Dear Reader,

Yesterday was a bad day, a really bad day.  Fewer and farther apart, these bad days are days when my emotions, my sadness, my hurt gets the better of me and the fragile happiness that I have been building just blows away.  In what felt like a split second all those negative emotions - the dismay, the regret, the what ifs, the self-hate - rush screaming to the surface to batter at me.  

I texted a friend who spoke about how he related, how he had felt his happiness had been paper thin, derailed so easily and recognized that in me.  And, how right he was.  I haven't had more than fractured happy moments over the last decade.  I barricaded myself in, with armor and anger, determined to persevere.  

Happiness is for those who are thriving.  I held tight, with jaw clenched, back muscles tight, neck immobile.  Joy, peace, contentment and enthusiasm were emotions rarely felt and sustained only for fleeting moments.  I lived in the space of fear and anger and held myself in check.  Tamping down my anxiety, my resentment, my insecurity took all my energy and left me no space to be.  To be grateful, to be hopeful, to be passionate.  To be me. 

But now, now I spend time being genuinely happy.  Dancing making dinner, making plans with friends, riding, planning to go to horse shows.  But there is still all this unprocessed shit just beneath the surface - and my happiness is paper thin.  A fragile origami butterfly.  It fills me with light and hope, but can collapse in a split second by forces outside or inside me.  

And so, dear reader, I have two jobs in front of me.  

First, like my friend I need to focus on my own "happiness thickening" - an apt term created today.  To build layer upon layer of happiness - doing things that have meaning for me, strengthening and building connections to friends, family and community and nourishing my soul, doing that self-care thing folks always talk about.  Things like being there for my girls, good times with friends, old and new, and riding.  I've spent so very long hiding behind armor and shields that being vulnerable, being open to happiness is scary.  And, being open to happiness, leaves me open to all the unprocessed sadness, anger, hurt.  But I'd rather feel again - and feel all of it, bad and good - than go back to being locked down.  

Second, I need to tackle this inside voice that loves to shred my happiness layer and return me back to that deep, dark well that I've climbed out of.  She'll always exist, but I need to see her for who she is.  A hateful representation of the worst of all my thoughts.  Not me.  

So thank you, dear reader, for coming along with me on my journey.  And, while not that related, I wanted to share this week's them song Lizzo's "About Damn Time" lyrics... I'm feeling it right now!

Oh, I've been so down and under pressure

I'm way too fine to be this stressed, yeah

Oh, I'm not the girl I was or used to be

Uh, bitch, I might be better

Hello Dear Reader,

Had a hair appointment today, and was talking to my long time bestest hair stylist about the 'broken doll' syndrome and going back to work feeling all the discomfort of knowing that folks will wonder how broken I am - just a bit or a whole lot?  She snorted and said, "You aren't broken, you should be called Braveheart".

"Hell yeah", I said.  "Hell, yeah!"  It's been a decade, not just a year or two, of constant, almost unrelenting poundings.  It's not the suffering Olympics, my youngest is fond of reminding me.  But if it was, we'd be at least in the Canadian Nationals.  

The cardiologist last year told me that I couldn't expect to get better because I was living in a war zone.  How dramatic is that I thought... but then, well. 

Cancer, Bipolar Disorder, Gambling, Anxiety, panic attacks, brain fog, Grief, Loss, PTSD, Concussions, Menopause, hearing loss, catfishing, stiff heart syndrome, broken bones, broken hearts, blame, anger, screaming, yelling, retreating, crying.  These were all the ingredients in our home, in our refuge from the demands of life, of work.  

I've finally pulled myself out of that war zone and created a little happy place.  I'll be working for many more years than I planned.  I won't have my hoped for retirement - winters in Mexico!  Horses!  Cottage!  But eventually I'll have some version of it. And, have met new friends along the way to add to my trusted old friends.

And, more than that, I'm going to wear this like a Badge of Honour.  I started to crack badly at work - the chaos, the deep fear that our separation would push FH too far and cost him everything added to a busy and demanding time with a high-vis project culminating on the exact day of our separation.  All that guilt.  All that fear.  All that pressure on one stupid day.  I still delivered, with the help of great colleagues.  The project was a success.  

The cost though, the cost was real psychological damage.  But it really was that last tiny little straw placed on a huge pile that had been breaking my back for years.  Just like so many others with worse stories to tell, I have been through it.  But, I am OUT the other side.   Something I didn't think possible in 2021.  Feeling more myself than I have in years and years.  More confident in my abilities, in my heart, in me. 

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also plagued with insecurities about how firm the ground I am standing on is.  Whether I am still too fragile to withstand any big bumps in the night, so I am going to take my time.

But I am also going to own this.  I'm not broken, I've been through my fire.  I'm out the other side. 

Braveheart signing off,

Hello dear reader,

It's been a long time... These little posts got me through some dark times, but how was I know how long those dark times would last?  Or how I would continue to break apart, break apart, and break apart some more but still stand?  

I've struggled between my need to over-share, my need to protect myself from those who have used this blog in the past to celebrate my weaknesses and failures and my need to protect those that I will always love, but who are also a big part in this long, dark chapter in my life. 

I started to become someone that I barely recognized.  My heart was breaking, literally and figuratively, and I forgot what it was to laugh, to feel a smile creep onto my face, unbidden.  To have muscles not in pain.  To only recognize the largest of panic attacks, because anxiety wasn't just my best friend, anxiety was now my real and true life partner.   

I'm leaving this chapter behind.  But this isn't a hallmark movie, where the curtains fly open, birds sing and the sun shines in.  This is a slow story of healing body and soul.  Muscles that haven't relaxed in years, are finally learning to be loose and I find myself smiling and looking people in the eye.  More comfortable in my skin than I have been in years.  Ending my marriage was the hardest, most heart-breaking decision of my life.  Ending my marriage and living in dread of what the cost of that decision could mean to someone that I will always love, well, that has fucked with my heart and mind more than I thought possible. 

My FH (former husband) and I separated in September, 2021 and I bought myself a new house, and started a new life, in September, 2022.  Still linked to my FH, still finding myself choking back sobs of sadness and regret, still having nightmares and panic attacks about what might become of him, I've inched towards strength and regaining my resilience.  Will I ever be as strong as I once was?  I don't think so -  but maybe that is as it should be.   Maybe all that "strength" did was keep me rooted in an unhappy, unstable, caretaking role where change was the enemy.

I forgot about the other Lisa - the one that I used to be - the one that was passionate and charismatic, and loved change.  Stay in a job for more than five years - NEVER - BORING.  Embracing new experiences, new friends.  Instead I hunkered down, pulling tighter and tighter into myself trying to ride out storm after storm after storm.  Just a facsimile, a shadow.  Cortisol levels climbing and climbing, pushed beyond fight or flight.    

The storms never stopped coming, and I would battle the waves, yanking and pulling and struggling to get everyone out of the water.  With less time between each storm, and weaker each and every time.  

It was about 16 months ago that I went in to my Doctor for a cough, and he sent me to a cardiologist.  I thought, what nonsense is this.  But he was right, the chronic stress, high blood pressure had taken a toll on my heart.  Still I couldn't conceive of change - until my friends finally broke through and woke me - and I started making grown-up and hard choices.  

Terrible choices that still give haunt to my sleep.  But now I find myself also having lovely, pleasant dreams of a different future as well.  A future filled with laughter and love.  

So, after a "burnout" break, 

I am stepping back to life, to my job, in 2023...

But... 

But... 

I'm going to resolve to protect Lisa better this time around.  For reals.  

I'm supposed to be Lisa 2.0.

Post-cancer Lisa.  More zen and accepting of all the crap that life throws at us, Lisa.  Living in the moment, and choosing happiness, Lisa.  And, I've tried to be that Lisa.  But I'm not so close and deep down inside, the thing that I really haven't been able to figure out has me out of bed tonight, tapping away at keys instead of lying in my comfy bed.

I need to be needed, and I need people to appreciate me.  That's my 'personality overlay'.  That's me.  Which is why I am crushed, catapulted down a dark well when people who are supposed to know me, blame me for what's wrong with the world. Or what's wrong in their world.

My husband has a mental health condition.  He's been diagnosed with a variety of different things at different times.  Prescribed a variety of different medications.  Some have worked a bit.  Some have worked a lot.  Some haven't worked at all.  And, he's on a rinse and repeat cycle with all of this.  First time he got sick, his family lined up squarely against me... and he joined them.  Or maybe it was vice versa and they joined him... but they were all convinced that I was the cause of all that was wrong with his world.  

I was floored by the attack.  By the vitriol, the hatred, the lack of understanding, the accusations.  And, the bizarre overstepping of boundaries by some quasi family members.  Flash forward a couple of years, and we have a more muted version of the same drama happening.   Now, of course, the toll of all that drama the first time around, all that blame the first time around, had made me sick.  Or to say it in a more fair way, amongst all that toxicity, blame and anger, I stopped caring for me while fighting with them.  So, for this rinse and repeat cycle, I'm a few months out of the end of radiation treatment and not feeling myself.  On this cycle, we have a more civil and restrained go around.  When he starts to unravel, I tell him I can't do it again.  I can't be blamed again.  And, so he left to live with his family.  

