Girls Guys or Goldfish

"Fag"

Today is October 20, 2010. It is Wear Purple Day.

I learned about the event as I learn about so many other events in my friend's lives: Facebook. This time, it started with my friend J.F. Wickey, or rather, Reverend J.F. He's a United Church of Christ Minister living and working in the far reaches of Oklahoma and a man for whom I have a great deal of admiration.

Today is Wear Purple Day to honor the people who have recently committed suicide over gay bullying. The 6 faces on J.F.'s notice were all young men. Some were just in high school. Another was Tyler Clementi, the sweet faced Rutgers boy who jumped off the George Washington Bridge after two fellow students videoed him having sex with another man and then distributed the video online. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20018170-504083.html

I've let everyone know about today through my own Facebook post. I made sure my husband knew to wear a purple t-shirt while working on the house today. I applauded my mother's purple workshirt (she and Charles are running the table saw today, working on the house.) She informed me it was the last clean shirt she had, but if it did the trick, all the better.

I am wearing Purple because of Tyler, of the other 5 boys, because of Jack and Chris and Shannon.

I'm also wearing Purple I was once the target of gay bullying.

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Middle school is no fun. Anyone that tells me they liked middle school is automatically suspect in my book. It's Lord of the Flies in real life. It's Animal Farm. It's horrific. A friend of mine's sister took her kids out of middle school and home schooled them to just get through those years then sent them back to public high school. I totally get that. Her reasons may not be because her children were being tortured and that the other kids had obviously misplaced both their brains and their hearts under some remote staircase at home, but I still get it. Actually, in my book, high school bit as well, but that's another blog post.

My middle school experience was horrid. We'd just moved to central Illinois from New Jersey. I'd literally gone from the largest elementary school in the state of New Jersey to what had to be the smallest speck of a school in the smallest speck of a town: Atwood, Illinois. The town was so small that they had to combine with nearby Hammond to have enough kids to actually make up a school. There were 35 kids in my entire 8th grade graduation class.

My class had its bullies. They were classic. Backwards backwoods putzes, Kyle and Mike. They adored torturing me every time the teacher's back was turned. Everything was up for grabs: Acne, glasses, being tall, being geeky, my family being rich (PUH-LEEZE. We'd bought a big house just outside of town and were forever house-poor afterwards. My mother would never let us turn the heat up past 60 because we couldn't afford it!)

It didn't help that my family was going through some horrible times as well. My parents should have divorced when I was 11. They didn't until much later. The emotional tension in my home was terrible and I pulled dramatically into myself to just stay out of it.

I was taller than most everyone else. I was the daughter of a tomboy who thought long hair was too much fuss. I had very short brown hair. I had big Kathy Whitmire glasses. My feet were size 11, so I wore unisex lace-up Dexters with crepe soles. Finding clothes was a nightmare - I wore lots of jeans and short-sleeved "polo" shirts with collars.

I earned money during the summer by walking soy bean fields to pull weeds and I walked corn fields to de-tassle hybrid corn. My mother and I installed an iron pipe fence and electric "hot" wire around our 3 acres for our horses. She and I also roofed the barn. I was in charge of chopping the family's firewood by the time I was in 7th grade.

I say all this so you can have a picture of me by the time I reached 7th grade: Tall, geeky, strong as an ox, sexually ambiguous, totally introverted with very little voice, and alone.

It was about then that Kyle and Mike found a new way to torture me and I learned a lot of new words: "Fag", "Dike", "Lesbo", "Gay." It was way too easy.

I pulled into myself. I buried myself further in books. I tried to talk to my parents, but they had their own problems: "Ignore them." I tried. I really, really tried.

But it was middle school. The Middle Passage between childhood and adulthood. Things are happening in the body - hormones are percolating, feelings come crawling from the nether regions and propel a body forward. My body was strong and vigorous and virile. I was full of fresh air. I was sexually turned on by just about everyone.

Because I believed so much of what was said about me, I began to believe this too. I had no idea who I was - All I knew was that I pretty much was a waste of space, and here was another reason why I was just all wrong. I knew I was really really attracted to a number of boys in my class, but... there were also girls I thought were delicious and I was sickened by the realization.

I had to work this all out on my own, because there certainly wasn't anyone to talk to about all this. I could't really decide what I was. Was I gay?? Well, there were some cute girls in class... And there were some cute guys in class, but they were all putzes...

I ultimately decided that maybe I was doing the whole sexual orientation thing wrong like everything else I did and that I just was attracted to people. A very broad choice, but one that allowed for variation, so I went with it. It made me different, but I was used to that. It meant I thought differently, but again, I was used to that. I went back to my books and dealt with the churning unreleased volcano in a variety of unhealthy ways and then proceeded to do my best to grow up.

I hated myself for this. It just further substantiated why I was just not human, was just wrong. I thought seriously about suicide. But I couldn't do it.

It wasn't the last time I was harassed for being gay. It happened a lot in high school. By then I was so pulled into myself that I'd become unapproachable and I cut myself off. It was only when I was a senior that I began to pull out, actually had a date for prom (a boy from my brother's class whom I adored) and started to feel like maybe I was worth something.

