The Looming "C" Can't Get Me!

I'm a bit of a wreck at the moment. It's no one thing in particular, just a culmination of days of unrest and uncertainty, being alone with my thoughts too much. I've learned that mini-meltdowns are ok. You're allowed to cry, in front of others, in the quiet of your own bed at night, in the car...in a bathroom stall. Wherever you damn well choose, at least if you have cancer. My crying jags have come in various spurts. No one thing sets me off. Today I think it was that I had such a good day with Sammy.
We spent the day hunkered down at home and he is just getting so big. He's ready to crawl, screeches all day, and smiles whenever I sing him "You are my Sunshine," which just melts my heart. My parents have set up the house now so that Bill and I have our own living area, and they have their own. So Sammy and I were visiting my Dad today and I watched as my Dad smiled and encouraged Sammy to try and crawl to him. God that boy was frustrated. He can get himself up on his upper arms and attempts to scoot, but he looks like a frog unable to get his footing. Soon though, he will get there soon. And I know we will be cursing the day he started moving. Nothing will be safe from this boy's left hook! He already tears at stuff and clings to things like fly paper. We joke that he is an octopus with the speed his hands move at at the table!
So why would a "good day" set me over the edge? Because, inevitably, in these good moments where I feel like my old self, have no awareness of the cancer that lingers inside me, I am shocked back into reality. It's like a big letter "C" sits over my shoulder saying, "No, no. No fun for you, your life is in our hands now!" Seeing my son attempt to crawl sets my mind pacing ahead, as all mothers do, thinking of them getting on the school bus for the first time, graduating from school, finding their true love, giving you grandbabies.....I am constantly reminded how fast it goes, but I feel like I have a timer set on my time with my son, that ticks incessantly in the background while I try to enjoy the little things.
Most days I am ok. Most times I can press snooze on the timer or cover it with a blanket in my mind, so I can ignore it. But then there are days like today, where no matter what I do or how hard I try, that damn cancer will not go away. I'm making a bottle, there's the big C. I am pushing a cart through the aisles of Target looking at clothes for spring, there it sits atop the clothes rack. I'm driving my car to the mall, it's waving to me in the backseat when I look in the rearview mirror. It's everywhere. I can't avoid it. Especially now with my lack of hair and array of scarves atop my head. People everywhere are aware now.
I can't sneak out to the store for alone time. I can't eat a meal in a restaurant on my own now without stares. I know, everyone means well. It's just some days I have lost my sense of self. Today is one of those days. The cold and darkness doesn't help matters and I know that the vast majority of CNY'ers is sick of the winter too. It makes us feel trapped and depressed and wondering why we live here again?
But I sit here today having a mini-meltdown because I just feel so frustrated. I go to reiki and my practitioner told me that she could sense that my spirit is done with being sick. Ain't that the truth. But she also told me it was ok to be frustrated and upset at the situation, this was not going to make me lose my positive outlook. For so long I have felt like I had to present this united front of "kicking cancer's ass!" and holding others up, that I didn't allow myself my own time to let reality hit.
Reality is hitting these days. The novelty of my diagnosis has worn off. People still offer to help still and send positive thoughts, but life has moved on. I'm in everyone's thoughts, I know that, but they have families and lives to attend to. That's the reality of cancer. You get hit by the train, but it keeps on going because it has other stops to make. You go to your appointments, you find yourself planning your schedule based on nausea/tired days versus ok days. You waste hours of your time sitting in that chair having poison injected in your veins, and praying that the poison works. You lay in bed at night, the quiet scariest of times, and push the "what ifs" away as the looming "C" tucks itself in next to you for the night. It's still there, it's always there.
Most days, I don't let the "C" win. It shows up, I push it away and carry about my business. But it's ok to let it affect you, to let it catch you off-guard, let the tears fall. You did nothing to deserve this, life is not fair. I can ask "Why" and I can crumble. But I will get up. I will not collapse into nothingness. That is what the "C" wants. I will prevail, I have to prevail. I will do it by hearing other people's stories of hope, by watching my baby play, by just living each day. There is no shame in crying, there is shame in giving up. Although I am having my meltdown at the moment, it won't last forever and before you know it, I will be saying, "We got this!"

It Goes On....