We eventually made our way back to each other again, and I made my way back to work.  And, started the Lisa 2.0 process in earnest.  Fought through panic attacks, sleepless nights, seemingly insurmountable self-doubt to get to a better version of me.  But, now we are on another rinse and repeat cycle, and the blame is back.  And, my tolerance for toxicity and anger has evaporated.  Tonight I lost myself in the anger, and I hate the way that makes me feel.  The anger is so damaging, but the hurt, the lack of understanding... I don't have the words.  This blame for his illness hits me somewhere that makes me unable to get my legs underneath me.  My balance goes, it's that feeling after the spinny rides at the amusement park, part nauseous, part dizzy, mostly struggling to stay upright.

I've been told that I need to take some responsibility - like the responsibility for the two teenagers, the nephew, the cat, dog, horse, vehicles, house isn't enough.  I've been told that HIS problems are MY fault.  I've been told that if I really showed him love, then this wouldn't happen.

My head calls bullshit, he owns his thoughts, his health, his illness and I own mine.  But my heart, well, my heart is broken.  Tomorrow, I will square my shoulders, throw my head up, smile and keep on swimming.  

But tonight, I'm going to cry.

How many of us hate the thought of disappointing someone that we care about?   I've been meeting fairly regularly with a psychologist - it began as a way for me to figure out how to get back to work with at least the illusion of sanity, and it's becoming more and more like an  archeological dig - each session digs away and we find another layer, another plateau, and another look at the reasons for my choices... made either consciously or unconsciously.

At the end of today's session, the psychologist asked me to think about something - and she said, "if you don't think you can, if you feel like it's not right, don't hesitate to tell me.  You won't disappoint me.  You don't have to do this to please me."  Thud. I felt it like a lead weight dropped from my head to my gut.  Don't worry about disappointing someone else?  About not pleasing them?

Beyond that she wouldn't judge me, lies this place where it would be okay for someone to be disappointed in me.  I built myself into this unsustainable place of trying so very hard to never disappoint.  Only to find myself failing, and crashing and careening around in these vain attempts to be this perfect version of myself.  And, the joys in life can get ruined by the shoulds that come before or after.  I SHOULD have planned something better.  Been kinder.  Be thinner.  I SHOULD find a way to be a better mother.  A better wife.  A better role model for my children.  My house SHOULD be cleaner.  My car SHOULDN'T be filled with doggy foot prints and unwashed saddle pads.  My bathrooms SHOULD be painted by now.  I SHOULD be able to get my butt into work every day like a normal person.

How I wish I could be this 'should' girl.  This girl who doesn't run into this wall of fatigue.  Who can get everything that she wants to get done, done.  Can do all the right things.  And, still carve out space for herself.  

And, who doesn't have to get angry to stand up for herself.  Who doesn't have to be pushed past her limits and turn into "the bitch" just to advocate for herself.  

I have a sneaky suspicion that I am far from alone.  A big part of this 2.0 version has been to actually believe something that a dear friend spent a year trying to get me to hear, much less believe.  Over and over he would say "it's a problem, but it's not your problem'.  And, over and over I would nod and pretend to listen, all the while trying to figure out how I should help, what I should do, what I should not do, figure out whose fault it all was.  After all,  if I wasn't helpful, who was I?

Leaving that behind has been frustratingly difficult.  It's like the christmas lights that you just threw in the box and they are all tangled up.  And, so you need to carefully tease it all apart.  Just when you think you have one strand free, another knot appears.  Mine are called Responsibility.  Fear of Disappointing.  Guilt.  Anger.  

If you need me, I'll be curled up in a corner praying for patience as I untangle 50 years of crossed lines. 

Two years ago, right when I was diagnosed with cancer, several Doctors suggested I read Gabor Mate’s book, When the Body Says No.  I wrote about the book then, about how the book made me feel like it was either my fault or my parent’s fault that I had cancer.  At the time, I couldn’t hear its message because the lines it drew were too straight, too direct.  They painted my inability to cope with stress as the reason for the Big C, and my childhood as the reason I couldn’t cope with stress.

In my blame seeking state, neither were acceptable answers.  And, I couldn't see anything but blame. Understanding without blame, without judgement was a concept my head might have been able to understand but was a foreign language to my heart. 

But now I’m finally open to hearing the message of this book – the message that we live in our bodies, and these bodies of ours are driven by our emotions.  How we see the world relates directly to how we were raised in the world.  

As the child of imperfect parents, as an imperfect mother and an imperfect wife, I have always rejected the notion that we can or should escape our accountabilities by blaming our upbringing.  But that’s been my longstanding misunderstanding, for you see, you don’t have to be a blamer to try and understand yourself, and understanding yourself starts at the beginning.  And, understanding doesn't automatically make you an unaccountable victim of circumstance, with no part in the play.          

If I’m honest, I've struggled with myself since my mother died.  And, railed against myself for being so weak.  Even writing that down makes me feel…insufficient.  Everyone’s mother dies.  Why should I be so special, so dramatic about the natural order of the world? 

Only now am I beginning to understand that it was because of the pedestal that I as on from the time I was a child, the one my mother loved to see me on, the one I clung to at all costs, that blocked my ability to listen to my body, to listen to me.

My pedestal of being the ‘good’ daughter, kind, hardworking, successful, helpful to the extreme, made even more necessary to compensate for being the ‘fat’ daughter… It was what I thought defined me.  And, whenever I would feel myself slipping off, I would clamber back up.  Brush off the dust and bruises, ignore the aches and pains – the migraines, the rashes, the asthma attacks, the hives -  all of these were just my body betraying my need to be my best and most idealized version of myself. 

My pedestal cracked to the core when my mother died.  Not only because she was the eyes through which I saw myself, but because my pedestal was built on a tripod – of my mother and father’s love and my husband’s undying commitment.  That was my base – I had my girls, my friends, I had my work – but their perception of me was my core.  Without my mother, made worse by my feeling that I had let her down in her last days, the pedestal started swaying.

Some time and spackle later, I thought that I was finding my way back.  Only to lose the next leg of the tripod – when my husband became ill, and his commitment to me wavered, my world spun.  And, I couldn’t understand why – I shielded myself in anger, I found enemies (some just, some unjust) to fight and I dragged myself forward.  Still unrelenting – still clenching my jaw and ignoring my body whining and moaning at me – I pushed through and tried to clamber back up on my tarnished and swaying pedestal. 

Is it a surprise then that I spent that year, with a growing sore on my tongue, ignoring it…wincing when I brushed my teeth but not googling what it could be?  Not saying a word to my Doctor? What could have been a simple nothing the previous year turned into surgery and radiation treatments and lifelong (albeit mild) effects. 

The Big C and recovery from treatment sent the pedestal rocking so hard that I finally had to get off.  And, it’s taken me a couple of years and lots of help to understand, finally laying BLAME aside, that the effort of understanding the WHY, understanding what makes up this pedestal I clung to, is probably the most valuable thing I’ve ever done for myself.

The pedestal has no place in my 2.0 Version of myself.  So even though I often want to clamber back up, and sometimes pop up there without even thinking, I am trying (and sometimes succeeding!) at spending more time listening to the voice I'm so used to ignoring and testing my limits with kindness instead of a stubbornly clenched jaw. 

PS.  Dear select reader - I went a wee bit off topic on this post, it was supposed to be mostly about stress... but blame and understanding your stress is at the bottom of it all and that's where I went.  But for anyone who hasn't watched Dr. Brene Brown on blame, the link is below.  I love her and she makes me think... often.  And, I've also linked Dr. Gabor Mate's book, which is insightful.  And scary.  

http://drgabormate.com/book/when-the-body-says-no

In my quest to put my little Humpty Dumpty life back together, I've been on an internal voyage in some damned choppy water.  I have to be honest, it's been challenging, interesting, demanding and far less than fun.  What's worse than having a life that looks like a shipwreck?  How about diving below the water to pick away at the pieces of the shipwreck, only to find all these clues keeping pointing right back at you?

I've been working the little system I have in place to try and rebalance my life so that I can find joy where there was stress, and peace where there was confusion and anger.  And, most importantly, trying to find a way to have the energy coming in be MORE or at least EQUAL to the energy going out.  As much as I would have loved a reason for why things are as they are, or better yet, for there to be a magic potion, there doesn't seem to be one.  And, so, if nothing changes if nothing changes, then I guess it's high time to change something.  

Almost every week, I've been seeing a psychologist and while my time with her has been filled with all of the self-help catch words that pepper our social media feeds and seem trite for the sarcastic and witty among us, it's a lot harder to brush away and ignore when the seemingly trite words need to be accompanied by some tangible action on my part.  Some change.  Take words like self-compassion.  Blech, I can't write those words without squaring my shoulders.  I immediately snort, and think about how I should just be able to put my shoulder to any challenge.  Self-compassion just sounds like granola crunching BS.  Or how about that damned oxygen mask metaphor?  Sure, sure, I think to myself.... that's fine for someone else, but not for me.

So then, the tiresome psychologist probes, why would it be good for someone else, and not for me?  Just like a fish on a line, I dangle there... caught between my brain that recognizes the stupidity of my thoughts and my heart that tells me that I need to perform.  I need to be 'all that'.  Smart, kind, hard-working, passionate.  A good mother, there when things get tough.  A loyal wife.  A great friend.  

Defined only by what others see in me.  

Oh wait a second.  That seems less than healthy... and not what I would want for my girls.  So why should I settle for it?  Is it because, rather than feeling like a valuable person in my own right, I feel like I am valuable when I am an asset to someone else's?  Is it because rather than just feeling a bit guilty when I can't or don't help someone, I feel unworthy?  I feel shame, that 'soul-eating emotion', as Carl Jung put it.   Oh dear Lord, that just seems so...unhealthy... and, just maybe, true.  