Gay bullying happened again in college, but this was the mid 80s where being gay was slightly exotic and just beginning to be maybe cool(ish), I had just been absorbed and accepted by an amazing group of people led by my wonderful friend Chris (whom I dated for a brief wonderful summer) and was becoming the Real Cecelia. More sure of myself. More who I felt I'd been built to be. I went on to be much less worried about which pigeon hole I belonged to.

Fast forward to today: I'm happily married to the love of my life. He and I have been together for 22 years. I'm still attracted to "people", but I want no one else but Charles.

Please, no labels.

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I've unfortunately witnessed other gay bullying that puts my experience in the pale.

Before we were married, Charles and I had our first apartment in Houston's Montrose, which was Gay Mecca at the time. We lived in a charming post-war 4-plex. Our neighbors included Jack and Chris. This was 1990, when deaths in the gay community from AIDS was spreading like wildfire.

Jack was the first to develop full-blown AIDS. He entered the public hospital and Charles and I went to visit. Jack looked horrible and Chris was a mess, worrying about his sweetheart. Jack developed all kinds of complications and was horribly vulnerable from attacks of all kinds.

The worst of them came from his own family. Chris told us about how his mother and father visited Jack in the hospital and denied Chris access to him. Chris had no rights to visit his lover.

Then Jack's parents started beating on Jack emotionally: He had to renounce being gay and renounce Chris so that he could be buried next to his grandfather in the family graveyard. If he didn't, he'd have a pauper's grave with no marker. Jack was feverish, couldn't breathe, was hallucinating. He agreed. Chris never saw him again and was not allowed to the funeral.

Shannon Ferris was a member of my new circle of friends post-high school. He was about 4 years younger or so, was still going to high school, and was an absolute dear. I loved him so much - he was a younger brother, best friend, sweetheart all rolled up in one. He'd not come out to anyone, but the fact that he was likely gay was pretty apparent.

I'll never forget when he came out to his very religious parents. He came home a few nights afterwards to find a strange woman in his home with his family. He was trapped with them - they forced an exorcism on Shannon, where the woman stood before him, screaming in "tongues" and hitting Shannon on the head to dispel the demons. His family stood around and wept in prayer that Shannon would be rid of the terrible curse of being gay.

After this horrible event, Shannon was at our door in Katy, in tears. He'd been utterly betrayed by his family and terrified that they were right that he was an evil entity. My heart shattered - I could see the same terrible feeling of being just essentially wrong, not human, not worth of compassion and acceptance. And he'd been made to feel that way by his own family.

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So, for all of you out there who find yourselves in the position of looking at yourself in the mirror and confronting who you actually are, know this:

• You are not alone.
• Who you are is not defined by who you have sex with. It is defined by the choices you make in the way you treat the rest of the world and yourself.
• Character is not defined by the outside but by the essential qualities of the inside: Compassion, honesty, willingness to stand up for what is right and those who have been wronged.
• Be in love with whomever you love and love them selflessly, with everything you have.

And remember: You are perfectly made. Your Maker made you just the way you are - enjoy that gift.

And don't let the backcountry putzes wear you down.

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One last note, because I always like to leave with a laugh...

While I was in middle school, dealing with the slings and arrows of small-minded hillbillies, I decided to go into the school band.

I announced to my parents that I wanted to play drums. Or the flute. Decided against the flute, but really really wanted to play the drums. Mom stated "No Drums In This House!!!" I was told that, if I really wanted to play an instrument, I could play my dad's trumpet. We didn't have to buy an instrument that way.

I dunno how a trumpet would be less loud than drums. I didn't really have a talent for the damned thing, tho I was very very good at playing LOUDLY.

My dad played trumpet in dance bands through college in Nashville and was incredibly good at it. So good that his parents bought him a beautiful two-toned Olds trumpet in a leather case and had his nickname in gold leaf on one side.

I carried that horn through middle school and my freshman year of high school.

My dad's nickname?

"Butch."

Going through pain and watching pain

Hello all,

It's been a looooong time since my last post. A lot has happened since that point.

I was rebuilt in January of 2009. I'm no longer a uni-boob. It's quite nice - the surgery was difficult as all hell, but I'm so grateful to have new breasts. I do and don't miss breast tissue... I have no breasts or female organs; it's sobering to realize my body could not sustain those parts of me. But I don't have to worry about their going bad any longer and that's a real relief.

It's 3:45 in the morning and there's a lot on my mind.

The cancer experiences I've been through have altered my perceptions in so many ways. I'm sure those of you who are reading this who have gone through your own journeys will understand: Real pain has the potential to deepen one's ability to identify with others' real pain. I understand how painful pain really is. It's no longer possible for me to listen to news reports without somehow connecting to how the people in the story - or other living creatures - are being affected by what is happening to them, like in the Gulf of Mexico. It's difficult for me to hear and even more difficult for me to understand why other people allow such horrible things to happen.

When Hillary Clinton was running for president, she asked women to provide feedback on what they thought needed to be done to fight breast cancer. My question was, who's collateral damage am I? What executive or engineering team or investment group found it acceptable that a certain percentage of a particular population around their industrial operation or industrialized farm would be negatively affected by their chemical usage and waste?