Bill and I have been having a lot of long talks lately because I have found myself thinking more and more about why I'm here, how I got to this place, and where I am going to go from here. My life was stopped in its tracks and given a fork in the road, but the choice of which way to go was made for me. Bill says I have a every right to be mad about the hand I have been dealt. But I feel that is just wasted energy. I've always been a worrier, since I was very young. My mother cursed the day I could read the "no parking" sign and basically panicked myself into a meltdown because I was convinced a cop was going to haul us away. As I have gotten older, it's only become worse. I can no longer fly on planes without tremendous panic (in my defense, a plane I was on lost engine power and had to make an emergency landing....it's hard to come back from that!). I fear the first day of school still even though I am the teacher. I worry about my sisters driving back and forth to Maryland. My anxiety hit an all-time high though once Sam was born. The joy of his birth was taken from me when he was whisked away to the NICU minutes after his delivery. The shaky shelf I had built for myself to stand on, suddenly crumbled beneath me. I held it together in the hospital as best I could. However, several times I let the cracks show. The nurses watched as tears streamed down my cheeks at some point each day. Bill held me on those moments I was in our hospital room, trying to pump for my baby that was rooms away, and I would rake back sobs. I know having a child brings forth all sorts of anxiety, even to the most well-prepared and stable of people. But this was like nothing I had experienced. I would shut my eyes to get the much-needed sleep I had been deprived of, only to have my mind turn on me. I would dream of death, dying, to me, my baby, my parents. My OCD went into overdrive to compensate. If I prayed enough, nothing would happen. I would cycle through prayers while these absurd, awful thoughts would press their way into my prayers. I would be saying a "Hail Mary" and picture my father dropping dead from smoking. Halfway through an "Our Father" there would be a little coffin floating through the blackness of my mind. Immediately I my body would react, my insides would wrench and I would heave within at these thoughts. Sitting amongst the stark white walls of the hospital room we were calling home for the week, my eyes would open wide and I would hit the wall I was staring at, all in an attempt to rid myself of the awful thoughts. Nothing helped though, I was shuffling through the days in my pajamas, convinced that once we got home things would change. They didn't.
Some of you are probably asking yourselves right now, "Why didn't she get help?" If there is one thing you should be taking away from my blog, it's that I'm an open book. My pregnancy was no different. I fought with my midwife about going back on anti-depressants, which I had abruptly stopped taking once I peed on the stick. I thought I could hack it without the meds (even though I had been on them for years at this point). Poor Bill. I would sit down to dinner with a smile on my face and by the end of the meal be crying and angry at him for no apparent reason. I was a mess. But for some reason, I needed everyone's approval to go back on my meds. I inquired with friends, family, doctors about taking drugs while pregnant. I'm not going to lie. People were harsh. For the first time in my life, I was ashamed that I needed help. Many people told me how they were afraid to even take Tylenol while pregnant, let alone an anti-depressant. So I was left to think of myself as weak and selfish. How dare I want to quiet the nagging anxious voices in my head, God was blessing me with a child after all. How could I not just take this pregnancy in stride and do what was good for the baby? So you see, even though I was honest with myself and some others, I was relegated to sitting in the "bad mommy" chair for a time-out. I guess mommy guilt can start as soon as conception. My midwives ( who I screamed about in my car one day and called "the kiwi-eating, elliptical machine bitch who was nothing like me" and the other one who wrote in my chart "Patient admits to eating lots of doughnuts) always got this look on their faces like "how dare you" when I mentioned going back on the drugs. But my doctor, god bless her, appreciated my honesty and talked to me frankly about going back on them in my third trimester to avoid the very thing that was happening to me now. But because she was the lone wolf in a pack of people who had no problem sharing their opinions about how awful a person I would be if I started "using" again, I refrained from meds until my 37th week.
By then it was too little too late. My doctor met with me in the hospital and because of Sam's traumatic birth, upped my dosage. If you know anything about anti-depressants though, they take time to kick-in. So it wasn't like I was taking a magic happy pill and light would return to my eyes that day. No, it would be weeks before anything would change. And now, I wasn't just dealing with depressive thoughts, but anxiety too.
Again, I thought the safety and comfort of my own four walls of my house would return a sense of normalcy to my life. I would be able to shut my eyes and actually sleep. I would be able to hold my baby and not have the vivid image of him not breathing flash before my eyes. I was taking my medication and I had faith that my energy would return and my happy, sarcastic self would be back. I didn't bounce back though.
I wouldn't sleep in our bedroom at first. I had to "sleep" on the couch with my hand in the baby's bassinet. I put sleep in quotes because I was often staying up until 3 in the morning just to ensure he was breathing. This did wonders for my sleep-deprived mind. If and when I did fall asleep, from sheer exhaustion, I would wake with a start and touch Sam and make him move so I knew he was alive and my nightmares had not become a reality.
So this was motherhood, I remember thinking to myself. I started thinking about friends who had more than one child and wondered aloud that they must be most stable women in the world. Surely anyone who had felt the way I was feeling would NEVER enter into this childbearing thing again. The cracks in my foundation were starting to show, but I was doing everything I could to manage them and patch them up so no one knew. Again, I was blessed, how dare I be feeling this way. I would wear pajamas all day until right before Bill was coming home. From 2 pm on, I would work like a madwoman to make sure everything looked authentic and real as a happy mom would. I'd do all the dishes, fold all the laundry, give Sam a bath, put him in clean clothes, throw on my own maternity clothes and some make-up and wait for Bill. I wanted to make sure I was still fooling him, maybe then I could fool myself. I would show him everything I had done and he would praise my efforts, but then I would basically force the baby upon him. Sam, being a little peanut still, was like a foreign object to Bill. Most fathers have a hard time with newborns because there is really nothing to relate to or interact with and we, as a society, talk about how normal this is. Yet this same society expects moms to birth a baby, try and breastfeed, live without sleep and hit the ground running within 6 weeks of their birth. I can only imagine what I would have been like had I had to take a normal maternity leave! But that's a whole other blog entry.