You would think that this realization would be freeing... I've been on the edges of it for such a long time and the movie version of this story would have the cloudy skies open up to a beautiful sun over a quiet and peaceful ocean.  But the opposite is true.  It's heartbreaking, and it tugs deep into my soul and plunges me down into the darkest and deepest waters.  But I trust that this plunge will be worth it... and that the life rebuilt will be better... more sustainable...more...me.

So, I've finally made it back to work.  I'm lucky enough to work with amazing, kind, brilliant and dedicated people.  But their brightness and quickness makes me blink like I'm staring into the noon sun sometimes.  Friends say that I seem like I always was.  Able to speak my mind, see the big picture.  But this return to work has been hard.  You see, a cog slipped, the cd got a scratch, a gear got stuck, and so things that I took for granted are shockingly, ridiculously hard.

Reading and writing is hard.  Writing is the worst, instead of being cathartic, instead of being able to just 'fall into' it, and let the words and thoughts flow, they get lost.  They swirl and twirl around me and as I chase one down, the follow-up, the next line is lost.  This damned post is like pouring cold molasses in a freezer.  It's there, but it won't flow.  At work, I  flew out of my office in frustration trying to capture some thoughts in a simple email.  An email that took me literally hours to write, instead of minutes.

And, then there is the reading.  I can read, I can analyze, but the stuff I read seems to keep getting filed in the wastebasket in my brain.  And, get dumped before I can go and fetch it.  So, my viewpoint is there, but what I've read is not.  

I've known for months that all was not the same.  That I wasn't the same as I was, pre-radiation, with a couple of scars to show for it.  And so I dragged my feet and dreaded returning to work.  I've spoken to my doctors, over and over again, and there is no magic potion to make this all better.  The Radiation Oncologist, when I finally saw him and told him that something wasn't right, was pretty direct.  And, quick to point out that it couldn't be the radiation.  When he turned to me and said "well, your brains aren't in your mouth", I felt like a ballon pricked by a needle.  My GP is less sure of the cause, and I know what I know about how I feel and when.  But the cause matters not. The impact is the same.  I find a bit of comfort in my kind colleague who has fought her own Big C battles and relates to this feeling of being less than before.  And, of course, I'm just supremely lucky to be working with friends... people who I trust and whose support means the world to me.

And, so I do all the things that I'm told to do and some that just help.  I see my acupuncturist, I do yoga classes with an amazingly talented and soothing instructor, I practice mindfulness, I see a psychologist.  I have a little pit crew assembled to put me back on the road.  But, I dunno.  For you see, gentle reader, I'm writing this with tears streaming down my face, and a headache pounding in the back of my skull.  It's so crazy hard to do this, you see.  I'm writing, rewriting, getting lost, rereading and getting lost again in my own muddied thoughts.  

I wasn't going to broadcast this, who wants folks to know that there's a slipped gear?  But I've got to practice this stupidly, ridiculously hard, thing.  And, this is what is top of mind to blog about... so there you have it.  Here's to hoping that this blogging practice is like a yoga practice.  It may look like crap, but I'm just going to breathe through it, and keep trying.  

It's been months and months since I finished my cancer treatment.  I've been off work for almost a year now and I ended my radiation torture months and months ago.  How naive I was thinking that I'd be back to work in November.  Or January.  Even though I couldn't eat or drink, I wanted to get back to Normal so badly and figured that if it could get that bad that fast it could get better just as quick. 

Now I wonder and worry if Normal is slipping away from me.  The physical scars are fading, the abuse heaped on those poor mouth and throat tissues is pretty well healed and I'm adjusted to my new normal.  Coca Cola still taste like sewage, I'd just as soon drink battery acid as have a glass of orange juice, but I'm pretty much put back together again.  Except this little Humpty Dumpty seems to have lost her head.  

It's so hard to explain, even to myself, what it's like to lose that edge that you had, that glimmer of brightness or quickness in your thinking.  Ideas would link for me, I'd see connections and I took my mind for granted.  I'd write, just for me, I loved to pour my heart out through my fingertips... and the words came easily.  The grammar, not so  much, but the words would just flow.  

Now...  now each word is stuck in molasses.  Thoughts don't run together, they slowly seep through a fog and get lost and swirled with other thoughts.  Reading has become a chore.  Instead of losing myself in a book, I labour through.  

I so remember that tired working mommy feeling, that overwhelmed feeling of being ON, tired, on edge and ON all the time.  Having that rolodex in my head of every appointment, every schedule, every deadline, every colleague that needed a push, every relationship to nurture.  I'd love to have the capacity, the endurance, the brain power to feel that again.  What I feel now is different, so very different.  It's a heaviness in my head and a tired that won't go.  A tired that makes you slow and stupid ... that pounds at the back of your head and sits in your bones.  I don't know where my synapses went, and what's worse, I worry that they are gone for good.  The Doctors say vaguely reassuring words, but they don't know why this happens to some people or what causes it.

For me, because I'm a complicated girl, and nothing can be simple, it's even less clear because there are three pieces to my confusion puzzle.  Is it from the radiation treatment?  Or is it that plus stress from my husband moving out due to his struggles with the ugly black dog in his head?  Or, just to kick a girl when she is down, is it the conveniently timed menopause?  

So I try and build around the edges of this foggy, grey puzzle.  Right now, this blog post is one piece of this puzzle.  If I can just put together one little corner of the puzzle, just a few pieces that would click together then maybe I'll start to believe that I can get myself put back together again... 

I have a sneaking fear that I am a drama addict.  If you knew my family, you'd find me to be not nearly as dramatic as some.  I always thought of myself as a bit of the voice of reason in my family.  A sometimes temperamental voice of reason, but still - pragmatic, counselling for forgiveness.  But, but, but... sometime over this little period of time where I was diagnosed with and treated for cancer, I realized how complicit I am in the drama that sucks the life and joy out of my family.

Some in my family have drama filled, chaotic lives rife with problems, challenges and tales of victimization.  I tried to help, but those efforts just cost me and backfired.  I tried to protect my parents from some of the drama - another futile and costly attempt.  And, so I withdrew, enough to be safe, to be above the fray.  I was just going to do my best to be as kind as possible without getting sucked into hurtful and silly arguments and exchanges.

I was on a bit of a high horse about how well I managed to stay 'above it all'.  But this summer, during my treatment, some in my family found another bit of proof that I was the 'favoured child' and I boiled over in anger.  It was good to have something to be angry about, something so much more tangible than the lurking threat of little cancer cells.  And, I seethed at their concern with themselves while I suffered through ridiculously hard radiation treatments.  

As I started to feel a bit better, and started peeking down from my high horse, I started to feel a bit stupid.  After 48 years on the planet, and sisters who have called me every name in the book and then some, how could I possibly justify being angry because they are angry?  How can I justify wasting any life energy on grievances that I can't possibly fix?  I thought I had changed my part in the play, but did I really?  

The cycle is exactly the same as it has always been, a grievance (real or imagined), they lash out, I react, I withdraw, they apologize, and we go around again.  When I was 23, my boss in my first real job, asked me to not have my family call me at work because I became too upset and agitated.  And, at 48 I allow myself to feel the same way?  

If the cycle is the same, then I haven't done a damn thing any different.  And, so I decided it was high time that I stop being a partner in the drama.  To leave my supporting role in this tragic play.  

How did it work out, you may wonder gentle reader?  Well, I just failed my first test.  Miserably and horribly.  We are in the process of clearing out my Dad's house and we all spoke up for what we wanted.  My mother's dining set, which had been her mother's before her was to go to me.  But I wasn't sure that I wanted it or would even use it.  And, said as much.  One of my sisters said she wanted it, so that was all good.  But a change in her circumstances led to conversations about storing it, about storage lockers and all forms of options.  

I felt a tug of responsibility for safeguarding the dining room set, and sent a poorly worded email and am back living in the land of drama.  Of my own creation. Doesn't seem that I learned much of anything, except that choosing to not be complicit in drama is a bit harder than it would seem to be!

Back in the day, I used to do aerobics.  It was a very 80's thing to do, and I was an 80's girl.  I remember being in the class with the uber fit little sprite of a girl leading the charge and saying, 3 more, 2 more, 1 more NOW 5 more!  That's very much how I felt after I slogged through 6 weeks of hell - well, really about 3 weeks of treatment hell.  Only to have my Doctor turn to me and say that the 2 weeks after radiation ended would be worse.  And, that I would only see the light at the end of the tunnel in about 6 weeks.  Oh, and some of the side effects MAY be permanent.  

And, then, gotta love this guy.  He looked me in the eye and said, you look kinda down.  Really?  Is that much of a surprise?  But at least it was over and I could stop my mind from running around in circles wondering if I should have ever consented to this treatment.  The decision  to put my life on hold because my Doctors told me that I had a better chance of not having a reoccurrence if I did was far easier when the costs were thereotical.  Before I knew what the side effects would really feel like.  Even though they warned me, repeatedly and somewhat eagerly, about how unwell I would feel.  Give us six months of your life, they said, and we will work to prevent a recurrence of a cancer that is not 'salvageable' if it comes back.  

