Can't sleep

I imagine that there are hundreds of blogs across the 'net that have this as the title. What a pitiful state of affairs when the only reason we hit the keyboard is that sleep is defying our will and we are somehow, for some reason, still awake.

Such is the state I'm in now. I'm sitting on my futon, in the main room, with my precious pit bull, Atticus, snoring pleasantly beside me on the sofa. My stitches itch, I've got a cough that wracks my abdominal cut everytime I have to hack and it feels like someone is poking a hot iron in to the right side of my abodomen. I'd much rather be in the land of nod.

But the middle of the night is also the only time I have available to write! My days are so full right now - I'm having a ball with my Mom here, and with my sister Katie now added to the mix, it's been wonderful.

I was worried about having Katie come. I've not handled our relationship well the last decade or so. We're so alike in some ways and so dramatically different...I'm really having fun with her - it's been the same wonderful release that I'm enjoying with Mom - for some reason, all of the chips have finally, FINALLY fallen off of my shoulders. Is it the cancer? The Effexor I'm taking to deal with the Tamoxifin? Did I suddenly grow up at 40, independent of any of the other crap I've been dealing with? Why are some parts of life getting easier right now?

I'm a bit of a polly-anna - I want my experiences to have a jewel buried in the middle of them, the quintessence of the diamond in the rough. Inside, I'm giving cancer the credit for all of this, that the disease, while it has been trying to kill me, in many ways is saving my life by cleaning out the detris of the other traumas I've been through and has returned vitally important parts of myself back to me - my self respect, my sense of humor and of the absurd, a knowledge of what is really, truly important and what is just plain crap. I have precious little patience with crap now. I can feel myself operating from my center, as if my fairy god mother or the good witch of the north by north east finally cleared the spell that obscured the road from my eyes.

Not all is clear yet, but I can see the way to finding some Windex to help things along.

There have been many poignant moments in all of this. Long distance family relationships create a house of mirrors - different parts of the other's personality, habits, life become distorted in my perception simply due to lack of personal, day to day contact, regardless of how often we speak on the phone. The reality of a person is lost until you start living with them again - until then, parts of the relationship are still trapped in time, like a note in a bottle.

I've discovered, from living with Mom on a daily basis again, her real humanity, which is something that you never get as a kid, so until this point of time, some of that unhuman, superhuman quality of her hung around. Now I know she's a fellow adult. Not "merely" a fellow adult - it's so much more amazing than that! - but at the same time, she is just a fellow adult, not the woman who could do no wrong, as I'd created her in my memory. Nor is she any longer the woman who held my self esteem under lock and key, dependent on her approval. That's also gone - instead I can hear her and see her and just know she's "Bunny" and that if something falls out of her mouth that's critical, that I can take it on or not, and see it as more of something describing who she is rather than who I am.

What's more, now that I've relaxed and quit taking things personally, I can see that she feels more free to simply be herself. What a wonderful compliment! She's comfortable around me as a friend! How many daughters and mothers can enjoy that kind of relationship?! I've rediscovered how funny and irreverent she is, how very intelligent and beautiful she is. I can admire her graciousness and her huge heart. It's created such a sense of gratitude, but at the same time a very real sense of loss - how many years were lost by my tilting against her personality, being angry, taking things personally, keeping parts of myself hidden from her? What a shame!

So, it's been an amazing interlude here at the house on Frasier Street. I'm enjoying having a home full of people, as only a true extrovert can, but more than that, I'm so enjoying the return of my family into my heart. The world seems so much less lonely now.

Good night.

I'm at home

I've been back at the house for a day. So far, I'm doing pretty good - I feel a little lopsided, since I've no boob on the right side now. Just rolls of skin wrapped around a tube that hangs down to a Jackson-Pratt drain, which is essentially a bulb syringe. The syringe itself is suspended around my neck on a cotton loop, and just hangs by my side in a pouch my sister-in-law made for me. Every few hours or so I have to empty the syringe and measure the lymphatic fluid draining from the site. Remember, they took my lymph nodes as well as my breast, so that whole area is draining while it heals.