I would snap at Bill when he got home that he needed to take the baby. He had the luxury of working all day afterall in the Syracuse City Schools mind you, and I had been trapped at home all day with a squawking infant. He would ask to go change the laundry and I would roll my eyes. So slowly, my gig was up. I gave up on breastfeeding after two weeks. I just couldn't keep it up. I would pump every two hours, the baby would eat every three, go to sleep for an hour and I was pumping again. Not to mention he had been formula fed at first in the hospital because of his condition and you try sticking a breast nipple in the mouth of a child who had a free-flow bottle nipple for days. It ain't happening, I don't care WHAT the breastfeeding Nazis tell you. And mentally, where I was at at this point, a screaming, inconsolable infant was not going to do much for my cause. I was unraveling.
At this point, I could tell you that Bravo was my favorite channel because they didn't show infomercials until around 4 a.m. I had become a zombie that was no fun to be around. My parents came over daily to help, but they just added to my concern. One night I physically sat and watched my father breathe as he held Sam and convinced myself he was going have a heart attack that night. My mom knew something was up, but she wasn't immune to my craziness either. At least when she came over, I felt I could actually go to sleep for a few hours because I trusted her implicitly with Sam. I told myself Bill couldn't handle the baby. Only I could watch him to the extent that I felt was wise and only I knew what to constantly watch out for. I screamed at Bill if he walked out of the room on "his watch." I was becoming unbearable to live with and when he was home on the weekends, I eventually would succumb to sleep for hours. I had twisted my mind into thinking that if I slept during the daylight hours, nothing could go wrong. That theory shot the bed when Sam was diagnosed with pyloric stenosis.
At this point I remember thinking, the breakdown is about to happen. I literally laid on the fold out couch in the hospital room and said to God, "Alright, let me make it through this hospital stint and then I can have my mental breakdown." The horrible, mind-numbing thoughts creeped back in. I envisioned us in the waiting room and the doctor coming out and telling us horrible news. I would shake my head vigorously, even smack myself, to make the thought go away. But it inevitably came back in just another form. I began my praying ritual, pinched my eyes closed and begged to have happy thoughts. Let me see Sam's birthday parties, his first day of school, anything! My mind had become this dark, dismal scary place that even I was afraid to inhabit, so I was welcoming the thought of a breakdown. At least then, I thought, I can get some sleep, have some time to myself, end this nightmare. But guess what? As much as I planned for the breakdown and devised a plan of sending me away.....it didn't happen.
One of my favorite quotes is by Robert Frost, "Everything I learned about life I can sum up in three words. It goes on." Go on it does. Things may stop us in our tracks, or our hand may be forced and pushed down a path we didn't choose, but it doesn't stop, if only for seconds. I learned from the birth of my son that I am never in complete control and life is anything but predictable. My honesty didn't save me from postpartum depression. I had to get in the trenches and fight an uphill battle against it, and there were times I didn't think I would win. Those were dark times and scary as hell. I liken it to PTSD. I was shell-shocked by childbirth. But I had come out the other side, only because I fought it head-on. I told my doctor what I was feeling. I confided in the friends I knew would get it. I confessed of my thoughts to a close few. Those who reached out to me in those dark early days and told me "You're not alone, it's not as easy as people make it out to be." They are my heroes. My doctor encouraged my returning to a therapist, a place where I could say the thoughts out loud and not be afraid of judgment. I fought my way back, and I eventually got to a place where my thoughts weren't so bad, I could sleep, I could live and be a mommy. It may have only been for a short while, because then my cancer diagnosis took me out at the knees again. But I will never forget my doctor saying that sometimes going through the hard times shows us just how strong we are and that makes going through the fire a little easier the next time.
I shared my postpartum journey in hopes of helping someone, somewhere feel they are not alone. Hell, I was prepared for it, knew I was susceptible to it, and still got hit by that train. But I wasn't derailed. At times I felt like I was hanging from the caboose, but I never fell off. Everyone has the fight in them and can survive even the toughest of times.
I marveled to my husband tonight about how well we have handled the hand we have been dealt. He lost his job, we moved, the baby went through sickness and now the big "C." People tell us to hang in there, we always land on our feet. Truth is, we have to land on our feet. Worrying, spewing anger, that's not going to get us anywhere. We only have each other and we are in charge of how we play this hand we have been dealt. I know, with Bill in my corner, we will never fold. In fact, I would bet on us. All of these "bad times" have led us to here and shown us just how much fight we have in us. So even though I may not have picked the path I am walking down, I can be sure of this. My armor is on and it is weathered from several battles. Those battles are now scars that remind me just how far I have come. When I look at Sam, I know I have what it takes. I know, I've got this.

Bingeing and Purging and Finding My Way to Happiness in this Storm

So it's really late. Blame it on the steroids, but I can't sleep (I also took a four hour nap when I came home from chemo, so could be that). I felt this overwhelming urge to write in the last hour. I have received numerous compliments and love from people all over about my last blog post on my sisters. I think that it resonated with so many of you because it was an honest message. I didn't sugar coat it with the assurances that we have and always will be best friends. I think many of you like the honesty that I put out there. As I told one of my aunts, I'm an open book and I'm going to be like a Kardashian with this diagnosis. Take it or leave it, my story is my truth. If it wasn't, I don't think you would be reading.
