Fear of...

Is there ever a point in your life when you begin to feel completely safe? When the trappings of your childhood, your high school heartaches, your college embarrassments, and your adult mistakes all fall away and you can just stand there and feel completely safe?

I’m not talking about breast cancer. I wish it were that simple. I am being photographed on Monday for a book project that a woman is doing on breast cancer survivors, and she asked me to write up my “story”.

Now, every breast cancer survivor has their story. They may modify to suit their audience, the situation they are in when telling it, or how they need to use it. For this situation, I have been asked to look at how I overcame the trial of being diagnosed and going through breast cancer. And my first reaction was “HAVE I overcome it?” And I didn’t mean in the literal sense of being finished with treatment or moving into a place of survivorship. I meant, when I asked myself that, “have I reached a place in my life where I feel safe from harm, from things that will come back and haunt me no matter what they are?”

I have a fear of clowns that goes back to being an impressionable age when the movie “Poltergeist” came out and that darn evil clown attacked the child in her bed. I don’t like loud cracking sudden thunder (or any loud booming surprise noise) and I am pretty sure this goes back to an incident as a baby when my dad and uncle cracked cue sticks down onto a pool table and laughed at how I jumped up in reaction in my chair. I have little fears and mini-breakdowns in anticipations of specific meetings at work only based on how previous meetings have gone (I attended an excellent workshop once about the conversations we have with ourselves in anticipation of things like this – still hasn’t helped though!).

So I wonder, if at the ripe old age of 85 or 90, should I be lucky enough to live that long, will I feel so truly safe that I will not feel intimidation or fear about anything I once feared? Will I no longer shiver slightly when thunder booms? Will I be able to laugh at clowns instead of only see evil lurking in their eyes? Will I think that I overcome those things that once I was certain were out to harm me? Or will I have to wait until I have moved beyond this world and look down upon those things and simply laugh at myself?

Even worse, what if I am killed by a raving lunatic clown with a thunderous voice? Will I then look down from above and say “HA! I was right to be scared!” ?

Tack Trunk Project

In the fall of 2008...ish?...I was serendipitously introduced to Jo Wickline and her lovely stable out at LJL Farm. You see, I rode horses as a teenager. It was more than that. I lived for horses. I began at around 11 and rode until my mom and I moved to the Gulf Coast at 16. I rode at 3C Horsemanship School (which back then was 3C Farm) and was lucky enough to be there when the Cornetts still bred and trained American Morgan horses. I rode their foundation stallion, Shakers Shoofly, as well as his son the World Champion 3C Avenger. I showed Morgans at regional shows, placing as high as 3rd and qualifying for Worlds. But I was also privy to more than the average "equestrienne" student at that age because I was so into it and there so much of my free time. I saw foals born, mares bred, colicky horses tubed, colts gelded, and helped with many young horses at various phases of training. Not all of that was retained. Some of it was just doing what I was told and not completely understanding the motivation or reasoning behind the doing of it. But all of it lay in my heart and the memory felt a little like one of those jewelry boxes with the ballerina that some girls have and women keep around to admire.

So when my mother in law had taken up riding lessons and invited me to come out, I fell in love with Jo, with LJL Farm, and with all the horses out there. Not long afterwards I began riding a Thoroughbred not owned by Jo but kept there. Brite was once a racehorse and had the issues to go with that. He also was more than 15 years old, had been tried out in just about every style, as well as completely not ridden for long stretches at a time. So I had a project. Suffice to say that although he is a sweet, gentle, and soulful horse, and I had a wonderful time with him for about 8 months, things ultimately came to a close last September. I was thrown (if you ride horses, you are going to get thrown!) and hurt and that was the end of me riding Brite.

Once I recovered, Jo offered a gorgeous gelding by the nickname of Snickers up for lease. I jumped at the chance and the rest is now history. I am in love with him. His real name is Del Rey Rhythm, he's 6, 16.1 hands, was raced as a 2 year old, then barrel raced, and then eventually ended up with Jo. I have been working him in some dressage as I train to learn this art myself - interesting way to go about it.

Anyway...as one knows when you own or lease a horse you very quickly acquire a lot of stuff and you need someplace to keep it! Jo has a great tack room at LJL but one also needs a little storage outside of the room. I decided to resurrect an old trunk of mine that Brian and I used as a coffee table.