When the cost was low, it was easy to comply with what they asked of me.  The trouble for me comes when people start telling me what I 'have' to do.  I really, really hate being told what to do.  Is that because I am the youngest?  Just the way I was made?  Who knows, but it's been something I've struggled with my whole life.  

To make matters worse, I didn't fit nicely into their protocol, so they would tell me what I 'had' to take and when I did it would cause more problems than solve.  They have a little path you take, your mouth erupts into a million sores making it feel like there are razor blades lining your throat every time you swallow.  The pain of a sip of water would cause tears.  So, they prescribe some hydromorphine for you.  And, some anti-nauseau medication.  And, give you samples of liquid sustenance - ensure, boost, resource.  Sugar laden, high calorie stuff.  Suggesting anything out of the protocol - holistic options for managing the mouth sores for example, was met with more resistance than I could counter. 

The problem for me was that I couldn't get my protein shakes down, and the other stuff would make me throw up.  And, convincing them of that was an uphill battle.  Frankly, spending hours throwing up with a throat lined with razor blades feels as good as it sounds.  And, of course, the narcotics would also make me throw up.  It seemed endless until I found a balance of a lot of anti-nausea medication and a little narcotic to take the edge of the pain.  And, through it all I counted the days until it was all done.  Luckily for me, I had miscalculated when my end date was so finding out that it was three days earlier than I thought gave me the lift I needed to push to the end. 

So after I rang that lovely bell and was done with my last radiation treatment, I really hoped to be able to beat the statistics and heal a bit faster than predicted.  I went straight away to my friendly acupuncturist, a lovely fellow who was able to abate the razor blade pain and get the nausea under control in one treatment.  But just like the outside of my neck was horribly burned, the inside of my throat and mouth was burned and started to 'peel'.  Creating oodles of thick, smelly, disgusting, revolting mucus.  That I would cough up all day and all night.  One entire weekend I spent on the couch with a bucket, watching the entire Walking Dead series, and wondering how to get a medically induced coma.  

But  s l o w l y  it started to get better.  Far more slowly than I would like, and not better every day.  But the razor blades are gone, yesterday was the first day that I went to bed and wasn't hungry, and my mouth and throat are just moderately sore.  I still don't speak very clearly, and it hurts to speak which I find inordinately frustrating.  I'm still coughing and spitting up phlegm and blood from my poor healing throat and have started antibiotics in case the swelling is related to an infection, but am moving steadily towards a healed mouth and throat.  And, will wait and hope that the most limiting side effects don't stick around forever.  

It'll be interesting to see how I feel in a month or two.  Right now, if I could be teleported back in time to April and asked if I wanted to go ahead with this treatment, I would say "HELL NO!  Absolutely not.  Not a chance".  Hopefully this will all have been worth it, and my Doctor is right.  By his way of thinking, the law of averages means that some good luck should be coming my way soon enough.  

And, I do have more blessings, more kind and generous friends who have supported me with their words and actions, than I could have ever hoped to have.  

Website of Lovely Acupuncturist  -  http://www.brucecawdron.com/

Do you know that I have a bar code?  Yep, I have a little slip of paper with a bar code, and rather than telling a clerk that I've arrived for my radiation appointments, I just scan my bar code.  Then wait and the radiation technicians come and get me for my quick, efficient and streamlined irradiation. 

We've moved light years passed Henry Ford's first assembly line to bring his cars to the masses.  Whether you know it or not, everything you have is made in a factory - including the food that you eat.  It has struck me more than once, that I'm very much like the little piggies that get moved from pen to pen in their specialized swine housing, the little piggie factories.  And, just like the unease that happens when you think (well, at least when I think) of animals being treated as parts of such an industrialized process, I'm not that comfortable thinking of myself as part of the cancer factory.  

See the picture below?  Is that what you thought a pig farm looked like?

Just like the guidelines on how to house little piggies, treat them humanely, feed them so they grow quickly, manage all that manure, treat them so they don't get sick, there are written guidelines and protocols about how to treat my type of cancer, surgery, radiation, management of side effects.  Now, one certainly hopes  the goals are very different - rather than fattening me up for slaughter (although I've done a good job of that all by myself!), the goal is to eradicate the cancer and keep me around a lot longer.  

But the means to the goals, the search for efficiencies drives to the same process.  For the piggies, the protocols and guidelines strive to most cost effectively manage their short little lives, and convert them from wee little Babe like piglets into pork.  For cancer patients, it is to rid the patient of the cancer, as quickly as possible.  So many people are so often surprised to learn about where we get our food from, I often encounter folks who had no idea that their idealized vision of meat production belongs to a different century.  

With millions of people to feed, efficiency and cost savings are king.  It only makes sense that with thousands of people to treat for cancer (is it millions in Canada - interesting question that!), we have a assembly line approach to treatment.  When I'm in a happy mood, I like to think of it as a cancer village.  But, then sometimes I feel like a cog, just a barcode in a huge industrial complex.  

In so many ways, as a society, we have progressed so far.  But all this information and specialization drives us away from being personally connected.  As organizations become larger and larger, they need to weed out inefficiencies wherever and whenever possible.  I know that I am a series of statistics and numbers to my radiation doctor.  I'm a T1N0M0 with a 3mm margin.  

Don't get me wrong, everyone at the cancer centre is great - they are kind, interested, polite, engaged and efficient.  But sometimes I think it would be nice for my Doctor to pause for a moment, and say hello to me.  Not to T1N0M0, lateral tongue resection.  

On a sidenote - when I think of assembly lines, I always think of the famous I Love Lucy episode, which I included because I love it so much even though it has really very little to do with the blog. 

And, if the whole factory farming bit bothered you, one of the easiest and best things you can do to encourage the more humane treatment of animals is to stop buying cheap eggs!  Free run or Nest Laid eggs are easy to find, and each and every time someone spends the extra dollar on those eggs, they send a message to the industry that people do care about how animals are treated.  More on that later!  

Like the nerf ball I am, every time I think about my upcoming radiation treatments, I end up with the Spiderman theme song stuck in my head.  Not the new Spiderman, the 21st century fancy computer generated special effects Spiderman, but the dorky cartoon Spiderman from the 1960s.  A little radioactive blood and Peter Parker was using his spidey senses and spinning webs across the City - I wouldn't mind a spidey sense or two! 

I'm been thinking about Spidey since it has been almost eight weeks since the surgery, and now that I'm starting to feel well, it's time to start the radiation treatment.  

I've got my mouth guard and my freaky little radiation mask.  It is a wee bit like a Spidey mask - not nearly as cool though.  Getting it was sort of an adventure.  There were two very sweet young guys explaining the process, the machine and then outfitting me in my new friend -  mouth propped open, mouth guards in place and this mesh stuff molded to my face.  The mask will be snapped into place each and every appointment to make sure that they get the same spots each time I get zapped.  

A real highlight of the appointment was the piece of wax that will protect my scar.  They carefully placed the warm wax on my scar, the scar on my NECK and then I had multiple hands pushing down firmly. And, by firmly, I mean enough to make me think that I watch too much Criminal Minds, and start to wonder if they've ever accidentally choked someone.  It was a relief to be out of there, and tomorrow I'll see the results of their handiwork.  

Tomorrow is number one of 33 treatments that will stretch until July 4th.  I'm hoping that it won't be as bad as billed, and that I'll be able to have a bit of a life in the next month.  I'm planning on heading to Toronto on the weekend for the last cheer competition of the year, the Wonderland competition, where the girls really just get to have some fun and strut their stuff.  Oh, and maybe do a bit of shopping.  From the amount of times the subject has popped up in the last week or two, I'd say they probably have detailed plans already laid out of what stores they have to make it to in our two days in Toronto!  

I think I could fill up my pool with a dripping faucet faster than I can read this freakin' book.  It's is so irritatingly, maddeningly picking on a what seems to be a very raw nerve.  

What has me up tonight is the constant theme in this book, and to be fair, in most pop psychology, that the root of all evil, all the quirks and problems with how we are built, stems from our childhood.  Go see any therapist and just like the ubiquitous kleenex box in the soothingly lit room, questions about your childhood, and how you perceived your parents and your siblings, will be asked.  These questions serve as the tea leaves for them to build the story of why you are the way you are.  

Was your mother needy or jealous, neglectful and self-absorbed or a saintly martyr?  Were you the middle child?  An only child?  Last born like me?  Answer those questions and you'll find the reasons why you behave the way you do.  Do you crave attention, seek out conflict, have an air of superiority or disassociate when times get tough?  Well, how could you not, you were reacting to the way you were raised!  Pull together the pieces of your childhood, read those tea leaves, and the reasons, dare I say, excuses will be laid out for you.  

This approach makes victims of children.  And, by default, the parents become the criminals - the villains.  I look at my girls and wonder what stories they will have to tell.  What faults in my parenting will leach into their souls when they are 30 years old?  Will they remember their childhood as a frenetic, chaotic time or with that unrealistic rosy filter we drape on the moments of time that we want to keep precious? 

It also takes the faults of the child and plops it squarely on the parent's lap.  No matter how old the poor parents are.  When my girls are 30, I hope to remember to tell them to suck it up.  So what, we didn't do a perfect job.  So what, we fought, we had problems.  If you have some unresolved or deep seated problem with how you were raised and you are an adult, it's on you now.  Most parents do their best, and sometimes it is woefully inadequate.  

