LIFE IN ARIZONA -THE FIGHT OF MY LIFE

Being done with treatment feels strange, I am emotional but also proud to have gone through the process of surgery and radiation. I am both relieved and excited to be done with treatment but I worry about recurrence and getting on with the business of living.

I am left standing and on to the next step, Anastrazole, a tiny anti estrogenic pill.  I go into it with a hopeful feeling, my mind already deciding that I will not suffer from great side-effects. When the five year ‘contract’ ends, will I feel like my security blankie is gone, will I be alive?

I am doing everything I can to fight the beast. So, what now? One day at a time sounds easy to the ear but is it that simple? Can I get on with living my life to the fullest?

I try to find a happy medium, joy in the things that I loved before this happened...there's no magic bullet… "it's over, move on" is the artless way in which people respond to my queries ... it’s hard to understand when they haven’t been ‘there’ themselves. I am different from everyone else and I will recover at my own pace....my doctors, both, have told me it takes about as long as the treatment itself to recover physically...mentally however, as long as my mind feels it needs. I need to stop looking back over my shoulder, the BIG C isn’t there, it’s all out of my cells and my body, they say. What I am doing now is preventing, through all the possible means I have available to me, acupuncture, juicing, organic diet, massage, QiGong! A whole routine not unlike the one I had before, but maybe taken now more seriously.

I look at life in a different light, as this has been for me, a great awakening. I don’t know from what or for what.  I’m just trying to sort things out in my head. I didn’t think this disease would happen to me. As always, my spirit believes it’s immune from the commonality of things. As a young bride I remember thinking I wouldn’t get pregnant too quickly, didn’t that take time and practice?

It feels pretty much as if I've been on a racing motorbike for the last four months to abruptly be let off by the side of the road.  I don’t seem to feel like I've been through a lot because I feel fine -- just a bit unsettled… and fatigued. Everyone uses that word: fatigued. It truly describes the lethargic exhaustion that assaults me unexpectedly as I’m driven back home from treatments. Sometimes we stay in town to eat an early dinner, sometimes we come straight back and I doze off half way between town and the house.

When exhaustion sets in, even if I sleep well at night, I can feel thoroughly wiped out during the day. I could take a nap anywhere, anytime.  I listen to my body, is what I do.

During my last week of treatment my skin started to burn as if I’d spent a few days under a blazing noon sun. Aloe Vera gel is cooling and St John’s wort oil softens and nourishes my incisions.  The radiation site is now turning really dark.  The entire area under my arm down to my scar is very dark brown. It's not painful only moderately uncomfortable.

Now, I’m ready to travel!

LIFE IN ARIZONA -CANCER AND THOUGHTS ON MORTALITY

Two owls that live in a vacant Joshua tree area close to the golf course hoot softly as tendrils of lavender and russet streak through the dusky skies of our summer sunsets; such is the quality of color and sound when dozens - sometimes hundreds - of birds and bats rejoice in mid-air to witness it.

This is a curious place, the Southwest, where intense dry heat recedes into a warm, not unpleasant evening allowing us to sit and appreciate the beauty of our garden and the silvery crisscrossing jet tails that fill the sky.

I have witnessed moist pine groves sheltering villages at the summit of low hills; I have seen sunsets in secluded islands as village fishermen confront brightly lit coral reefs with unusual netting traps but I had never beheld a painted nightfall of so many hues while the ever present coyotes howl in unison under a giant rising moon.

I have been blessed with a wonderful life partner, three great children and two glorious granddaughters. 

My husband is my greatest source of strength and whatever unhappiness I may have known before I met him, has been worth it when the payoff in my future was a man like him.

To remind myself of the insights I’ve gained with time, I temporarily adopt an outsider’s perspective, stepping outside of myself to carefully consider how my life in the present differs from the range of flips and turns I lived through in the past.

I know my strengths, capacities, and inner qualities which help me accept who I am today, that the basic person that was in me before is still here although transformed. My attitudes, opinions, and values have now somewhat become more relaxed and tolerant; these variations can be ascribed to my willingness to accept that I still have much to learn.

Having difficulty giving  myself credit for these changes, I think about the goals I have met, the lives I may  have touched, the wisdom I acquired, and the level of enlightenment I have attained over the past years.

Evolution is a natural fact of life and becomes a potent motivational force when celebrated, and I do celebrate the changes in me. Knowing that I am, stronger, and more grounded than I once was, I can look forward to the changes to come. By acknowledging my growth, I can build a strong foundation upon which I can continue a disease-free path well into the future.

If I live long enough, I can look back and see this day as another stepping stone in my search for survival.

Today I’ve had my 24^th radiation treatment. I feel exhausted but I keep going taking little catnaps and rests along the way.