Actually, as it turns out, this trunk had a history.


Before Brian and I painted it a boring brown with black trim I had used it to store blankets while at college. It's metal and cold and clanky. Not cedar or padded...
My mom used it as a place to store her scuba diving equipment. I remember it always having the smell of saltwater and sand and being slightly musty. But I had no idea that before that, it used to belong to her father, my grandfather. It was his Army trunk from World War II. This explains the Army green color it once was. And the leather handles that have fallen off.

However, now, armed with spray paint, spray gloss, and some beautiful customized decals from the extremely talented Elizabeth Moyer at Moyer Custom Decals.... I have this!

Notice the hot pink, the dressage rider, the sparkly black...yep...it couldn't be more ME if it tried!!!!

Not bad for an old Army trunk :-)

Friendship Introspection, Part II

A look into friendship, for me, could not be complete without a discussion of the friendship I share with my husband, Brian.

Brian and I met through mutual friends while working in restaurants in the late 1990's. We opened a restaurant as part of a training crew, and spent many long hours together. At first, we even hung out as friends, and he actually had a crush on another gal. I had no feelings for him other than friendship, but I do remember watching him do some computer training and thinking there was something special about him...but it was not a ground-shaking, earth-shattering "this is the man I am going to marry!" moment. A bit later, he asked me out and the rest is history. We dated, fell in love, and married.

Some where in between the dating and the marrying, I realized he had also become my best friend. And that friendship became no more apparent than when I was diagnosed with breast cancer upon the return from our honeymoon. Brian had to cease being my husband, to cease being someone with needs and wants, and even dreams. He had to become someone who could support me and listen to me completely unselfishly. He had to become the person who would cook for me, clean up my vomit, and get my prescriptions filled. So very NOT the image of a newlywed husband.

Now he is the person who I want to spend my free time with, who I think about calling first to share a joke or a tidbit with, and who I want to discuss almost any topic with.

Almost :-)

We have our differences, of course. We swim in them and enjoy a good debate now and then. But mostly, it is the long discussions where we are in complete agreement and simply are looking at things through different colored glasses that I find the most enjoyable because I learn so much from him. He's so smart!

And of course there are times when we have the boy/girl disagreements that spring simply from being of opposite genders. The times when I want to turn to someone else and say "Can you believe he just said this?" and have them affirm what a complete doofus he is, and what a complete genius I, obviously, am.

These are the times that are difficult for me. I can't call my husband to complain about my husband! Especially since, being a man, he would try to fix something that simply can't be fixed!

:-)

These are the times when a completely different friend is needed.

Friendship Introspection, Part I

Over the years I have had the pleasure of having moved from one city to another by being the child of a member of the Air Force. Both my mom and my dad (and my step-dad) were active duty at certain points of our lives and so I grew up in never having lived in one place for more than 3 years until we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and I enrolled in 6th grade at Kings Mills Middle School.

I am also an only child. Being an only child and one who has moved around, I honestly don’t have much recollection of my childhood years, especially school years. I don’t remember my friends from those years because they were so random and scattered. I think not having anyone else to connect those times and places to limits my recall capacity in some way. I remember summers, spent with my grandparents in Marion or Ashland, Ohio; or at a Bible camp a couple times. I remember a friend here and there who I saw every summer because they lived near my grandparents or were at camp. But individual grades or teachers are out of reach for my memory and always have been.

Cincinnati and Kings Mills is where things start to settle into my head better and I have a clear memory of my friends there, my teachers, the classrooms, the fun and the laughs and the things we learned. From there my mom and I moved to Ocean Springs, Mississippi where I would graduate high school and find another set of friends. I have to say that after years of moving around the States, living in the south truly felt like home for me. I don’t know if it was the pace, the beach, the food, the colors, or everything combined but there is a kinship I feel with the Gulf Coast. I only have to read something from there or start to recall a memory out loud and my drawl will kick in (Brian adores it).

I traveled over to Mobile, Alabama to attend college, graduated and stayed on (even after my mom had moved back “up north") there until 1996, when I decided that it was time to move on. I packed up and headed to Columbus, Ohio where I met and married Brian, where we live now.

