... and then I'll miss you.

I overestimated myself. I thought I could go shopping for groceries AND carry them up the stairs AND put them away AND then do both bunny cages. Then have no ill effects. (See, the confidence that comes with that taste of normality doesn't mean I should take humongous gulps) Then I agreed to watch my cousin Sissy's little three year old boy Mason the following day. I haven't watched him in over 6 months since all of this started. She was in a lurch and I missed the funny little bugger. Wednesday night was sucky, pain pain pain but I was excited, truly, to get to play. I mean it. I wanted to play. Like a kid, with a kid. So Thursday comes and the kiddo shows up, and what does Peanut do after Mason only being here for 5 minutes? He jumps up on my bed, and pees on it. I really think this was Peanut's way of saying "Um, listen... you pay attention to me. You love me. No other little creature. Got it? If not, let this be a little reminder." So, Mason helps me strip the bed all the while repeatedly saying "Peanut peed, Peanut peed." Later in the day, while I am getting Pickle a treat of lettuce and saying Pickle's name over and over to entice him to his special treat, Mason mutters "mmmmm, I like pickles." Then, while watching the bunnies eat their lettuce, he informs me he doesn't eat salad while scrunching up his face, implying that anyone who does, is crazy.

Later on, with a kid, a diaper bag, a laundry basket of bunny soiled bedding, a screaming bladder, wincing kidneys, complaining ureter and the remains of an inner ear infection I headed out to my Mom's. Mason was excited to see Barbara. He likes to say Barbara (little kid lips saying Bawb-ar-Wa). He sat next to her on the couch with his plastic green tractor. He threw the kong in the backyard for Bud, but was mystified that Cooper didn't want to play as well. Then, the three of us tried to go to the local park that is being rebuilt, but there were NO SWINGS! How can there be a park, with all types of slides and jungle gyms, but not one single swing? So with no swings, Mason had no interest in the park and we left for home BUT not before a REAL LIFE tractor honked and waved for Mason and drove down the street where Mason was certain that he was going to dig in the dirt. Siss was having her vehicle serviced so I needed to pick her up at the repair shop, so to fill the time we putzed, shopped and got coffees. At one point I was getting out of the car and Siss exclaimed in the funniest voice "Holy crap, your ass is smaller than mine!" I turned around, stuck my head back in the car......paused, paused some more, looked her in the face, then said "I'm sorry?" We both couldn't stop laughing for quite a while. But, I have to say my favorite sentence of the day came from Mason. When it was time to leave my parents' to go get his Mom, I teased him and said he could just stay there while I went to get her. He put this thoughtful look on his face, paused, smiled "Nah, I go too. Get my Mom, and then I'll miss you."

Emotional Swing

Okay, here comes an emotional swing. I have had this stuck in my back pocket since I was diagnosed and haven't taken it out, well in public anyway. I'll get asked in mixed company how I am doing, some won't know about my diagnosis and they will ask, out of curiosity and I am all about sharing information. When you tell people (specially males) that your cancer is cervical cancer, the air gets a little cooler, a little more distance grows and the unspoken definition of how a women gets cervical cancer hangs above waiting to drop like a dirty dirty bomb. Cervical cancer is the Dirty Cancer. You get it from sex. So, me being me I sometimes want to say "Oh, I have that slutty cancer." If you know me, there is so much irony in that sentence. I have only had sex with one man. Ever. And the last time that happened was twelve years ago. You can go and read that sentence again. We lived together, bought a house. Then he left in fabulous douchebag fashion and last September on a routine gynecological visit (meaning I had been having them every year) I was tested positive for HPV and had my first abnormal PAP in those twelve years. How did I never test positive all those years? (I am a freak of nature naturally, so anything goes) My wonderfully kind and sweet gynecologist (who, to my devastation has decided to retire) also informed me that women who take birth control for extended periods of time without ever having children are also likely to have cervical cancer. I had to take birth control for other reasons, say for having such treacherous periods that I couldn't leave the house for weeks at a time, you know those reasons. So, the one two punch. Cancer from ever deigning to have sex, and then from not having enough of it.