That question is easily extended to - who finds it acceptable that the Gulf of Mexico spill continue unchecked? Who finds it acceptable that the Gulf of Niger is polluted? Who finds it acceptable that the Amazonian indigenous people are suffering from severe lead and cadmium poisoning because of petroleum spills that cover their area? (Here's the link for more information: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=127992348)

When I've expressed concerns over the Gulf of Mexico spill, there have been others in my world (who will remain nameless) who've sniffed at my concern and said "This too shall pass," and then went on to read their Wall Street Journal. The spill is negligible compared to the need for oil. It's not affecting me. Why should I care?

I care because now I feel the pain of each animal that finds itself inexplicably sick. I am suffocating along with the dolphins trying to breathe as they come up for air. I'm dying with the pelicans who are coated in oil.

I'm crying with the fishermen of the Gulf who have lost their livelihoods.

My insides are becoming sick with the people who are being exposed to horrible chemicals while they clean the beaches and replacing the booms.

I'm crying with God as She looks on her creation and asks "What have they done?????"

I'm also with the people watching their land being torn apart because someone thousands of miles away has to drive a big SUV. Or has to have all their foods wrapped in plastic. Or who just generally doesn't think "barbarians," as the Victorians would say, have a right to their land, their way of life or a general sense of peace because others with more money need their resources.

And this is what is keeping me awake. Perhaps I shouldn't be allowed near a computer late at night...

From the Roof during Springtime

Hello All,

It's been a number of months since my last post. Sean has reminded me that this blog is not for everyone else, it's supposed to be for me, so no apologies necessary. But I still think I should try to explain and catch everyone up.

When I last wrote, it was early December. I was angsting about my weight. I'm grateful for the comments I got from that post - there were so many people who appreciated what i said and really supported me. Thank you. This blog is truly stream of consciousness most of the time - I edit it somewhat, but I don't get too anxious about it - so hearing that you've enjoyed what I've written and gotten something from it makes this a wonderful exercise. Editing and being super picky (or as super picky as I'm capable of being) is for my day-to-day life, not this.

We were also contending with Lisa's terrible diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. I'm sorry to say that didn't end very well. Lisa died on January 5th, 2008, 2 days before her and my brother John's wedding anniversary. I think they would have been married for 13 years.

I was with her when she died, and it's one of the most precious moments in my life. Her mom, dad and brother were there as well. I had my hand on her heart as it came gently to a halt - and it was such a blessing for her pain to finally be over. I'd never been at someone's death bed before and it's been something I was terribly afraid of, but the reality was quite different than I'd ever imagined.

I was still in chemo at the time. Mom and Claude were in town and Mom had been spending a number of evenings in Lisa's hospice room, switching off with Sheryl, Lisa's mom and both were exhausted. Mom absolutely insisted that I wear a mask when I was near Lisa since my immune system wasn't as strong as it usually is. It felt so strange to sit there with a surgical mask on, with my hand on her heart. She'd take deep breaths, in and out, and I can still feel her breath on my skin, the moist warmth around the edges of the mask. Her eyes were half open and I thought she was looking at me while she was passing - then one final, deep breath, and she was gone.

After she passed, I said the Hail Mary quite while I had my hands on her head. I felt compelled to say the prayer and it was one of the most natural things I've ever done. It gave me so much peace.

Here's a picture of her with Hannah and Jessica. This is while she was in Hermann, early on in her diagnosis. I love this picture of her.



John and the kids are doing pretty well these days, it seems. The whole Junker clan (Junker's my mom's maiden name) is descending on St. Joseph, Missouri, this weekend for my cousin's wedding and I'm very much looking forward to it. I've not heard if Uncle Allan is able to make it or not.  He was the instigator of the family-wide water fight the last time we got together after my grandmother's funeral...a water fight that ultimately resulted in one box of condoms used as water balloons (they didn't sell balloons at the 7-11 and the family just had to make do) and three of us wetting our pants from laughing ourselves silly. (I've just realized we're down to Funerals and Weddings as a family - EGAD. We've got to get some better excuses together for us to gather!)

So, John and the girls are taking to the road to get up to the wedding. He's planning to drive all night Thursday going up and then all night Sunday coming back. I think he's nuts, but then who am I to call someone nuts??? I'll be very happy to see them when they arrive at both places in one piece!

We took him and the four kids out to dinner at 59 Diner for his birthday - John's like a Ring Master in a Four Ring Circus - the flying Goads:) He had all the kids moving in roughly the same direction and everyone managed to be fed, watered and enjoying giant milkshakes without many tears. To be honest, the four kids are really great. And, yes, I'm biased, but they are really, really, really great kids. That was the same weekend that my buddy Harley had Hannah, John's oldest, and I over for the weekend where we played with Chevy, the Cuddly Pergeron horse (with very big feet!) Hannah did beautifully! She rode Chevy both bareback and with the english saddle and had a rock-solid seat. Both Harley and I were so proud of her!