Beyond school, my friends came from work. My college years (as well as when I moved to Columbus) were filled with friends from the restaurant and bar world. These are great friends who are seriously down for a good time. The memories (and sometimes the lack there of) that I have of concerts, crawls, football games, after parties, and on and on…oh my. Thank goodness the Internet was not around then. Just sayin’.

However, I am very happy to say that because of the Internet I was able to reconnect with and am able to stay connected with many friends with whom I have lost contact through the years. I’m not a good letter writer and I don’t really like to gab on the phone, so email and Facebook have made the world smaller for me.

To be continued . . . 

Time for a face lift...

I've been doing lots of fun things on the YSC Puck Bunnies site, working up a site for the place where I ride, keeping up a few twitter accounts and the YSC Puck Bunnies facebook page...I think it's time I gave MMWR a little facelift!


So - if anyone actually stops by here - sorry if I move your cheese but there will be some switches and I don't know if they will be big or small! But I like change so put on your big-girl panties and deal!

To biopsy or not to biopsy...

That was the question...

My apologies for the sometimes cryptic statuses over the last several weeks: I wasn’t trying to be mysterious or inviting attention. I was venting some frustrations and pain and fear while at the same time trying to keep some information contained. I have friends who are family and family who had events going on last weekend and honestly, with all the unknown aspects of what was going on – there was just no reason to lay it all out here. Had there been more certainty in what was going to happen at any given point, I promise I would have been more open, because I believe in sharing my life in hopes that it teaches something…

The journey of a cancer survivor trying to get answers is never easy and never quick.

I ride horses. I LOVE riding – it helps to keep me sane and is a major way to relieve stress. I am able to communicate with a creature who is larger than life, who is waiting for my commands, and who is thinking for itself. Well, sometimes this works against humans. In September, a horse I had been riding for about a year threw me off. Hard. When I hit the ground I had the wind completely knocked out of me. I remember getting mad because I couldn’t breathe and telling myself to breathe. I sucked in some air and blacked out. When I came too I heard myself groaning and the sound of sirens. I ended up at the emergency room in Delaware, where it was determined I had 3 broken ribs on the right side, a mild concussion, a sprained left shoulder, and some bruising on my right hip. I recovered through the fall and started riding again last month.

Meanwhile, at Christmas, I had a nasty cold, accompanied by some severe pain on my left front chest. This is also the side on which I had my breast cancer. I then had bronchitis with a lovely cough. The pain mellowed and moved from the front to the side, but has remained (along with the cough).

At some point during the holidays, because of the pain, I had a couple chest xrays and both were negative. It was sort of thought that I probably had pleurisy or perhaps coughed myself into a broken rib. But when the pain continued my primary care doc ordered a bone scan.

Now, for those of you that don’t know, a bone scan is used to look for metastatic cancer lesions, but will also show healing spots (like fractures) and other things. I had a “hot spot” show up on left rib and my left shoulder blade. Well, this caused chaos.

My primary care doc and my oncologist both decided these could be metastatic spots because they were so isolated. At this point, of course, I am freaking out too. My left shoulder had not been in pain so for a spot to show up there REALLY concerned me.

I contacted a longtime friend who is also an excellent radiologist, and asked him to pull the films from the Delaware ER (where I went when I was thrown from the horse) to see what he could see. He found a shattered left shoulder blade, which I never knew about, and which explained the hot spot showing up on bone scan, but couldn't see the left ribs to see anything different there.

In advance of the rib biopsy, I was scheduled to have a chest CT. On Saturday, both my radiologist friend and my oncologist called- both felt that the spot on the left rib looked to be a healing fracture and nothing else. The last step would be to gather as many films as possible and get a really big picture of what was going on.

I was scheduled to have the biopsy this morning at 6am.

Yesterday afternoon my oncologist called and the radiologist scheduled to actually do the biopsy recommended against it. The feeling was overwhelming that the spot being seen on the bone scan is definitely a recent break, different from the right side fractures from September, probably not cancer mets, and not worth a biopsy!!

The current plan is to wait and if it doesn't heal or gets worse will rescan in 6-8 weeks, and I am completely fine with this. I have some good pain medications that don’t knock me out, just help with the minor twinges. And perhaps now I can start sleeping again!

So -alls well that ends well!

For now.

As my oncologist said “until the next shit hits the fan.”

*sighs*

Such is life as a survivor.

However, I am always thankful that I am one.