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.

Ho Ho Hold on a Second...

I have a confession to make: last year Brian and I did not put up a Christmas tree. Now, while you pick your jaw up off the floor (or laugh at me for sounding so melodramatic about it) realize that for the previous eight or so years we have had a very firm tradition. As soon as we can after Thanksgiving, we travel out to Granville to the Timbuk Tree Cutting farm and pick out an appropriate tree. We cut it down, struggle to fit it into the car, and bring it home. We also walk around Granville and take in the sights. I love eating at the soda shoppe cafe there, and take comfort in the fact that my maternal grandmother (Gloria Woods "Glo") went to school at Dennison and not much has changed. We stop at the little book store and usually buy a few books. We always marvel at the size of the houses there.

We put the tree up and haul out the decorations from the basement. Each of us has a large collection from years of gifts but mine is particularly special. Every year as far back since I was a baby both Glo and her mom, my great-grandmother (Grace Danner) would give the children ornaments and write the names and the year on them. Not long ago, my mom started giving me Christopher Radko ornaments, including his annual breast cancer awareness ornament. After Brian and I married she started also gifting us the annual White House collection ornament.
Seriously - we have a collection of collectors pieces as well as sentimental, priceless artifacts with history all their own.

And last year we did not put up a tree.

So this year we did.

And when we hauled out the ornament box I opened it to find that mold had invaded the box.

Not just invaded - taken over and won.

As I made my way through layer upon layer of ruined ornaments to pick out the ones which were salvageable, I found my self becoming more and more upset. But why? These were only material artifacts. They cannot replace the memories I have. Many were handcrafted and of felt or wood. Some were even made by Glo or Grace themselves. Certainly in my teen years, I didn't appreciate these gifts. They hold no monetary value and I wouldn't make any money on eBay with them. But as I sat there and lifted out a fabric unicorn that was a gift from Glo and marked my Christmas as a 5 year old and the fabric crumbled with mold and mildew, I crumbled inside. Is this what it's like to grow old? To feel your memory slip away? Neither Grace nor Glo are around to ask them what the ornament meant or why they chose it for me. Maybe that's why I became so upset. The sodden pieces of fabric and mold covered wood were ties to the past that help sustain something, even if it truly doesn't exist anymore.

I salvaged what I could, vowed to purchase new containers and Brian promised to store them in a different area of the basement. When it was all done the tree still sparkled with the multi-colored disorganized glow of a homespun, non-designer tree. And I know that even in the years to come,when we don't put up a tree, I will haul up the ornaments and check on them, and maybe even take them out to adore them one by one and admire the tenuous gifts they hold.