So, the title says "from the Roof"... I'm at work and one of the perks here is the wonderful porch roof right outside the window next to my desk. I climb out here when I just can't stand being inside another moment longer. HexaHouse is an old Victorian 3-story, built a the turn of the (last) century, with inlaid wood floors, tall ceilings, stained glass and oodles of character (not to mention the characters that are officing in it...) I share an office in one of the old bedrooms on the second floor with Shirer, our bookkeeper. I've not managed to talk her into joining me in crawling out onto the roof yet. I have, however, gotten Tim, one of our graphic designers, to have a meeting on the roof and it was quite nice. (There's nothing like a little random madness to make the day go by oh so much better.)

I'm doing well. The chemo ended the first of February. I had an end-of-chemo set of tests - which had me clinging to the ceiling in anxiety! - and everything came out clean. There was a follow-up blood draw on Thursday last and I get the results this Thursday, so keep a good thought for me. The rebuild is on July 16th. The surgeons will be removing my left breast and then moving my belly up to my chest, rendering me both svelte and stacked. I'm referring to the procedure as my "Breast Cancer Gift with Purchase."

I have hair! And eyebrows!! And eyelashes!!! (And chin hairs!) Oh Joy! I watched every little eyelash come in this time, cheering them on every morning. I'd have sprinkled miracle grow on them if I could have! It's so strange to see myself with hair now! You wouldn't believe how easy it is to get used to your own face even when it looks so dramatically off! I've learned oh so much during my two hairless sojourns...

1. Most people really don't care what you look like. They might glance once or twice, but usually they have other things to think about....like, if anyone is looking at them...

2. People react to a person because of the way that person carries themselves. If you're not worried about what you look like, neither are they (and see #1 above for why!)

3. The Essence of Ce is waaaaay more than my hair, body, foot size, number of breasts. You wouldn't believe how easy it is it forget that your chest is cock-eyed. (wait, though... I'm seeing a theme here... It's easy for me to forget things...hmmmmmmm.)

4. People say dumb, thoughtless things when faced with unusual circumstances - and what comes out of their mouth says everything about their life view and almost nothing about what's real for the person living with the issue. (And I know this one from being on both sides of illness.) My favorite example?? A coffee-house friend of mine walked up to me just after I'd shaved my head for the first time and very earnestly said, "Cecelia! I've got a book for you! "Alkalize or DIE!!". Oh. Joy.

5. Life is WAY too short - Seize the Day! Get off your butt and go get some sunshine!! I'm having a ball swimming and traveling!

6. Every day - Each and Every Day - is precious. When you can, stop, say "thank you", notice the world around you, and give someone random a great big smile.

Love to all,

Ce

Weighty Issues

My mind likes to come out and play in the tender hours of the night, just as the light has gone out and Attie and Charles start snoring. My eyes close, and then like a college dormitory after lights-out, the doors of my mind all creep open and all kinds of thoughts flutter about . Some are good, some are not so good, often there are puzzles to be figured out and - my favorite - art projects come zooming into 3-D and I start designing things in my head. Love that part...

But, tonight, the door to my Repressed Issues came swinging open and out danced my chubby hips, and "fluffy" buttocks...my adipose tissues are haunting me.

There's a reason for this - this evening, I started reading "Ultrametabolism," a diet book by Dr. Mark Hyman. Those of you who know me well know I DETEST diets. I've been on a number of them, and they've done me no good. They've even added weight. I don't like to talk about them, I don't like to be in conversations about them, I don't like being around people who are obsessing about them - diets piss me off.

Get me around a bunch of women discussing their weight and I develop a need to pull the table cloth off, wrap it around myself, climb up on the table and begin lecturing all of my newly-created stunned audience that they're SO MUCH MORE THAN THEIR WEIGHT, that the size of their asses and their tummies SAY NOTHING about their worth as a human being. SO THERE.

But my dirty not-so-secret issue is - I'm overweight. And I hate it.

So, let's go back to the book. Why am I reading it? My nutritionist told me to. If Natalie the Wonder Nutritionist tells me to read something, I'll buy it and trust that she knows what she's doing.

Natalie Ledesma worked with my brother Chris, both as a peer and as his oncology nutritionist. Based at the University of California in Berkeley, Natalie works with Dr. Garret Smith, the oncologist my brother worked with as he fought his KS and as he wrote his book for trainers working with breast cancer survivors. (And for those of you who have managed to keep up with the timeline of Big Events in the Goad family, that's two years before I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I feel like my brother has been looking out for me!)

Natalie started working with me during my first diagnosis. Let's just say I'm not a model patient. I think she keeps me around because I'm "family" and we like each other a great deal. She's the stalwart type - even in the face of my too-frequent random indulgence in shrimp po'boys and philly cheese steak sandwiches, she sticks with me.

The last conversation we had came immediately after a call from my second opinion here in Houston. Dr. Naqvi let me know that she'd talked to my radiation oncologist and he insists that my cancer recurrence was within the field of the radiation treatments I received at the end of chemo last year. Theoretically, the recurrence shouldn't have existed. It should have either been killed by the chemo I received, or roasted by the radiation. Unfortunately, it was a resilient little schmutz, so the assumption is that I have a very aggressive form of breast cancer. If it is metastatic, I will know in the next year. It will show up somewhere.