Am I mad at ever deciding to be in a relationship, to ever have sex ever? Men don't have a test for HPV so most just go around willy nilly with no signs and we females end up with the majority of the life threatening consequences. Is the best way to just wrap yourself in cellophane and never have sex again? If I ever see Neil again will I punch him in the penis? Or do I just feel rage at the universe for giving me the kind of immune system that would hold onto a virus that any other human would have discarded after three years? Do I hold up my fists and shake shake shake them because my uterus was never a fit candidate for children to start and I had to take medicine to keep me from bleeding so much every month that I could operate as a relatively normal human being?

No. It was how it was. It is how it is. It will be how it will be.

Will there be a penis punch in the future? Anything is possible.

New Presciption

I didn't know I couldn't see until I was in the fifth grade. When you are young (or maybe not so young) you think that the way you view the world is the same way everyone else views it. In my case it was very very fuzzy. I had no idea that other kids could see what was on the chalkboard from the back of the classroom, or even from the front of the classroom for that matter. I saw things how I saw them, or didn't see them and I just went on with it. When it was discovered that I couldn't see, after I was continually moved closer and closer to the front of the class while still never being able to see the board, I finally figured out something was wrong. I will never forget the ride home from getting my new glasses, wearing them for the first time. I sat in the passenger seat, beyond starry-eyed, pointing out all the new things I could see. "Mom, I can see the leaves on the trees! Mom, I can read that sign from here! Mom, I can see the snow on the mountain!" It went on and on, while my mother silently cried as she drove the car. She was so sad that she had no idea her daughter was nearly legally blind, and to hear me exclaim my excitement to finally truly see the world in all of its intricate delicacies was a lot to handle.

I have been thinking about that moment a lot, not only because of my mother, but because of the concept of focus. Cancer changes your view, and shifts your focus. What once was fuzzy, isn't. Everything is newly framed.

Uncharted

I have been tense. Feeling tense and not knowing why I felt tense made me tense. Then I stopped, and thought. My Mom told me I am a good thinker. I trust my Mom, so I just laid on the bed and thought. Of course there was a bunny running in and out of the room, binkying on the bed, sticking his nose in my face reminding me how much I love having them in my life, in my apartment, in my face. Between laughing at Pickle have the time of his life chewing and leaping, climbing and nosing, and me just reaching a calm that hadn't been there for more than a week, I realized why I was so tense. My body had been actually holding the "what now" status of my everyday that has moved from cancer cancer cancer, to I HAVE NO IDEA! I am in this strange limbo, a flip side to the hospital waiting room. There is waiting, but waiting for what? I still have to wait for more scans, but now less frequently. I may have to wait for years to ever know if cancer will come back. In life there is always waiting, yet this is different. There is a slowing down, and a slowing down of the urgency to feel the scare, the danger of losing the life. Now, how to feel THIS life? I smile all the time. I am grateful for the smallest things. There is this want for more, yet I tell myself "in time, in time." Then the scare comes back and time feels so fragile. Now to gauge where I am able, sure enough in my body AND my mind to step full into the summer sun and stick out my face.

Extra Kick

"There is too much, let me sum up." Inigo Montoya

So, okay on Wednesday, it was a pretty big day. We had an appointment with the surgeon, then pharmacy, then lunch, then pedicures, a pit stop at my apartment, then my Mom dropped me off at my cousin's and I went to my first ever "Slumber Party" where the doctor's order of putting something in your vagina once to three times a week is the name of the game. Then I stepped in a hole in the yard as I left Nadine's house, fell like a ton of bricks and sprained my ankle. I took all day yesterday to recover, and am still limping. It is quite funny to see I am sure, I can't step out and view myself, but I still kind of hunch to the left and sometimes hold my left side and NOW I limp on the right from my ankle. In the right lighting and with the right groans (which I do) I could stage a zombie attack in the parking lot. WHICH is how I must have been appearing to people, a zombie, during all of my treatments. The saying of the day was "your coloring is so much better" or "you look so much better." What the hell color was I? Nearly translucent with a splash of green thrown in? I will get the occasional, "you are still pale" but I was always pale? How much paler did I get? Well, actually, how pale can a person get? I truly had no idea. I must have been scaring little children. I could have been an extra in a zombie movie, and missed my chance.... literal Walking Dead and I was too busy to notice.