That is why I came to the conclusion tonight that I must share a part of me with the rest of you that not everyone knows, but many can relate to. It is a part of my journey that got me here, and one that I often wonder if it could have contributed to my latest health crisis.
My name is Jodie, and I'm a recovering bulimic.
(you'd think with the liver cancer I was going to say alcoholic, but I got you!)
I say recovering, because despite the latest ads out there touting finding a "cure" for eating disorders, there is no cure. There is awareness and understanding from the people that love you, but ultimately those demons live inside you for the rest of your life. Why am I saying all this? Well because tonight I made the connection that bulimia, anorexia, alcoholism, smoking....they are all addictions that we can never be fully cured from....but we can recover. And this not unlike my stage 4 cancer. For those of you that don't understand, once you have been diagnosed as stage 4, after the initial punch to your gut and hoping you don't get swallowed up in grief, you also learn that you will never be cured. This cancer, while it may be "stabilized" at some points in your life, it's probably going to come back. Hearing that at 35 years old, with a 5 month old that you want to see hit every milestone in life, makes it all the more heartbreaking of a diagnosis. I'm living with cancer and it is always lurking around the corner ready to pull the rug out from under me again.
But as I was thinking about it tonight, and getting somewhat down because I want to be able to say with all certainty that I will be putting Sam on the bus, I will see him graduate, and grow into the person he can be. I want to live to see him watch his true love walk down the aisle to him, and I want to hold my grandbabies. Although I want all these things, there is uncertainty now, and as I have continued to say, I must live in the moment.
But tonight was one of those nights where the cancer thoughts creeped back in. They start slow, and they easily can snowball if I don't reign them in. And I got to thinking about all the people I have touched with my story, and how I wasn't being totally honest with everyone. I've fought a disease that lingers, and I like to think I have come out on the other side.
How did I start thinking about my bulimia. Well, on Sunday night at dinner in a restaurant, I was overcome with nausea, and found myself overlooking a toilet bowl in the handicapped stall, and it wasn't the first time. The memories came flooding back of the hundreds of times before I had sat of the pool of water, looking at my reflection, wanting so badly not to beat myself up, but still not liking what I saw in that water.
I can still remember the first time I vomited. It was my freshman year of college. I was so lost. I never felt like I fit in there. I wasn't a complete weirdo but I wasn't at all the type to sell my soul to a sorority. I just couldn't do it. I gained weight and found solace in food at the neverending cafeteria options. Was I skinny to begin with? No. I had always struggled with my weight (or at least I thought I did). From about 3rd grade on I became aware of the pressures of society on women to look a certain way. I remember a teacher brought a scale into the classroom that was going to way us in kilograms or whatever the metric term was and had us line up and compare weights. I'm 35, and I remember dreading that line like it was yesterday. Or how about paying what you weigh for a kid's meal? I had convinced myself that I weighed more than the meal cost, and refused to step on the scale. I look back at pictures now and I see a little girl that was so beautiful, so funny, yet wouldn't open her mouth because she was fat in her eyes.
Being a bulimic is far from glamorous. Those first few times trying to sneak around to binge and then purge out the ugly took a toll on me. The heaving, the splashing of food all over you, the smell. It was all so disgusting, but I saw results. If I didn't like something about myself that day, I could stuff my face, feel the comfort for just a few minutes, then punish the crap out of myself by drinking a quart of water and watching it all splash into the toilet. With one flush, the insults, the crazy thoughts, the ugliness was gone....for just a few moments. Then I would retreat to my room for a nap, no matter how short, because I was exhausted from the heaving and the hiding. My body was getting skinnier, but I wasn't getting happier. I was becoming obsessed.
I planned my day around bingeing. I knew where secret bathrooms were. I weighed myself incessantly. Going out to dinner was never fun anymore, because as soon as I was done I was fidgety and downright mean about getting myself to a bathroom to rid myself of the demon. It had overtaken my head. The laughter was gone. I wasn't a person. I was a shell.
My parents eventually found out, but no one knows the "right" way to deal with a bulimic. This was not their fault, but they wanted me to stop. My dad would bang on the bathroom door. He would beg me to stop. I was taking diet pills too, trying to speed up my metabolism at this point. I was playing with fire.
Friends stopped interacting with me, for their own well-being or because I wouldn't listen to them. They knew what was going on, they confronted me. I had people crying to me because friends had died....I was an impenetrable shell. No one was going to stop me, this disease had taken hold and I was right in the thick of it. I didn't care who stopped talking to me, who was disgusted by me. This was going to be my path to happiness. So I could look in the mirror and like what I saw.
But we all know, it wasn't. I started to see blood when I was vomiting. I was sweating gobs of water in 30-degree weather. I could not make it through a day of classes my senior year, without at least two naps. I snapped at people when they tried to eat some of my food. if they interfered with my routine. I had lost myself to bulimia, and didn't know how to turn back.
There was no one thing that snapped me out of it. It was a gradual process. The blood scared me. My heart racing, petrified me. Doctors never caught on, I was good at dodging appointments and I came across as so strong-willed, no one suspected that I would have caved to bulimia. I was a smart girl, straight-A student, a perfectionist, a people-pleaser. (Hello, that is the definition of bulimia in the dictionary!)