Natalie called just after I got this delightful bit of news, and we had a frank discussion about how the docs are doing all they can for me - it's going to be up to me to make the lifestyle changes necessary to give me the best chance of surviving this crap.

Believe it or not - it's easier for me to get chemo then to make lifestyle changes.

That sounds awful. It's also unfortunately true.

I have never had a moment in my life where my weight was not an issue. I have memories of being a little girl, in first grade, and looking at my brownie pictures with some unremembered Important Person In My Life who made a comment about how fat I was. I was so ashamed. It only went downhill from there.

My world was the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The value of a woman was her looks. Oh - wait. Gee, what am I thinking?? That's the same thing for the 90s and into 2000. And it was true for decades before that. Wow. I guess women have been judged by the size of our keesters and our sex appeal for, like, ever....I'm a little bitter about that.

But I digress.

I have always been outsized. Taller than everyone, a little heavier, strong features. I feel like I stick out like a sore thumb. My features are combined with pretty sensitive nature and a dysfunctional family that moved a lot, which meant that I was always the "strange" kid at school, which meant that I was pretty much tortured by other children at school. As you can imagine, this led to my always wondering what was wrong with me. I never thought to ask the question of what was right with me. Too many people were ready to tell me otherwise.

Combine this with a propensity to put on weight, and a family obsession with both food and being thin and what you get is yo-yo dieting, a constant feeling of being a failure and a perception that my body is out to get me. Certain family members' obsession with my weight led to all kinds of crazy behavior, all perpetrated with the idea that, if I were pushed enough, embarrassed enough, told how socially unacceptable I was, I would finally get off my lazy butt and lose weight.

Yes. I'm bitter about this. At the time this was going on, I had become so socially reclusive that I was eating my lunch in the library of the high school, translating Robin Hood stories from the Middle English in the Oxford Book of Ballads. I wouldn't talk to anyone anymore - I trusted no one. Lunch consisted of a my bagged sandwich, apple, three cookies and a snickers bar. I walked every day, worked with horses and rode, and took long hikes into the ranch behind our house. I liked to come home after school and watch the Muppet Show or the 3:00 movie. I sometimes did my homework in the pasture with my filly, Chantilly. I was not lazy, nor did I snack all the time. But my body still put on weight.

I dieted and ate differently from my family, munching on weighed portions while they had what they wanted. I lost weight and was elated; I'd put it back on again and hate myself. I'd watch as my food was measured out while everyone else's was just put on their plates. I endured comments from older family members about my shorts looking like I was a cased sausage. Visiting relatives seemed to always comment on my weight, whether I looked like I was heavier or whether I looked "good".

Needless to say, my issues with weight and identity were a pattern that went on for a long time. I started Weight Watchers before Charles and I were married and lost 50 pounds. Every 10 pounds I would find myself standing in front of the mirror, gazing at my newly lightened figure, and wonder at what I ever thought was wrong with myself at that weight because I was beautiful. How could I ever have hated myself at that weight? And then I'd lose another 10 pounds and, again, I'd gaze at the image and couldn't imagine what my problem was at that weight! At 30 pounds I was astounded - I loved what I saw and bought myself an antique dress, celebrating the beautiful woman I saw in the mirror. And on it went.

And then I lost my gall bladder. The low fat, supposedly doctor-created diet had exacerbated a pre-existing, inherited condition and out it came. And then the weight started coming back on. I found myself unconsciously staring at my figure as each decade of weight layered itself on my hips and stomach, and I unconsciously found myself standing at the mirror telling myself how much of a pig I was.

Finally, at the same 30 pound benchmark, I realized that I was the exact same weight that I was when I was so proud of myself and bought the dress. The only thing that had changed was my perception of myself at that weight, not the real beauty that was standing, weeping, in the mirror. I decided to try to quit beating myself up.

I made it a game - I realized that I was just as harsh in my mind to the women around me as I was to myself, so I challenged myself to find something beautiful about every woman I saw, and if I could, tell them about it. The results were astounding - I felt better about myself. (And I made a lot of women around me feel better about themselves as well.) I've dieted a few more times after that, but each time I do, I care less. There's a portion of me that see's a diet and does everything it possibly can to rip it to pieces and to never to submit to that kind of humiliation again.

This didn't stop me from crying myself to sleep the night before my wedding, sure that my dress wouldn't fit and that I would look like a pig in my wedding pictures. That all Charles would see when I walked down the aisle was a fat woman he'd been chained to. I worked through that. But, thanks to a variety of issues - hypothyroidism, a sedentary career, my hysterectomy, chemo, my denial that food is not necessarily friend - I'm the heaviest I've ever been, and it's looking like that extra weight could kill me.

There are those of you out there who are reading this and maybe don't understand what I'm talking about at all. Weight is an easy, black and white thing for you. Eat less, exercise more, weigh less. What's hard about that? But the equation is not complete - it's like simple math. You might get an nice, easy answer, a whole number, but once you get deeper into reality, you realize that whole numbers are only real when you're counting out apples, not when you're really trying to describe something of incredible importance. It's also similar to saying that poor people are poor because they spend too much and don't save. Nope. There are too many variables that are not being accounted for.