What is rubbing me raw with this book - with this line of thinking - is that people get sick because of the way they are built.  Which may be true.  But the second part of this thesis is that your childhood is the factory that builds you, so it is to blame for all your glitches and problems.  It's such a cop out, just like the drunk driver who pleads not guilty because they are an alcoholic.  Or the abused child who grows up to be an abuser.  

People who had great childhoods owe it to their kids to do even better than their parents did, but people who didn't have great childhoods get to see, first hand, the consequences of bad decisions, bad morals.  And, those lessons are expensive if you have to learn them yourself.  

* * *

Augusten Burroughs, Running With Scissors

"If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can’t buy you clothes, they’re so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but never for one moment do you doubt their love for you–if you have this, you have incredibly good fortune.

If you have two parents who love you? You have won life’s Lotto.

If you do not have parents, or if the parents you have are so broken and so, frankly, terrible that they are no improvement over nothing, this is fine.

It’s not ideal because it’s harder without adults who love you more than they love themselves. But harder is just harder, that’s all."

Last year I went to Wonderland with my girls for a cheerleading competition and I rode a huge, scary Roller coaster, aptly named the Behemoth.  This most ridiculous of steel monstrosities drags you to the top of the world and then lets you plunge down, too scared to even scream, in a type of free fall torture where you spend three minutes of your life in terror until you finally reach the end and let out what remains of your shaky, panicky breath.  

On that slow creep up to the tippity top, while my blood pounding through my veins, I remember thinking - I want to go back in time - I will not choose to go on this ride.  I just need to go back 4 minutes.  Okay 3 minutes will do.  The anticipation of the plunge down, the build up of fear, that is the hardest part.  The plunge down, that is when you make your peace with God, and figure you will either survive or be one of those splatted safety statistics.  

That is what having cancer is like.  You get some news, then you wait - to find out more, to have surgery booked, to have treatments booked.  This last little bit, this lead up to radiation, the wondering about whether the recent biopsy would yield negative news, these weeks have felt like a slow, jerky creep up to the top of that Behemoth.  I'm hoping that my anticipation of what radiation will have in store for me will be worse than the reality.  My little medical village, the doctors, nurses, naturpath, nutritionist - all tell me how sensitive the tissues of the mouth are.  How difficult this radiation is.  Each and every time I'm told about how bad it will be, it feels like another creaky jolt upwards, just another foot higher.  I don't even know when this roller coaster will start going down.  Nothing has been set yet, so I continue to build up the anticipation, on hold, and pondering the bad things promised once I reach the top.  

I can take solace that lately I have been getting good news lately rather than bad.  I went today to get my biopsy results.  Only to find out that my appointment was cancelled, and the Doctor was supposed to call me to tell me that she wouldn't need to see me until September.  My biopsy was fine.  I'll take that any day over the recent weekly appointments to check the little spots on my tongue that don't look quite right.  And, late last week I heard that I won't need chemotherapy, that my cancer isn't advanced enough for me to be eligible for the clinical trial.  More good news.  

Those bits of good news, of progress in the right direction, I'm hoping that they will foreshadow a radiation marathon that is less unpleasant than promised.  Until then I continue my creaky ascent - and try hard not to pack a backpack and run away to Mexico or Costa Rico.  

Dear select readers, how many of you related to that first image?  Hands up ladies!  Knowing my friends who might read this, I'm betting many of you.  Now, this image is a pitch for some supplements, but I found it because I've been reading a book at the recommendation of my newly found cancer naturpath, "When the body says NO" by Gabor Mate.  It's been a really hard slog for me to get through.  Not because it's isn't well written or interesting, rather because I read a few pages and stutter.  And reflect.  And put the book down to think a little about why it keeps making me react.  I'm reacting more to this book that even the Sheryl Sandberg leadership manifesto that made my blood boil.  

I'm not through the book yet and I keep seeing myself in it, over and over again.  The author is a palliative care doctor, and he writes from his own experiences with patients with diseases such as MS, Crohns, cancer and the like.  The book explains some of the research done in an area called Psychoneuroimmunology.  It is an area of study that focuses on the connection between the mind and the nervous and immune systems of the human body.  When I think of the mind-body connection, I always think of my mother, who would always, always, get a horrible cold  or some ailment whenever there was a funeral that she was supposed to attend.  It was never a feigned illness.  She hated going to the funerals and her body, without fail, was happy to find a reason to make it impossible for her to attend. 

This book, while careful not to blame the patient, pulls on the connecting threads between chronic stress, repression of emotions and these life altering, life reducing or life ending illnesses.  It begins to explain the connections between our complicated immune system and  our psychological state.  Much of the book focuses on the childhood experiences and stresses of the patients.  Some is rubbing me the wrong way as I've never met a perfect parent, perfect family or perfect child.  I've always felt that we are all the victims and benefactors of our upbringing, and we all have the choice to benefit from the good and learn from the bad. 

But if you start to think this through, if chronic stress or rather an inability to cope with chronic stress causes not just your run of the mill, depressed immune system, cold/flu, your hypertension or migraines, but also diseases like cancer or MS, what do we do with that?   For someone like me, where I have a disease that from a statistical point of view, I shouldn't have, it seems logical to blame stress.  

It's a pretty easy leap, really more of a hop, to say that the unremitting stress of last year and the feeling of being totally out of control in my life was a catalyst for an immune system that was not up to the job of catching the growing cancer cells.  But if how we are built makes us sick, what do we do?  If your life is built on loyalty, family and love, what do you do?  Unmake ourselves?  Be people that we aren't?   

I think often about something that a former colleague used to say to me ALL the time.  Whether talking about work or home, just about every day, he would say "Yes, it's a problem, but it's not YOUR problem".  I've always wanted to solve problems, jump in and carve a path forward.  Push for a resolution, a decision, a direction.  But in reflecting on this connection and the few studies that have shown personality types being associated with diseases, I am starting to ask myself some uncomfortable questions.

I've spent a lifetime trying to live up to my expectations for myself, and trying to drive down my expectations of others.  Maybe I need to find a new balance.  

More later as I continue reading and reflecting!  

This weekend my oldest girl, my horsie girl, spent the weekend at a riding clinic.  Watching her ride far better than I ever have, even when I was young and brave, makes me so happy.

Even before I started leasing a horse, I started my oldest daughter in lessons.  Hoping she'd be bit by the horse bug as I was.  She never really seems to love it, but she persevered, liking it enough to keep going.  Her turning point seemed to be when I decided to buy both my girls a pony - suddenly for her it seemed that riding became more than just an expensive hobby.  It was a madly impulsive decision, but I wanted both my girls to have the opportunity to ride.  Truth be told, I thought my youngest daughter would be the natural rider.  She, who will never have an issue explaining her point of view to man or animal.  

But life happens and never in ways we predict.  An incident involving bossy mares, a pony, some ice and Mom being run over left a pretty nasty aftertaste in my youngest daughter's mouth.  She decided that she didn't like or trust horses at all - something I blame myself for because I pushed her too hard, and even as a toddler, she was very clear that she won't ever be pushed around -  the pony was sold, and we began the odyssey to buy THE mother/daughter horse.  Safe for Mom, and athletic enough for daughter.  

My oldest daughter started to really enjoy the competitive aspect of riding, she loved perfecting her skills and began to see herself as a rider.  Much as I groan and moan about how the mother/daughter horse rapidly became the daughters horse, and Mom was relegated to the difficult to ride and not very athletic, super sweet mare, watching my daughter develop the determination, kindness and focus necessary to train a horse while learning herself makes me one very proud Mama.  

And, the time we spend going to and from the barn, talking about shows, coaches, equipment, farriers is time well spent.  The friends we have made, our barn family, is a huge part of our life.  And, this time is my hook into my private and contained teenager, this soon to be adult, who just yesterday was my tiny baby girl.  

Back to the land of the cancer updates.  Like I ever really left, eh!  

After last week's appointment with the surgeon, where she explained the pathology reports and expressed concern that the little devil cancer cells might already growing back on my poor abused tongue, I met with a bunch of other folks.  And, this got me thinking about the little health care village that I have around me.  Much like the village that Hillary Clinton talked about to raise a child, this village is apparently needed to drive out a cancer.

My village has three separate little communities.  My regular health care community, the GP and dentist that I feel fortunate to have.  I was so touched that my GP reached out to me not just once but twice to express her sadness at my diagnosis and to ask me to let her know if there was anything she could do.  Then, my dentist, who first sounded the alarm at the innocuous white spot, and then gave me a hug and very reassuring words when I went to pick them up uber detailed package of records she had prepared for the new 'cancer' dentist to review.  

Next community, is the BIG C community or my slash and burn group, as I like to call them.  They wield the scalpels, they plan the radiation treatments, they run the chemo trials.  They include the surgeon who sliced open my tongue and scooped out the cancer (the cancer that is hopefully not already making an encore performance - more on that later!  Or hopefully, nothing to tell about that later!!).  Her very sweet administrative assistant who makes sure that the forms are filled out, and that appointments are remade even when the other arm of the hospital messes them up.  My new radiation oncologist, who I hope knows what he is doing and recommended 6.5 weeks of radiation, all the while being VERY frank about the risks and side effects.  Although I did wish for a bit of sugar coating here and there.  We can add in the nurse assigned to my case, the chemo clinical trial nurse and the physiotherapist, who I have yet to met but hope to meet with sooner rather than later.  I would eventually like to be able to wash my hair with two hands!!  And, we can't forget the hospital dentist, she who isn't much of a believer in my unhappy, doesn't like to open, already abused before the 5 hour surgery, jaw.  Her job is to fix my teeth up so that they are as ready as they can be for the assault of radiation.  Although it's hard to ask a dentist to sugar coat information, the little tidbit that sometimes jaw bones can break if there are issues with your teeth after radiation, GULP, was yet another eyes wide, mouth shut moment in this journey. 