The truth is, I had to want my own recovery. I had to want to deal with what got me there. Eventually I couldn't keep it up. My relationships were failing, I wasn't myself, and I was scared of my body starting to turn on me, which it was. And I came to the conclusion that I wanted to live my life, not destroy it.
It was a gradual process of climbing out of the darkness of what my life had become; an endless round of bingeing and purging only to get back on that merry-go-round the next day and adding work and school to the mix. When I realized I wasn't trapped, I was in charge here that is when the healing began. I started by going to therapy and dealing with all my inside thoughts that drove me to not like what I saw, who I was. I began slowly taking my life back. Did I gain weight? You bet! Was it hard...in one word, yes. I had to relearn how to love myself. How to see me for what others saw me. What they were missing from me. The light in my eyes had to come back and the compulsiveness had to go.
I have been in recovery for over ten years now. That is not to say that those gnawing feelings don't come hurling back at times. I spent my whole pregnancy looking away from the scale and doing it because I wanted to be healthy for my baby. I have dabbled in the bingeing and purging on a few occasions, those occasions where I felt I needed control or was unhappy. But I am happy to say I always found a good support system, no matter where I was. And I have also found solace in sharing my story. Maybe that's why I like teaching and helping others, because I remember that scared little girl who wanted nothing more than to be like everyone else. It was when I learned that being me was the actual reason for living, I turned my life around.
The whizzing numbers on a scale still make me cringe. And going to chemo every time is fun because they got to check that good ol' weight. But I keep my eyes wide open and can admit I'm heavier than I have ever been. But they WANT me to stay at a fighting weight! Woohoo!
In all seriousness, I have to bring this back to cancer. That's why you are all following me anyway. And there is a method to my madness here. You see, I was told I would never be cured of bulimia. That I would always be in recovery. It too, like cancer, lurks in the dark places of my mind. But bulimia has not gotten me down again. In fact, quite the opposite, it has helped me to help others struggling with self-esteem, especially as a teacher. I may always be in recovery, but it is something that a positive attitude, surrounding myself with the right people, and having the support of so many that has helped me to survive.
I, too, will never be cured from cancer, at least that is what they tell me. And that is one hard pill to swallow. But if you start looking at it from my perspective and where I have been and what I have fought to regain, I know this journey is far from over. I have to have faith, I have to believe in myself, and I have to trudge that long road with a smile on my face. Sitting in the corner, rocking and crying myself to sleep will get me no where on that path. Loving myself and seeing that there is so much left to fight for, to live for, to be here for, that is what I am packing in my Mary Poppins carpet bag and bringing along with me for the ride. I'm proof that you are the person in charge, and you are the only one that can do it. Push out the negative, fight for the positive and hold onto your dreams.
We went to see Saving Mr. Banks the other night. And I won't quote the line totally correctly, but a character said, "You have to live in the moment. You can't get looking at the future. That's what gets you in to trouble." And he was right. When I let myself get bogged down with the "what ifs" and "If I don't make it..." I will never live in the moment.
My bulimia journey taught me I am a fighter, and there is so much to live for and see and do. I beat that on my own, and I have a hell of a lot of support in my corner now ready to pick me up when I fall down in that court of life.
The "C" word is nothing like bulimia, and I know that. It is a ravenous beast that preys on negativity and wants you to cave. But don't cave my friends. Fight the good fight. Get the last word in. Put your faith in yourself....because you are your biggest fan. I'm living with the scars of bulimia, and I am living with the scars of cancer. But there is one thing I have learned, just because you can't be "cured" doesn't mean you are down for the count. You can get this....and guess what you will. We all got this!

Mamie Sue, Stinky (and Peanut Butter too!)

Crazy name for a blog post, huh? Well, I decided today that I was going to write a blog post about two people that will forever be in my heart....my sisters. Mamie Sue is the name we deemed Jamie with when she was young. Apparently it had something to do with me and my grandfather. I told him that was her name at some point, and it stuck. Stinky, or Peanut Butter to me, was my littlest sister, Kathryn Mary. Notice to all of Jamie's friends, I never called her Ratgirl. That was all you guys' doing!
Now, anyone that knows my family, knows that my sisters and I haven't always been the closest. In fact, some could probably say that Jamie and I have been known to be each other's arch nemesis at one point or another. Kathryn, on the other hand, is more like a daughter to me because there is a 12 year difference between us. Some of you may even remember me pushing her in her stroller on the streets of Southwood during my teenage summers. That was my life then.
Growing up, I always got to see my mom and her sisters and how tight they were. They took care of their baby brother, Butch, and were each other's first best friends. I didn't have that with either of my sisters. Mainly because of the age difference between Kathryn and me. Jamie and I, well we just never really saw eye-to-eye.
We are three years apart, Jamie and I. Believe me, my great-grandmother had that saying recorded "remember, she is three years younger than you!" Three years is a strange gap for kids. I was old enough to realize when she was brought home and I was no longer the big cheese. Did that breed resentment?? Oh, hell yeah! And think about it, three years apart means you're in 8th grade, she's entering 5th grade. You're a senior in high school, she's a freshman. Just when I would make it to the top, there was my nagging little sister who rode on my coat tails, or so I thought.