Being overweight is not symptomatic of a weak will. It's not a sign of laziness or lack of character. It is not a sign that someone is a success or a failure in life. Nor is being thin an indication of intellectual brilliance or a sterling character. Being fat or being thin is often a chemical accident of our genetics, just as surely as that of our skin color being black, brown, yellow or pink.

I know some of you will want to lecture me on this subject after reading this post. Please, do not give in to that temptation. I will be rude if you do. I'm working with a very talented, well trained, well studied nutritionist and she will be my source for all nutrition-related issues in my life. Say a prayer of patience for her - she'll likely need it. But she will be my only source for this. I want to hear from you if you understand what I've said here, I want to hear from you about your own issues with this, I want to hear that you love me and want me around - but don't even begin to lecture me or say "I told you so." I won't like that a'tall.

I know this is a no-fun post, especially before the holidays, but it's where I'm at right now, at 12:16 p.m. This is my spectre tonight and now that I've exercised it (pun intended) I'm off to bed.

Good night.

Christmas Signs

It's December already. I can hardly believe it - life has been moving at absolutely rocket speed. I can barely remember Thanksgiving.

It's been a full month. At the end of October, I told you about two events in our family - Diane Ottenweller's death and Lisa Goad's new diagnosis of lung cancer.

Diane's family is working through their grief. There's a "Thank God" moment in it all - for many years, the family was living a bi-continent lifestyle, with Diane and Mark in Jo'burg with their daughter Leslie and her husband Tony, while the other two kids were living in the States. They were finally all living on one continent when her death occurred, allowing Mark and kids to grieve together, rather than alone, separated by literally 10,000 miles. That is absolutely a blessing.

Lisa is still in the hospital, but we have great hopes that she'll be out this week. She finally, FINALLY, got her chemo a few days ago. This isn't a failing on the part of the docs - many things had to happen before she was able to get the drugs. First, she had a gamma knife operation on the brain lesion. (Frankly, if it wasn't true that this cancer stuff is freaking scary, it is also absolutely fascinating! The Gamma Knife is truly revolutionary. Remember in Ghostbusters when it was baaaad to cross the streams?? That's what this technology does - it takes two streams of radiation, which on their own are benign, and crosses them at the lesion site. There's a milimeter of miss in the device....just a milimeter. Amazing!) They don't know if they got all of her tumor, but they gave it a good shot.

Then came the radiation to her back. It took about 2 weeks; Hermann Hospital in the Med Center, where she is, doesn't have the radiation facilities she needed. Memorial City, west of town, did. It's where my treatments were. Every day, Lisa was loaded into a private ambulance and driven about 14 miles to receive radiation. Now - hold onto your hats - get this: for the first week or so, every day, these private ambulances would get lost. Yep - that's right. Lost. They couldn't find their way to (1) the hospital (it's a big hospital, I promise you) and then, once they did, (2) the radiation facilities. Lisa's dad started riding with her to treatments and between the two of them, they helped the drivers find where they were going. I assume these folks were new to town...maybe to Texas... who knows. I was incredulous when she told me - how can an ambulance service not know where a big, prominent, as obvious as a sore thumb, hospital is?? It says a lot of Lisa that, by the time her treatments were done, she and the ambulance staff had bonded. They gave her a present and big hugs when she was finished.

But then, I'm not surprised. For those of you who've not met Lisa, she's a woman I can only describe as embodying grace. You'd be so proud of her - she's been in the hospital for 8 weeks now, being poked, prodded, in pain, away from her family and children, stuck in one bed for hours on end, and her peace remains. Serenity is hers, for the most part. Don't think for a moment that it is total - please trust me, this disease attacks serenity and faith as surely as it eats at your tissue - but her faith is doing its job and she's doing pretty well. I think she'll do even better when she makes it home.

We've had her's and John's two girls for a few weekends while Lisa's been at Hermann. I wish we could have had them more often - I know they're my family, but they really are wonderful kids. Hannah's the oldest. She's 9, and she's rolling with this situation very well. I not only love my niece, I also like and respect her. I'm very proud of the way she's been handling herself through this. I have sooooo much fun when they're here! Last weekend, we had a neighbor friend over to play, as well as my wonderful 14 year old niece Suzie, who's the daughter of Charles' sister Jean, and we moved the dining room table to in front of the fireplace, and then proceeded to sit around, enjoy a toasty warm fire, and work on Christmas stockings. I had a BLAST.

And then they go home. I think I like this aunt thing a whoooooole lot:)

So - I guess I should talk about where things are at for me. In a word - crazed. Look - I'm trying, very hard, not to put myself through the ringer and do too much, but I'm too awful at it! I don't know I've overcommitted myself until I'm standing in the middle of the room, wondering where the floor is. I'm working on my project at the Medical Museum - still loving every bit of it - but have hired a science writer to help wrap it up, just to take some of the load off while the Universe is giving me my turn at playing "Job". (No, not "Jobs"...that would be a different type of torture...:) I'm also doing some projects for HexaGroup, which include some web writing, project managment, and script writing.