My last little community is a more holistic little group that I stumbled upon and am very happy to have found.  The Ottawa Integrative Cancer Centre (http://www.oicc.ca/en) are a group that consists of naturpaths, nutritionists, psychologists, massage therapists, acupuncturists and more, who assess the whole person, and look beyond the cancer to try and help the person coping with cancer to rebalance their bodies and their lives.  Oh, and of course, manage the cancer ordeal to have the best possible outcome.  From the young and kind naturpath who made me eliminate coca cola, that sugary, tasty bubbly staple of my mid-mornings, to the Australian nutritionist who seemed to instantly see the stress that I have been trying to cope with, and discussed its affects on me as a whole, their calm and kind approach has been inspiring.  Teaching me about my beleaguered adrenal system, and instead of making me feel guilty about all the things that I haven't been doing for myself, they are nudging me towards taking better care of myself.  

These little steps, making better protein shakes, taking some little capsules of vitamins that are proven to aid in the prevention of cancer, or that help manage the side effects of radiation, makes me feel like I'm being proactive, that I am part of my own treatment.  While I would infinitely prefer to not need this village, to never need to visit the Cancer Centre, to have never heard of the OICC, I'm glad that they are there to help me through.  

Special Note:  I just found the video above on the OICC site, I have to say the last half is too much of an advert for my taste, but the start of the video, that hits home.

It's a funny thing, this cancer thing.  It dominates your life, even when you don't want it to.  It controls your conversations, dictates your schedule and messes with your mind.

People keep telling me how strong I am and it makes me wonder, what is strength?  I think about the friend who lost her son to cancer, just a wee boy who would never get to have a first kiss, play sports, dance at his wedding.  Or my friend whose nephew has been in and out of hospital for leukaemia and probably only remembers a life of blood tests, transplants and doctors.  Or the little girl with cancer who won a pony for a year, only to get sick again.  Those mothers, fathers and families trying to pull their children through, doing what needs to be done even when it's beyond what they can bear, that to me is strength.

Last year, I cried an ocean of tears.  During my hubby's twisted path towards the light, my eyes watered and voice cracked at almost every turn.  During this cancer crapshow, I've barely shed a tear.  Sure, there have been tears at each disappointment, but they are a drop in the bucket to the tears shed last year.  It feels easier to consent to scars to ward off cancer, to deal with discomfort, to (hopefully) cope with a treatment that sounds ... horrifyingly unpleasant.

Easier because the choices are mine to make.  Advocate for a neck dissection or don't.  My choice.  Consent to the recommendation to do radiation, my choice.  There is uncertainty, but it pales to the uncertainty of witnessing harm happening to someone that you care for and feeling powerless to fix them. 

The one thing that I should have learned by now is that things never happen as you predict, no matter how many times you run it through your mind.  

I wasn't really obsessed about today's appointment, except for last night when sleep eluded me and there was enough silly family drama to distract.  I arrived promptly at 1:15pm for my pre-arranged post-operative appointment.  Those who know me know that I have two options for arriving at appointments or meetings, on time or on 'Lisa time'.  Early happens just a few times a year, and only really to daze and confuse those who've come to expect my 'just on time' approach.  So, today like all others, I was running a smidge late, and to make it there exactly at 1:15pm, I had to leave hubby to park the car and dash up to my appointment.  

Once there, I found myself surrounded by... what looked like a group of very well seasoned, very old boozers.  Seriously old and seriously rummy looking crowd.  Suddenly I felt... youthful.  Good Lord, between the watery eyes, faint whiff of beer and canes and crutches, I felt kinda healthy. While I'm waiting, an old fellow just saunters right into the line in front of me.  Eyes big, I figure that even though my shoulder is aching and I did just have surgery - meh, he's probably not super steady on his feet, so have at it, take my space in the line.  After what seemed like hours, finally the nurse tells me that I was supposed to meet the Doctor at 9:15am.  This is now the 'liver' doctors time.  Oops, thanks to the hospital that gave me the wrong time.  But, at least, this crowd in this waiting room makes more sense!   

Luckily, they were able to squeeze me in to the cancer clinic and down there I waited, expecting the worst and hoping for the best. I had mentally prepared myself for the news that the cancer had spread to my lymph nodes and that I would need radiation. I also prepped questions in case I heard that we were all clear, it was all good.  But, best laid plans were out the window and yet again I ended up in a world of unexpected events when first I heard that they were worried that the cancer was already coming back because of the small red spot on the underside of my tongue.  Huh?  Of course, I still can't see it but then the overall grossness of the whitish yellowish 'tissue' and sutures might be blinding me when I look into my mouth.  Next, and for a final kick in the shins is the detailed explanation (only partially retained) about margins around the tumour on my tongue, pre-cancerous tissue, percentages of recurrence, and their recommendation for radiation.  Oh, and we'd also recommend that you do a clinical trial of chemo.  

My radiation doctor seems very kind - says that the first strike against cancer is most often the most successful.  Your choice, he says. Radiation of the mouth is very difficult, he says.  Towards the end you'll think I'm trying to kill you, he says.  And, words that I've feared since I first read about oral cancer, do you have good teeth, he asks?  

WTF? Again, I'm kinda stunned.  Again, I'm trying to shake some meaning into any of this.  But perhaps there is no meaning and that's what I'm supposed to get.  People get cancer, heart disease, strokes and die of tragic accidents all the time.  Superman falls off his horse and is paralyzed, tricks of fate are as plentiful as the stars in the sky. 

So if shit happens, we just need to get on.  Maybe forcing yourself to eat a side effect laden apple will make the good apples taste all the better.  

My guess is that there is no real recipe for strength, for courage or for life other than to say that we will choose to move forward, live, or die trying.  

Taking a break from the constant cancer updates, although sadly related, I'm feeling particularly peckish today about the sick leave discussion in the federal public service.

Moving beyond the sometimes ridiculously adversarial relationship that this government has with its employees, the issue of sick leave is at the forefront of many public servants minds.  After several years of downsizing and restraint, discussions about the much debated total number of sick days that federal public servants take feels like salt on a raw wound.  Public servants reacted - not as much to the loss of bankable sick days - but to another slap in their face, another indication that this government doesn't appreciate its own staff.

Rather than being the enemy of a frugal government, the public service is filled with economists, policy wonks, accountants, communicators, scientists, cops, lawyers, administrative assistants, computer programmers and (the list goes on and on and on).  Some of these people are brilliant, most are dedicated to serving the public good, and, yes, Virginia, some are slackers.  But the assumption that fiscal conservatives tend to have that public servants are NOT hardworking, or are spoiled employees with their hands out, is grossly unfair and extremely biased.  

Just like my friends and colleagues, when I hear the 'sound bites' alleging that “...the public service suffers from exceedingly high levels of absenteeism"..., words, that are accompanied with slippery statistics, and are clearly intended to raise the ire of all those voters who aren't fortunate enough to have benefits, to have sick leave, to have pensions, it seems ... well, spiteful.  And frankly, not entirely that bright.  Enraging your staff doesn't tend to make them engaged, happy and productive employees.  

For me, a sandwich generation girl, stuck between ageing parent(s), children, and an ill husband, I would love sensible sick leave reform.  I am now in a position to regret my decision to not return to the City, where I would have had the sick leave available to deal with not just one catastrophic illness in my family, but two.  

You see, many provincial and municipal employees have a very humane sick leave plan.  The plan allows for short term sick leave (of up to 17 weeks) for all employees.  Regardless of their tenure.  But if you've been there for just a year, you get a week at full pay, and up to 16 weeks at 2/3rds pay.  If you've been there for 10 years, it's 10 weeks at full pay, and 7 at 2/3rds pay.  And, the clock resets year after year. There is an 'escape' clause that allows the employer some measure of evaluation in cases where employees are ill too often.

Most large organization has short term and long term disability programs in place.  People get sick and the demographics of Canada and the public service are simply not going to help.  Our workforce is ageing.  Older people get sick more often.  Two out of 5 Canadians will get cancer at some point in their life.  

For me, as a public servant, BY CHOICE, having to take unpaid leave because I had the misfortune of using all snippets of leave to care for my mother during her cancer journey, well, that's a bitter pill to swallow.  So, I am hopeful that there will be meaningful reform of public service sick leave.  

Well, that is an overstatement - I would LOVE to see the government, unions and employees engage in a productive and constructive discussion on reform of sick leave.  But, unless some of the young spin doctors from out west take a deep breath and consider that one day, they too may get old or get sick, I think I'm left just wishing that we will be able to have the mature and reasoned conversation that is so badly needed.

I haven't had much stamina for writing or sometimes even thinking this past week, there is something that I need to write now. 

It was how wrong I was.  You see, when you go to a 'Cancer Doctor', amid the various forms that you fill in that list all of your ailments, you also fill out some forms on your mental and psychological state.  These questions help the doctors and social workers determine if you will need social services or extra  help.  And, one of the questions asked "Do you have someone to support you when you are ill?".  This question was about number 7 of 20 and all the other questions were easy to answer. But not this one.