Jamie was tough. She was a lefty, outspoken, didn't want long hair, or to wear a dress. The exact opposite of me. I'd play little league or go to Girl Scout camp and the cut-off for my age group would be Jamie's age. So she always ended up with me. It always seemed that I was annoyed that Jamie was my tag-along. But the truth was, I was always jealous of her. I can remember Girl Scout camp and this mean old lady who was the swimming instructor. We had to do a swim test to be able to go into the deeper water. We all dove in and did that test, and Jamie loved nothing more than to swim. But she "failed" the test, and was relegated to the little strip of shallow water that was buoyed off from the rest of us. I was humiliated for her. I wanted to punch the old swim coach they called "Oscar" right in between the eyes. She singled Jamie out and made her swim alone. But I was jealous! Why? Because Jamie could have cared less, and dove in and out of the water without a care in the world. I, on the other hand, would have been mortified and probably cried my eyes out. Not Jamie, she just smiled and splashed away.
We were supposed to be each other's best friend, my aunts would remind us of that often. Our grandmothers pleaded with us to get along. We were just too different. I wanted to play dolls, Jamie wanted to play guns. I wanted to wear fancy clothes like my mom, Jamie was content in a New Kids on the Block sweatsuit (You're welcome, Jamie). We just never clicked.
When Kathryn came along, I was 12 years old and probably going on 35. I was a nervous nelly and pretty much looked 35 too. I probably could have had my own kid at that age and been more responsible than I was in my 20s....but that's another story. Kathryn was like happiness embodied. Sure, there were a few times (Gettysburg family trip) where she was the child of Satan, I was convinced. But for the most part, I loved having her around. She brought the magic back to Christmas. The joy into a spring day. The laughter of a child. All of those things brought our home back to life.
She was like a little adult in a pint-sized body. She always was talking to adults and had not a reserved bone in her body. She and my dad were two peas in a pod in those days. They did everything together from fishing to seeing Daddy at his woo-woos (the firehouse). Kathryn would crawl into my bed on Christmas Eve and I would assure her that Santa would be coming this year, and try to get her excitement to die down enough for her to sleep just a little bit. She came to all my games as a cheerleader, and everyone would giggle when she would stand at the bars to the bleachers saying "Jodie, Hi Jodie, Jodie!" I went to college for a year and would come home to see her karate classes. She would be so proud to show me her latest "moves" as a 6-year-old. When I moved out of the house when she was 10, her little lip quivered as she stifled her cries as she was going home from my new apartment. She called me crying because she was looking at pictures of us together when she got home....yes, like I had died or something when I was actually across town living in a rat-trap apartment on Tipp Hill.
So my relationships with my sisters have been completely different over the years and with one sister I struggled to maintain a relationship. The other, as she grew up, became more distant because she didn't need me anymore. Did I want a close relationship with both of them? You bet. The words always echoed in my ears from my mom and aunts, "Your sisters are supposed to be your best friends." So how come I could be friends with basically a brick wall, but when it came to them, my brick wall went up? How would I change that? What could change that? One word, cancer.
People look at me like I'm bats*it crazy when I say this, but this diagnosis has had its blessings. It's helped me to live in the moment, stop and smell the roses, enjoy the mundane. But it has also brought my sisters and me closer than ever. I think that that Monday night when I was told I had malignancies in my liver, the world stopped turning on its axis for all three of us. Until that point, I think we all thought we had all the time in the world to reconnect, join forces, to love each other. But when those phone calls were made, and the "c" word was said, we realized life is precious and doesn't last forever. You have to live in the present and say things that you want to say, when you want to say them. You have to mend fences, break down walls, and make your way back to people now....not later. You can't put those things off. And family is of the utmost importance.
I can't say how they both dealt with the news of my diagnosis. I can say that when I was going through all the testing and the doctor mentioned that it might be cancer, they both broke down. Jamie was half a country away in Las Vegas and broke down at her lunch table. Kathryn was at my bedside because she had gotten in her car as soon as she heard the possibility and drove 6 hours to hold my hand and reassure me all would be ok. Jamie wrote me a text message that I hold close to my heart and that I read alone in my dark hospital room that night after everyone had left. It said what I needed to hear, and I will leave it at that.
The actual diagnosis surprised us all, and caught us off-guard. This can't happen to us, it won't happen to us....but it did. So what did my sisters do? They did what sisters are supposed to do...they rallied. They became like the Thompson women. Jamie came to town and when I came through the door, she hugged me and shook with sobs.....something I had never seen before. I held her and let her cry and told her I would be ok because I realized then, I have to be ok. I'm getting the relationship I want with both of my sisters. Jamie and I played like little girls one night over Christmas, with the karaoke machine she bought me. We were singing at the top of our lungs to some 80s tunes and could have cared less who was listening or watching. It was like we were 5 and 8 again, and no one could stop us (not even Dad banging on the floor!). Jamie also has taken to chasing me around the house with gross green juices that she hopes will cure me. She calls me every night with the latest juice to try despite my gagging on the other end. And when I was in the hospital, she created a binder with all my health info that I am to keep up-to-date (strict orders). The nurses loved all the hole punching she did in my hospital room. Kathryn bought me head scarves and taught me how to tie them and offered to shave her own head (Which I told her to wait until Cameron put a ring on it to do....he shaved his head instead) And she has been at my hospital bed side asking all the right medical questions. She's even working on getting me a new liver if need be! She's also rearranged her work schedule to be up here to take me to chemo every three weeks! Who knew my 23-year-old sister would be taking care of me?