Also, I did an interview with the father of one of my good friends last week, Mr. Gilbert Baker, founder of the AFP Group here in Houston. His firm is paying me to write the article for a local newspaper, in celebration of his 50 years in business. I can say, without equivocation, that this is one of the finest men I've ever had the grace to meet. The article will only be difficult in that I won't be able to unrestrainedly gush about the guy - I mean, I am being paid and it would sound like just so much tookus-smooching, but honest to God.... He's a man who totally lives by his ethics and creed to better his community. His company provides financial planning services for people - that's how we know them. His daughter Ann is not only one of my favorite people, she's also been our planner for the past 5 years. (She jokes that she's the 3rd person in our relationship, since Charles and I can't make a financial decision to save our lives!)

Gil loves helping people plan their futures, because he's seen first hand how his work saves lives. Yeah - saves lives. Never knew a 401k had that kind of power, huh? But he's helped 3 generations of clients save for retirement and planned for those unplanned eventualities - like what Lisa, Mark and I are going through - and knows that what he's doing allows families to continue on in dignity, with room to do what they need to for their loved ones and grieve, without relying on someone else's charity. That's very powerful. So, I'm enjoying the project.

My cancer treatments continue... we'll have to see about tomorrow's abraxane dose, tho. I've had a WHOPPER of a cold, an absolute head stuffer - bad enough that the doc office put me on cipro because I'd developed a sinus infection as well. Bleh. That's the stuff that kills absolutely everything - it's what they give folks exposed to anthrax. I spent the day in my pjs, kinda just mooching around the house... until, at 4:30, when we HAD to go get dog food (he was totally out) which woke me up, which meant we ran a few more errands, which meant I found a christmas tree, which meant we had to take care of it when we got it home...and I ended up pretty wound up....and now blogging at 11:3o at night.

We were coming home from a christmas party last night, listening to an irish music program as we cruised down the highways towards the house. We were on the North Side, coming through barrio areas. The elevated highway gave me a bird's eye glimpse into the neighborhoods as we zoomed past.

Beneath me, the humble dwellings were merrily festooned with christmas lights. I could see distinct yards as we passed, draped with zillions of little lights. The Irish music tilted along in the background - an earthy, centered music, that matched the humble state of the those homes I watched. It seemed to me so incredibly beautiful that these people, who have much less than we do, spend their time and emotional energy so lovingly on hanging those lights. They took such joy in the effort... these are people who's son and daughters are in Iraq. They joined the armed services for a way to pay for a new life, go to school, provide for their family. And their families back home were putting out christmas lights - not just as a cumpulsory activity for the season, but as a sign of Hope. The coming of the new year, new times, new decisions, new family moments. Hope of good family times to come. Hope in their God for protection for those they love.

That essence of hope came home with me last night, and amazed me with it's power. It's so easy to forget Hope, to instead become mired in the everyday dirge that has to be done and cleaned up, without realizing that Hope is waiting outside the door, ready for us to break free of our trying times and discover new life.

......wowoo...look at all the pretty swirly colors... I take it my Ambien has kicked in:) nighty-night.

October Wane

It's 10:17 pm. Charles is curled up next to me, waiting for me to put the computer to bed, and then myself. He's getting up at 6:00 tomorrow morning, to get things done so we can leave for Lake Charles tomorrow night.

We have to go to a funeral. Diane, Charles' brother Mark's wife, died suddenly Friday night of a stroke or heart attack. I don't know yet which. She and Mark had just - and I mean, like a week - moved to Philadelphia from Johannesburg, South Africa. She was about 57 years old.

Diane was a beautiful, graceful, grace-filled woman. She always had a warm and inviting smile, was an incredibly lovely woman with a true and abiding faith that I was frankly in awe of. This is the first death for Charles' immediate family, and it's not been easy.

This comes on the heels of our finding out that my sister in law Lisa, my brother John's wife, has stage 4 lung cancer. Lisa is 38, the mother of four, the youngest of which is 6 months. Yes, she smoked, but that was about 13 years ago. Since that point, she's lived an enviably clean life, very healthy, very much an advocate for taking one's health both personally and seriously. She also has a very deep and abiding faith. It's doing its job now - this is what faith is there for, to carry us through the darkest moments of our lives. Hers and John's is carrying them through this.

There's a train in the distance while I'm writing this. Trains have been a soundtrack through Charles' and my life together. Charles' first apartment had a train track nearby, and at night we would lie awake together and listen to it go by - it's such a wonderful sound. It's had a haunting presence for us - our lives are moving by us with the train, moment by moment, the wheels chugging as the days go by, carrying us to the next stop.

There are many of you I've not had a chance to talk to lately, but my heart aches for you, wants you to know how very very precious you are to me and to Charles. I had a chance to talk to my dear friend Theresa, and just the sound of her sweet voice in my ear was a balm to the soul and I'm so grateful.

It's time to let Charles go to sleep.

Loveyou.

Ce

Scenes from a Chemo Room

Hello All!