This one dropped a lead boot in my gut.  And, so I skipped it.  And, then when I went back to it.  I pondered it.  And, then left it blank.

I knew that my hubby would be there to drive me to and from appointments, and if he wasn't able to, then I could get someone else to.  But 'support me?".  Well, that's a tricky one.  I've been doing the support in my relationship for some time now (see previous blog post - ), and my nickname is the 'rock'.  Sometimes I feel like I am a rock on quicksand, and I hate that label, but it was given to me because when others can no longer cope and need to walk away, I'll always take up the slack.  

It's not that I can't ask people to do something for me, I'm great at that.  But if they can't - well, it usually means I'll think long and hard about asking for anything again, ever.  No matter how unreasonable my request or how reasonable their reason not to do me the favour.  It's a longstanding flaw - I hate needing anyone and I hate hearing "No".  So, I avoid both at all costs.

The week before surgery, friends were trying to support me and I was trying to accept that support.  But from the first time I awoke to find my old neighbour (a nurse at the Hospital) holding my hand, I've felt support.  I could write a lot of names down now.  

My husband - who just sat at the hospital so I could sleep.  Who swept all the gifts and flowers out of the incredibly tiny room when we all realized, that Lisa truly is claustrophobic and then stayed (maybe to make sure I didn't make good on my prison break promise though!).  

My sisters - who cleaned my house and corralled my kids, who brought books, scarves and told me that it was going to be fine, and who made sure I had the quickest delivery of the prettiest of flowers.

My dad - who came to the hospital to just sit.  To just be there with me.  

My daughters - the oldest who tried to step up into the "Mom" role and my little one, who kept those beautiful brown eyes steady when she first saw me at the hospital and said "Aw sweetie".... words straight from my Mother's spirit through my daughter's lips. 

My friends - barn friends who sent flowers, food, drove the rider to the barn.  Work friends who sent quilts and flowers and notes of concern.  Dear friends who just want to ask if there was anything they could to help.  Facebook friends, some of whom are old friends, dear friends that I use FB to connect with, and some are truly online 'friends'.  But, when I decided that I should let people see the scary incision in advance so that maybe there would be less shock, fewer tears, in person, my FB friends sent encouraging note after encouraging note.  

I promise I do have a funny story or two to tell about my hospital stay - but for now, I just want to let you know that I appreciate you all.   

Pre-cancer my little family was in the midst of a completely different type of health crisis.  We were on a long and uphill road.  You see, a little over a year ago, my husband found that life - kids, work, marriage was getting too hard.  And, he started to head off the rails a little bit.  Then more than a little bit.  Then little things became huge things and worry became his whole, entire life.  

We learned a valuable lesson about the little pink pills that Doctors prescribe for folks who start to struggle.  For 95% of folks, those little pink or blue pills help, take the edge off, reset some of that muddled brain chemistry.  And, then there is the 5%.  And, who knows if you are in the majority until you start to pop those little pills.  And, if you aren't - well, it's really hard for friends, family and physicians to know if it's the pills fault, or if you need a stronger pill. 

We ended up losing about a year to this process.  And, as I watched my husband completely and totally lose his way, and become someone I didn't like and didn't want to even know, I also saw into the hearts of those who were around us.  Sometimes egotistical, partially educated and grossly overconfident people can be extraordinarily dangerous.  When you feel like you are drowning, you will grab onto the nearest hunk of floating debris.  And, cling to it, especially if the promise is health, happiness, or, the possibility of "self-actualization".  

Lucky for us, we had people who stood, like the old growth trees in B.C., just stood there and said the same thing hundreds and thousands of times.  Finally, with an old, brusque Doctor's help, we started to break free from the tangled and stinking forest we were in, and the further he got away from the toxically opinionated, those who pushed him towards a path that fit their world view and their stunted understanding of human nature, psychology, and love, the better he felt.

But we were just on the path out, he was still not my guy.  He wasn't the person I married.  He wasn't my solid landing place as I was the rest of my family's "rock", the guy who was the 'super dad' of our neighbourhood, this kindest of men.  

Then I got sick.  And, he seems to have woken up.  Is it guilt?  Is it a sense that he has no choice?  Have the stars simply aligned at the right time?  I truly don't know, but can say that having him back is a godsend. 

I can't trust that he'll stay as he is.  And, the memory of all that has happened rests very close to the surface, dangerously close more often then not.  People say - he was sick, or "they" were just trying to help - but words and actions carry with them real costs and real consequences.  No matter what the slogans say.  

But at least he seems to be himself, for now.  And, so it seems that the best cure for anxiety turned out to be a good healthy dose of cancer.  It's probably not a recommended treatment - but hey, it seems to work!

For all those that tire of these seemingly endless cancer related posts, I'm sorry.  I can't seem to help myself - the darker the night becomes, the more the thought of these cancer cells, this tiny spot on my tongue, whirls and twirls in my mind.

One thing that I can't quite work out is why I react so strongly, so instantly and so adversely to everyone and everything that says that I will win the battle with cancer.  That I have to fight cancer.  

It's everywhere you look - everything you read about cancer is cloaked in verbiage and imagery of battles, wars, fights.  I fought cancer.  Join us in the fight against cancer.  Friends don't let friends fight cancer alone.

But what are we fighting?  Cancer is a natural order that has gone out of whack.  Cancer is simply a little collection of cells, a little part of the body that won't die when it's supposed to.  Cells live and cells die.  Cancer cells just don't die when they ought to.  It's hard to accept that something as simple as that can kill you.  If these cells are your cells - who ARE you fighting? 

Perhaps because we use such harsh tools to rid our bodies of these growing clusters of cells - poisons that kill cells, good and bad - radiation or scalpels to carve out the offending cells.  Perhaps those tools seem so much like weapons of war that we need to invoke the battle imagery.  We need to wage war against this invisible and insidious adversary. 

But fighting is such nasty business.  You have to be angry to fight.  You have to be pissed off, square your shoulders and be strong to fight.  I know how to be strong, but I don't want to be angry.  Angry doesn't feel healthy - and since the diagnosis I have spent a fair bit of time trying to accept the randomness of it all, the complete and total shitty luck, that has given me, the lone and constant non-smoker in my family, a smokers' cancer.  

I'm trying to cope with these flushes of rage but I don't want to fight anyone, or anything.  I would prefer to simply survive it.  Sounds odd, doesn't it?  

I'm taking this next week off work, a move that feels selfish given the circumstances of my employer, but I'm heeding my Doctor's advice to build my immune system back up before the surgery.  I'm going to go and visit my Mom, or at least that big old pine tree that shelters her soul at that big old lake that was there long before me and will be there long after me.  And, I'll ride my horse, hang out with my family, and get a massage. 

My hopefully competent and quite caring surgeon can wield her scalpel as a weapon, and we can see if we need to do more after the surgery.  

But in the meantime, I'm going to spend my time finding some peace.  

Years ago I did the Myers-Briggs test and was so intrigued by the concept of intuition.  Finally, I had a label for how I had always lived my life and made my choices.  For better or worse, I've let my feelings and intuition guide my life.  I love nothing more than "reading" people, and I find nothing more entertaining than watching passionate people debate real issues.  I love helping people understand why people or issues are stuck, and getting them moving forward again.  And, when confronted by people who hide their feelings and shelve them in hard to access places, I love chinking away at their armour to be able to understand them better, to get a window into their minds.  For me, intuition is nothing more than the power of observation on steroids.

But, my love affair with intituion is also why, from the first minutes when the dental hygienist and assistants were dancing around my mouth measuring my little friend, my soon to be diagnosed tongue carcinoma, I quickly jumped to the cancer conclusion.  Not from any lack of professionalism on their part, but their concern pushed my intuitive lizard brain into full alert.  Once I did my internet sleuthing, well, that bad feeling I had in the dental office grew roots.  

It's a hard slog in our pithy positive world to be honest and say that you have a bad feeling.  People think it means that you think you are going to die.  They chime in wanting you to be positive.  To think positive.  To broadcast your sunny outlook to the world.  And, funny enough, when my co-worker was recently diagnosed with a different type of cancer, I was ALL ABOUT the positivity.  We need to say something, to do something because we care and we feel like we have nothing real to offer.

But, being positive doesn't change reality.  It doesn't change the cancer cells that continue to grow and multiply.  It doesn't change the reality that over this past year of my life, this most shittiest of years, I have felt like absolute crap.  And berated myself for my weakness, my fatigue.  It doesn't change those microscopic little cells that may or may not have floated their way to my lymph nodes and could be the changes that the CT scan found in two of them.  

Only time, surgery and a biopsy will tell if those are stressed out lymph nodes or cancerous lymph nodes.

The one thing that I do know right now is that it always seems that whatever you expect to happen, is not what happens.  Life just doesn't seem to work that way.  It doesn't mean that it won't all work out in the end, or that the slog through won't be worth it.  

But, for me, at least, it means that I'll spend my time LIVING today and I'll think about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.  Oh, and, next time that little voice tells me to go and see the naturpath, I think I'll go!  

Since the first appointment I had with the Doctor when they explained the 'tongue resection' to me, I have spent a lot of time worrying and researching ways of keeping that scalpel away from my tongue.

Just give me a little radiation, I thought, and leave my tongue alone.  Some of the big hospitals in the states do a chemo/radiation combo rather than surgery.  Oops, then I read about how you may end up losing your teeth with the radiation.  Hmm - teeth or tongue - well, that's a question you don't think of asking yourself, is it?  Luckily for me, I always can use my Dad as an example of strength, courage AND perspective - after all, to save his life, he lost his leg.  I guess I can lose a chunk of tongue to rid myself of the cancer.