I watch Kathryn with my Sammy and it is like watching my younger self with her as a baby. She loves that little boy so much, as does Jamie, and I know that they can and will and have nurtured him on the days when I am weak and can't make my way out of the bed. Sammy knows he is loved and can see me in their faces and hear me in their voices. Because we are sisters and we are alike, despite all the years, distance and differences between us. We finally got there, and we got here because of cancer. If there is one thing I can thank cancer for, it is these newfound relationships. And now that we are together and working as one team, I know....We got this!

As Charlie Sheen Says, "Winning!"

Hey guys
Just a short post tonight, as I don't have much to share except we are WINNING this battle! For those of you that haven't seen yet, my CT results came back and they were awesome! The tumor in my breast is resolved (all gone!) and the nodules in my liver are dying off and turning into scar tissue. There was also another node in my chest that resolved too. So after two rounds of chemo I have made tremendous progress! I chalk this up to all the prayers and positive thoughts you all have been sending my way.
I have to admit, I have been known to be a negative nancy. However, with this diagnosis I have embraced the power of positivity. Many of you have contacted me and told me how inspirational I am and how strong I seem. Let me tell you, as much as I appreciate all your kind words, I am no different than any of you in this type of crisis. I think most of you would pick yourself up and keep on moving toward the finish line if you were hit with a medical crisis. I don't wish it on any of you, that's for sure. But the power is in the positivity, the living in the moment.
Today I sat with Bill at lunch and we made a bucket list for me. If there is one thing this diagnosis has taught me, it's that I needed to start living. I want to do things now, not just talk about them. I want to show Sam a life that's good, blessed, and fun. We put things on there like take a trip to Nashville, rent a cabin on Tully Green Lake this summer, buy bikes and ride with Sam, go to Disney with my parents....and planning Sam's first birthday!
Nothing crazy, but small goals. Things I can look forward to, things to live for. I wasted a lot of my PC life (Prior to cancer) chasing deadlines, working toward the next best thing, searching for happiness. I didn't always take time to enjoy the small things. I find myself daily stopping myself and telling myself to take the moment in. Whether that moment is giving Sam a bath and watching him kick the water in my face or just watching quietly as Bill smiles with Sam and I marvel at how we both are a part of him.
This diagnosis has also allowed me to let loose, and not care what others think. I love my karaoke, and I'm taking my show on the road this Friday. Join us at Candy's Hillside in Jamesville for some good times at a dive bar to celebrate my results!
It's also shown me just how draining negativity can be. I want to shake some people that I see complaining, those that can't seem to see the light at the end of the tunnel because of stupid, mundane things. You have your whole life to live, let go of the past, make your own future. The only person who can do that is you, yourself. Negativity preys on people and you can't let it win.
All the positive thinking, prayers, supportive energy clearly have an affect on me. I know that I would not be doing as well if I hadn't shared my journey with all of you and had rallied so much support. It is awe-inspiring how lifted I feel by all of you.
So keep your heads held high, know that you too are capable of being strong in a crisis, and you too can live a life that's good. That's my mantra these days from a song I heard on Nashville, "At the end of the day, Lord I pray, I've lived a life that's good."
Live each day, knowing, you got this!

The Great Wig Caper of 2014

Ok, I know, I know, it's been a LONG time. My last post was LAST year for crying out loud. It's not that I was sick and tired and not writing. I was quite the opposite. I've been having more energy (one day I did sleep for like 20 hours though) and spending some QT with the baby. I'm happy to report Sam is eating cereal and veggies and fruits now in his big boy high chair! He loves it, and every day he is gets bigger and bigger. He now, at 5 months, is wearing 18 month pjs......as Bill likes to say, "He's going to make me look like a smurf some day!" We are also working on our third tooth. But he is probably the happiest baby in the world these days, and makes every day so much brighter for me. So glad he picked me to be his mommy!
Anyway, so what's been going on with me these past few days? We had Bill's family into town for a Christmas visit, which was really nice. We put the Christmas decorations away for another year and got snowed in like the rest of the Northeast for a few days. This created a bout of cabin fever for yours truly. The remedy for me when the sun came out???? WIG SHOPPING!
That's right, it was time to get some fur atop this head, and preferably have it NOT look like I skinned Cuse, our 30 lb mean-ass cat, (as much as my dad would pay for me to get Cuse made into a wig) to get it. Why did I title this blog entry the "wig caper?" Well, you see, it wasn't as simple as looking up the wig stores in Syracuse and going in for a test drive on certain models. I enlisted Katie, my best friend since our womb days, to be my wig judge. She would "yay" or "nay" whatever model I put atop my head. She has known me since literally we were in the womb, so who better to bring along for the adventure. And an adventure it was.