This was composed while I was in the chemo room on Friday, October 5th, receiving my dose of Abraxane. I thought you might like to see and read about what the chemo experience is like. I wrote it on my new i-phone (the super magic phone referenced in the bottom of the post) while sitting in the chemo chair.

A lot has happened since that day. We were robbed Friday night while we were in the house, in bed. Yes. It was scary. We're both fine - please don't worry - but it was traumatic on us. Charles was my hero in the situation - I'd taken a sleeping pill so was totally zonked. Charles heard the guy in our living room, thought it was the cat at first and stuck his head out of our door and saw him standing on our futon, pulling on something. Charles yelled at him and then slammed our bedroom door while I called 911. (and where was Atticus, the formerly referred to "Pit Bull"??? Sitting on my foot, behind the bed, shivering like a leaf. He didn't hear a thing when the guy came in - and no, we don't give him sleeping pills! He's been demoted and is now The Cowardly Lion.) The police came and we discovered that the thief had stolen Charle's work computer and gone through some of the cars in the driveway.

The next morning was the Komen walk, which was a much happier affair. We put the burglarly behind us and continued on with our plans, which was the C-Team doing the walk while our wonderful husbands made us a five-star breakfast. Events like that make it easy to forget the stressful moments, and as ever, our wonderful family and friends were our solice, buffering us from the nutsiness of the previous night with their humor and love.

This is a picture of sweet Janelle, from my surgeon's office (Dr. Jo Pollack), wearing my Komen walk hat and the T-shirt my fan's at Jo's office had bought me for the walk. I was a hit out on the streets - several fellow "bosom sisters" cheered when I walked into a group, just loving the sentiment. Cindy Clayton, the captain of my team, bought a gargantuan number of pink mardi-gras beads which we gave out to as many people as we could on the walk. I could only do a mile; Barb and my sister-in-law Ann made sure I made it to the finish line after taking a short cut. We had a chance to go by the Komen Education tent and see my dear friend Betty Bezemer, who chairs the Education Committee, all decked out as a pink breast cancer angel! I wish I had a picture to put here - she was ADORABLE! Melanie and Cindy did the entire three miles and made sure they "decorated" ever police officer they saw with pink beads!

It's now Monday, and a new week has begun. I've started my Xeloda again and I'm doing fine on the slightly reduced dose. My mental acuity is taking a bit of a nosedive. I'm now writing notes to myself...and then forgetting where I put the notes!! Aww well - it's temporary. I've been joking that I need to put a "Hello My Name Is" sticker on the mirror so I can remember who the heck I'm looking at in the morning.

Charles is dealing with all of this in his own, inimical way... but I'm sure he could do with a good kidnapping and a beer or two:)

And now on to, "Scenes from a Chemo Room":



I'm writing today from the chemo room in my oncologist's office. The other Cecelia is here as well. That's her in the picture, praying with her sisters. She's also a breast cancer patient, but her's was found much later than mine. Her cancer was found at stage four. She was holding over thirty pounds of water and her tumor swelled her affected breast. I don't know what kind of cancer she had...there are many kinds.

She has a five year-old boy who is afraid of her walking around without a hat. Apparently, some of the other little boys at school tease him about his bald mother, so he won't let her be seen with him without her scarf at least.

Rose is hooking up my "breast milk" as we jokingly refer to my Abraxane dose. That's the Abraxane bag hanging on the right side of the IV pole. It only takes about 30 minutes to drip through into my veins. It takes longer to prepare - I've been in the office for about an hour and a half for the medication. That's not bad - they have to first draw my blood and make sure all of my organs are working and that my white blood cells aren't too elevated. Once they get the results, then the Abraxane is mixed by Jessica, the tech. I told her and Rose that I wanted cinnamon in today's dose - last week I requested a chocolate malt...somehow it still "tastes" the same:)

Seriously, though, I can taste some of this experience. Gratefully, it's much better than the other chemo! I'm sure you will be surprised by this, but I'm pretty sensitive! I am hyper aware of tastes and smells... I can taste the saline when they flush my port.

The port is in the upper left corner of my chest. Here's a picture of it with the IV in. (see, I'm smiling! Not so bad, huh??) It was installed during the mastectomy surgery. The physical port is pretty strange - it looks like a giant plastic sperm! Truly!! I was astounded when Jo (my surgeon) removed the first one. It consists of a ball with a small spot on one side made of rubber. That's where the needle goes in for the chemo. The ball has a tube that the surgeon sews into a vein that the chemo flows into my system through.

Cecelia is telling me about how her older children are behaving through her treatments...and the answer is "badly". They're trashing her house and not helping at all.

I hope you now understand why your support and love for me, all the wonderful things all of you have been doing for me, mean so very much. Those of you who have pledged my team, who are walking with our team, who are cheering us on from afar, who pray for me.. Thank you so much.

So, Rose will be coming in a minute to un-hook me. From here, Charles and I will go get some lunch (I'M STARVING!!!) and then home to make an apple pie for after the play at UH tonight and maybe a batch of chocolate chip cookies for Julien in Paris...maybe. I may be sleeping instead:)

Love you all,

Ce

Sent from my Super-Magic iPhone;)