One supremely cool interaction at the hospital was with a male receptionist while I was checking in. He was asking the standard questions, getting cards and such when a nurse walked up behind him, checking out the waiting room behind me. He asked her what she was up to and she answered "Oh, just shopping." I giggled, "shopping, for what?" She gives a big Vanna wave across the span of the chairs and said "Oh, for all the cool kids." I looked down at the receptionist and said "Ahh, with the pumped up kicks." He choked laughed, did a spit take, stared at me then said "Seriously, that was so awesome." The nurse just stared at us, confused. She stammered, "but, but I don't.." I pointed to the young man, I pointed to me and then said "That's cuz we are the cool kids."

Righty Tighty....

If you have never had a pelvic exam, and/or are a male human being, you might want to think seriously about reading this blog post. I mean it. Gonna be some major girlie talk. Speculum. Vagina. Lubricant. You still there? Okay, here goes. I may have said earlier that I have a super cool Radiation Oncologist. One of the major reasons he is so cool, is that he gets my sense of humor, I mean he actually laughs at my jokes. He genuinely thinks I am a funny person. On our last visit (I say we like a royal we cuz I include my Mom in all things) he had promised to save the pelvic exam. I asked him "save it for when? for when I get a craving? like potato chips?" He was chuckling so hard he could barely answer that the exam would be better for my cholesterol than potato chips, but most likely happen next visit. It happened. Any woman that has had this exam knows how uncomfortable, embarrassing and possibly humiliating it can be. Well, after all of the surgeries, exams, scans, x-rays and tests I have had through all of this I didn't really think one more would break me. I was wrong. I went in with my regular sense of humor, even quoting my regular Gynecologist saying "You can never be too rich or too far down the table." My doc and his resident were both laughing. Then, the speculum had to come out. Then, it was discovered I required the pediatric speculum. With radiation of the pelvis some female patients can get what is called stenosis, or a stricturing of the vagina, making it so narrow even a pelvic exam is unbearable. If I weren't bawling while he said it, I would have answered when he asked "So, I guess you aren't sexually active?" Then, while my hands were over my mouth to keep me from screaming, and the resident was offering me her free hands for me to grab onto, he said one of the funniest sentences I have ever heard uttered in a doctor's office, "You need to put something in your vagina at least once to three times a week." If my cries weren't being swallowed, you can bet I would have answered with something fantastic. Hmmmm, something in your vagina? Random things? Toblerones? Cowboys? Multitools? After, when the damned thing was over I was helped up and as I sat there, crying, I felt so terrible for making my doctor feel so terrible. He didn't mean to hurt me, yet I couldn't stop crying. I was so embarrassed. He hugged me. Twice. He felt so bad, for causing me such pain. He prescribed vaginal dilators. This pretty pink bag with a whole range of somethings to put in my vagina once to three times a week. The maker of these dilators is called Owen Mumford, and as I sat with my Mom in the waiting room for my next ct-scan appointment to be made, I said to my Mom "hey, a Mumford for my Muff." I went straight from wanting to lie down on the ground and never stop crying, to giggling at dirty jokes. With my Ehlers-Danlos, due to all of my joint dislocations and heart valve issues, the joke made early on in my life by my Dr. Grover was that I was the loosest girl in town. As my Mom and I stood outside Huntsman, waiting for the valet to bring the car, I said "I went from the loosest girl in town to the tightest eh?" We both smiled. Then I said, "This gives a whole new meaning to the term tight ass doesn't it?" My Mom, my most wonderful sweet voiced Mom says "Yes, you're a Tight Twat."