It couldn't be as easy as going to the place, trying on a couple and leaving with a smile on my face. No, no no, it had to be a treasure hunt. You see, Hot Cocoa's, the place that everyone in CNY literally yells when you say you need a wig, is not an easy place to get ahold of. I told Katie to meet me on the boulevard at the Hot Cocoa's I had driven by many a time. I got there first, (I need to also add that Katie is 5 months pregnant so that is a gamechanger too!) and pulled right in front. Guess what? Hot Cocoa's was a No Cocoa's. There wasn't a foam head with a wig atop it to be seen. Place was a ghost town. So I got on the old Iphone and looked on Hot Cocoa's website as Katie pulled in. Fearing she might go pregnancy rage on me (Your welcome, Mat) I found that Hot Cocoa's had a store on James Street in Eastwood. So Katie agreed (happily, crisis averted) to follow me to Eastwood (Because she has lived in this area for 36 years and still basically has no idea how to get to ShoppingTown Mall from her own house). Anyway, we high-tailed it to Eastwood. We passed by some familiar haunts from my early 20s that I would rather forget. Woodbine days are better left in the past. And we finally saw it, a bunch of heads in the window with an array of haircolors from magenta to black to blonde and dare I say, orange? It was creepy, not going to lie. We pulled in the parking lot and Katie said "Did you see there was a little slip of paper on the door?" We agreed to walk up to the store to see if it was open. Sure enough, the little slip of paper said that Hot Cocoa's opened by appointment only!
What the crap?! How hard was it going to be to get me a nice headpiece for 2014? I had already dragged a preggo lady all around the east end of town, and was getting desperate! In all actuality, Katie was in for the long haul and didn't mind when I suggested we head over to the West side of town to a shop my hairdresser had mentioned. I just had to get her there and not lose her in the process.
So we rolled up to the old Blockbuster Video store that was now a hair place and I took a deep breath. This was open, I was going to get me a wig, and I was going to like it. We walked in and there was hair everywhere, in every shade you could imagine. I told the girl in the front, with pink hair mind you, that we were interested in wigs and she smiled and said "I'll meet you in the back." When Katie and I got to the back, there were about 60 heads lined along the walls, waiting, just begging for us to try them on. Long, short, curly, frizzy, straight, bangs, no-bangs, bobs, INVERTED BOBS (that's for you Bridget!), black, highlighted, platinum, and red heads. They were all there. I had the associate explain to me the difference between all the wigs. There was human hair, but they weren't lace caps, those were on the other side of the wall, and those lace caps looked more natural to your hair line supposedly. There were more synthetic than human hair wigs. I figured what the heck, I was just going to dive in and try as many of them on as I wanted. The prices were a lot cheaper than I thought and I wanted to make it fun. When else can you get away with a "disguise" than when you are going through chemo????
As I was having the wig trying-on process explained to me and a wig cap put on, Katie was drawn to this massive curly blonde highlighted ball of craziness. I will admit that it was the closest to my normal hair color, but that is where the similarities ended. So I let her marvel at the curly ball of madness and I tried on my first dark, human hair wig. Oh, it wasn't pretty. All that shoe polish color black hair against my pastey Syracuse skin looked like death. And yes, I can say that. Katie turned away from the curly mop for about ten seconds to just shake her head "No." and we were on to the next wig. We tried on Beyoncé, Mega Venus, Viona, they all had names. I don't remember them all because I swear I tried on at least 20 of them. Some of them made me hysterically laugh and yell "Sock it to me!" while others just made me look like a mushroom head on a stick. Katie at one point called me Mrs. Brady. I tried the one on that made me look like a flapper. All the while Katie kept going back to that damn curly mop-top. Finally, I agreed to try that damn thing on. Two words, Chaka Kahn. "Get it off my head!" I shrieked.
The girls in the store happened to be former students at Fowler. So that made things ten times more interesting. "Miss Tranny be trying on wigs!" But actually they were cute and told me what worked, and what didn't. They all seemed to have a field day with the fact that I was incapable of wearing the wig cap correctly "You got it pulled all the way down your forehead, FIX IT!" and that I was totally inept at putting the wig on straight. I always looked like a hawk had tried to nest on my head when I put one on.
Finally, Katie and I agreed on two different styles. One was blond, well platinum, but that's all they had for blond and it was my old haircut. The other was a saucy brunette that harkened me back to my shoe polish black hair days of yore (AKA Minnie Driver days). We wrapped those girls up, got us a foam head and some spray to keep them looking good, and headed out the door. Katie had too much fun I think, at my expense, but she was a good sport. I thanked her and headed home with my new ladies.
At home I tried them on for Bill and Sam. Bill, bless his heart, would say I looked beautiful with a pile of poop on my head. That's just how wonderful he is as a human being, and he would mean it too. So I looked to Sam for the real reaction. Don't you know that little round-headed 5-month-old was just the judge I needed. He looked at me quizzically at first, but when I bent down and said "How does the mama look?" He smiled with his whole body! And melted my heart at the same time. So even though I went on the Great Wig Caper of 2014 with my oldest and dearest friend and wouldn't trade it for the world, I'm glad that wig or no wig, Sammy knows me and loves me just for being me. And he even loves me when I am disguised as Minnie Driver. That got the whole-body smile, as well. Blond, Brunette, or Bald.....I got this!