, Cancer, Family September 27, 2013 Comments: 3

Change. My life has changed immensely in less than a year, since the first doctor acknowledged there was an issue with my liver or kidney—but not my adrenal gland. So much has happened since then: surgery, being diagnosed with adrenal cancer, retiring. Dealing with the idea that I have an ultra-rare cancer that I could find out at any three-month interval has metastasized, making the focus of my life fighting the disease instead of living it to the fullest. That is change.

You can’t prepare for it nor would you want to be prepared for it. Who would want to live a dismal life like that? I have a positive attitude yet I am a realist. If those cancer cells are in my body, no matter how positive I am, they will find their way into my lungs, my liver (please not my left kidney since I only have one left). That I can’t even fathom. Are we talking about someone else? Am I the one with adrenal cancer, the one who the odds are stacked against? That is change.

Ask my husband and he will say the biggest change is I am a nicer person. 

The other day my grandson said when he pulled a handful of coins from his pocket, “look, I have change.” I truly enjoy being there for those moments. That is change.

Maybe I was never fully there for those moments, always preparing for the next moment. When people say “don’t sweat the small stuff,” I get it but on the other hand I see it differently. (I prefer “life is good.”) The small stuff is what your life is made of, so why shouldn’t you sweat it? Don’t take it for granted. Watching the kids pick apples, fixing the flat tire, making the casserole for the neighbor whose father died. It’s not the birth of your child-it’s when she takes her first step or says “I love you, mommy.” It’s not the job promotion—it’s when your boss says “thanks for the great job.”
That’s what we shouldn’t lose sight of.

Our lives are like snowballs, made up of unique snowflakes, small events, that when rolled together become something much larger than the individual snowflakes that comprise them.

That’s why it’s okay to sweat the small stuff. For a lot of us, if our lives were only comprised of the big events, there wouldn’t be much to them, would there?

HGTV Addict

Writing July 1, 2013 Leave a comment

Now that I am retired, I should have plenty of time to write, right?

Instead I find myself in the same situation as some of my retiree friends—not enough time to squeeze writing into my day! I used to get more writing done before my cancer diagnosis when I was working a full-time job than I do now that I don’t have to leave the house to go to work. Not sure how that happens but I am sure there is a scientific explanation. Or more likely a psychological one. I will admit that I am more interested in what I can do to fix up the house than I am in writing. You can’t imagine how many painting projects I could be working on. I blame this on the nesting instinct, fueled by HGTV. Unfortunately I am constrained by my physical and energy limits, by my intermittent nausea, by the pain in my right arm resulting somehow from my surgery, as well as in my side where my 14 inch incision is a reminder of the cancer.

As if I needed one.

But when I am honest with myself I know it is more than that. It’s something about being able and willing to share my feelings, to commit to paper the emotions lurking inside my mind and my heart. For even though I am writing fiction, I can’t avoid incorporating who I am—don’t I need to do that for my writing to be worth the reader’s time?–and right now that person is focused on her mortality. I just can’t bring myself to let those feelings out of seclusion.

Which leads me back to my question–if I am a writer, and I mean a real writer, shouldn’t I want/need/crave to do just that?

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