But wait, more reading, more studies by the National Cancer Institute and I find that many cancer centres prefer to take out the lymph nodes preventatively.  So now I find myself switching from the 'keep that scalpel away from me' side to the 'keep on slicing' side. 

I'm in the cancer treatment river for sure though, had my CT scan and have a surgery date booked.  The CT was quick and I was very glad that they told me that the contrast dye delivered via an expertly placed IV would make me feel like I was peeing my pants.  Even after being told, I still had a momentary panic thinking that maybe Shoppers was right when they sent me that Poise sample in the mail!  

With my surgery date booked for a little over a week from now, I've put a call into the Doctor's office to get a better understanding of their recommendation to not do a neck dissection.  It's hard to imagine that I'd feel like having someone give me a frankenstein like scar, but once you've hacked a chunk of tongue out, is the Frankenstein scar that much of a worry?

And, in other more interesting priorities, as I continue to float and bob along the cancer treatment river, I'm starting to plan my upcoming TV time.  Is it time to start watching the Walking Dead?  Should I order Season 3 of Homeland?  

Big decisions, little decisions, all in good time...

I'm sick.  And, I'm angry - angry all the time.  Why?  Other than the obvious, because I feel so stupidly guilty for not doing everything that I am supposed to do.  We are told as woman that we have it ALL.  What is it that we have?  We have jobs that are equal to our husbands, but our jobs don't end at 5pm.  We go home and 'run' our houses - kids, appointments, furnace repairs, we juggle it all.  And, our husbands, well, they are getting lost in the world of the Supermom. They help out in the second shift, but they can't measure themselves by the yardsticks used by their Dads.  And, they aren't their Moms so what is their role in this new world order??  How many men do you know that seem a bit lost - more than we would probably care to admit.

Then back to us, us warrior woman, caught up in our daily juggling act, supporting and goading each other into more and more.  If we pull back at home, we feel guilty.  If we pull back at work, we feel guilty.  When our bodies fail us, we feel guilty.  And, so we keep juggling, and juggling, and juggling.  And, then a ball drops, and we rush to the closet to sweep up the shattered glass and throw another ball up.  All the while quoting positive and self-empowering words to each other to get us through to the next day.  

Even before THE diagnosis, I tried to read Sheryl Sandberg's book, "Lean In" and it pissed me off.  Angered me to the core, because we are so busy wanting to be just like the boys, and as good as the boys, that we forget sometimes that we aren't boys.  And, if we weren't so busily competing for success, we'd realize that the world is getting seriously out of whack.  Instead of busily looking to others to see how well we are doing or running on our own personal treadmill to keep our place in it, we could stop, stand, breathe and think.  

Do what's right for us, and what is right for our families will naturally follow.  

It took a cancer diagnosis and a week in Toronto feeling like crap while pretending to be 'fine' for me to decide that, for me, with balls falling all around, it's enough.  

I found Lexi's papers cleaning up the office.  As of May 8th, my Lexi (for those of you with crappy middle names, consider her name was.... Patches... eeww) is going to be 10 years old.  She's been in my family for almost 5 years now.  

The moment she put her face in my coat on a cold March day in 2009, I fell in love with her.  Her long and tangled mane, her kind eye and her prettiness entranced me.  I was fast to overlook those crooked legs, those never seen a farrier before hooves, and the whole unbacked thing.  That didn't faze me at all.  

My first brush of fear came when I watched the former bull rider turned horse whisperer ride her in his round pen.  And, saw her buck and give him a good body slam into the sides of the round pen (of course, Reuben being Reuben just pushed himself off the sides and stayed on!).  After that, I wondered what I'd gotten myself into and it took a long time to get some modicum of confidence between Lexi and I.  But it seemed every time we were moving forward, something else would happen.  

Hooves, fractures, hooves, I'd become expert at noticing the slightest hint of unevenness in a horse's stride, the slightest 'off' feeling and the frustration started getting to me.  One day, when it was bleak, my Zen master and I took a walk in the woods and we decided it was time for Lexi and I to part company.

But that didn't happen - and, today I think maybe I see why.  You see, the undercurrent of anxiety that has ebbed and flowed and coloured my riding has turned into rapids in the spring.  So much so that I'm just about jumping out of my own skin when ice falls from the roof of the arena, or a pigeon flutters its wings.  And, so, I've decided to go straight back to the beginning.  Trust, relaxation, calmness and quiet in hand and lunge work.  If she can be calm, then maybe so can I.

And, watching my pretty girl watch me and do her best, I'm falling in love with her all over again.  I hope I don't end up being one of those middle-aged parelli ladies who never rides, but, for right now, that's what I am.  And, having fun with it.  

So, Lexi, you'll get lots of carrots on your birthday.  You may not be particularly rideable or athletic, but you are just meant to be in my life.  

As I rushed to the appointment, running late for no reason other than really not wanting to have to go at all, I thought of all the things I've read about oral cancer in the last two months.  Then I thought about why I never considered it important to think about my health or my well being over the last few years.

Since the oral surgeon said "I'm afraid I have bad news...", I've been researching and struggling to keep an even keel.  But, despite my best efforts, I found my mind skidding around corners, peeking under beds for monsters that I had read about, seen pictures of, and wanted no part of.  

Today's news was good news- they don't expect that I'll need radiation.  I'll have to have a CT scan in the next two weeks to confirm but they don't expect that I'll need a 'neck dissection" (code for taking our your lymph nodes and giving you a nice Frankenstein like scar across your neck).  But I am going to lose a goodish chunk of my tongue.  

The news that the tumour is less than the magic 4cm took me by surprise.  We live in a world where guidelines dictate so much of how we live and what we do - and for tumours on your tongue, 4cm is a magic number.  Over 4cm, and they automatically take out the lymph nodes on that side of your neck.  Under and they don't.  

For now, my two little tongue friends "seem" to be about 3cm.  Once they carve into my tongue and take an additional 1cm around the two cancer demon buddies, I'll be losing a long slice.  Might affect my speech, might affect my swallowing - but I won't have to do radiation.  

So while part of me is relieved, part of me is pretty sad.  This gets more real by the day.  And, I like my tongue.  Even more so now that I know that it's been harbouring those little demon cancer cells and fighting the fight all on its own.   

But the scars will be there for inspection, and every time I open my mouth, perhaps I'll remember to put myself somewhere on the priority list.  

Over the last thirty odd years, I've had lots of jobs.  Done lots of interesting work, lots of horribly boring work.  Worked with people that I grew to care deeply about, and some that I grew to kinda hate.  

Making the move to the federal government was a hard move, but well worth it when my kids were little.  At times I've chafed over the work.  Over the last six years, I've had some really great opportunities to do some "fun" work.  And, each and every time cancer has stopped me.  Yep, cancer seems to be stalking me.

Somehow though, something in the universe seems to link new work opportunities with cancer.

Six years ago, I was approached to work as the EA/Policy Analyst for an ADM.  I said No, then No again, then No again.  The ADM in question, while very talented and successful, had a personality a little too similar to mine for comfort.  I felt like there would be a good chance of a blow up at the end of some random long week - that would end badly for the one much lower on the totem pole.  Then, ADMs changed, I was asked again, and off I went.  Feeling empowered and using my one claim to fame, my ability to talk, cajole or force people to do what I wanted, when I wanted it... no matter how unreasonable the timeframe.  

Fast forward a few months, and my Mom is diagnosed with an aggressive cancer - a quick calculation of my emotional and physical capacities - and I'm off work for a couple of months to get Mom through her chemo and radiation.  And, say goodbye to the cool job.  

Some time passes, and another really neat opportunity presents itself.  I'm working with a bunch of folks who's pinkies and baby toes are smarter than I am.  To whom I HATE to say that I graduated from... cough... Carleton.  Even though I've suddenly dropped 40 IQ points, I'm keeping my head above water.  And, enjoying the challenge.  

Another fast forward, and my Mom's cancer is back with a vengeance.  It's spread to her brain.  She has little time left- who knew that little time would actually mean five months and five days.  I take heaps and loads of leave, every little scrap and then some.  And, after she has passed away, I've lost my way.  And, soon the assignment ends and I'm no longer in the cool albeit challenging job.

But life goes on, kids are trundling their way into their futures, and although work is horrible because we are downsizing, and downsizing and I watch good friends become affected, and I can almost taste their bitterness in my mouth, the part of me that loves being busy, starts getting a kick out of my job.  Then, due to other's misfortunes, I get an opportunity to travel internationally.  Oooh, now this could be fun.  

Oh no, another quick fast forward, and the stupid asinine sore spot on my tongue turns out to be not so asinine.  Not so irrelevant.  In fact, it's cancer.  Oral cancer.  Kinda rough to take since I have NEVER smoked, don't drink, have none of the risk factors.  But yeah me, I have cancer. 

I know the drill, was there at my Mom's diagnosis, and now wait to get swept into the river that is cancer treatment in Canada.  I'll wait for the appointment with the oncologist, I'll try not to go mad wondering what stage I am at, I'll wait for the CT scan, I'll wait to have surgery booked.  I'll have radiation.  And, hopefully, at the end of it, I'll have enough tongue to talk.  

But fuck me, enough is enough.  Three times better be the charm.