The hysterectomy site is where most of the pain is coming from. I'm strong enough to deal with both of the surgeries, and frankly, the pain I have is not bad, thanks to my friend Vicodin:) It helps get me through the sharpness of some of the abdominal cut and as long as I take it slow, I do pretty well. I kinda move along like Granny Grumps, as my friend Vera used to call it - makes me smile to remember he saying that.

Father Dan called around 2 today. What a surreal experience! We were discussing the Sacrament of the Sick for me and when we might do it. Talking to him suddenly pulls the covers off of me for a little while - I'm raw, revealing what I'm truly thinking and feeling and tears welled up almost immediately as I heard his voice.

It reminds me of my Aunt Mary. You may have heard me talk about her before - Aunt Mary was my grandmother on my mom's side. I was the first grandchild and the word "grandma" made her feel old, so she insisted, much to my mother's disgust, that I call her "Aunt Mary." It stuck and my siblings and I were her only grandchildren that called her that, while the rest of the grand kids were told to call her grandma whether she liked it or not!

Well, Aunt Mary was deathly afraid of dying. Really... Scared the crap out of her. She became a widow in 1978 when my grandfather ("Grandpa" - he was my only normal grandparent!) unexpectedly died of a heart attack (and of course there's a story about that, but you'll have to wait for another entry to get it!). She had lots of anxiety about the final moments.

In 2000, Aunt Mary had congestive heart failure and it was serious enough for her to be put in the hospital. I come from a medical family - she was an RN as well as my mom and my aunt Janice, so everyone is pretty frank about things. Mom called me up and told me things didn't look good and that I should probably book a flight to Fresno, and maybe I should call my brother John, who also lives in Houston.

John and I both got tickets using American Express points. I travel to Fresno often to see the family, but John can't get there as easily since he's highly fertile and has kids everywhere, so the California portion of the family doesn't see him very often. So it was a pleasant surprise that he could go. We arrived at the hospital and were greeted by my Uncle Allan who was very
concerned that we would strain Aunt Mary, and that we should go in one by one.

I should mention that no one had told her we were coming. So, when she saw me walk into the room, she started crying... it had to be bad if I'd made the trip. I held her while she cried and told her how much I loved her and calmed her down.

Then John came in and Aunt Mary started crying very hard... if JOHN had flown out, things HAD TO BE BAD! She was unconsolable and we had a terrible time calming her down.

There was a third surprise however - My mom had made arrangements for the hospital priest to come give Aunt Mary the sacrament of the sick. Aunt Mary was a devout Catholic and Mom thought it would be a good thing for her to go through the sacrament. The priest walked into the room and Aunt Mary totally lost it... She practically ran out of the hospital at the first opportunity and went on to live for another 4 years. I don't know if she ever got the sacrament...

So, when Father Dan called to talk about giving me the sacrament, amazingly I had the same
feeling. "OhMyGod... this is so real! I have CANCER!" I'd been through hours of surgery, days of recovery in the hospital, limping around the house, bossing around my husband (and wow has that made me popular) but it took the priest calling for me to finally getting it through my head that something was wrong! AAAAARRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!

But the sacrament isn't Last Rites anymore. It's a prayer by the faithful, using annointing of oil, to call on the Holy Spirit to heal the sick person, and I'm all over that... bring it on! It's going to be next Sunday at UH, where Charles and I were married 16 years ago.

I've not quite gone running screaming out of the house at the call, but it's certainly popped me in the butt, so to speak and woke me up. Holy Spirit, Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Buddy Jesus - all of
the above, you're officially invited to my celebration of the sacrament next sunday - I'll give you front row seats!!

Why Dear Amy?

"Dear Amy..."

This isn't my first bout with breast cancer. When this happened last year, I journaled about the experience but did it privately to my friend Amy in Denver, and just told her to store them for me...she'd know what to do with them if something needed to be done with them. And each of them had the subject line "Dear Amy."

And now, here I am again, facing down a temporary hairless existence and I'm thinking, "What the hell!" and have decided not to hide. So, for those of you who choose to, join me on the ride through the wonders of dealing with the disease.

It's not that bad... Okay, maybe it's not great, but I promise to throw you all of the diamonds I find along the way;)