Monday, June 20, 2011

A+

Quick update, since I haven't written in a while:

I feel fantastic! 100% normal. Healthy, strong, happy, FINE! And I'm having a terrific summer.

Here's how I've been occupying my time in the last few weeks:

1- MOVING SOON! Neil and I have spent the couple weeks getting the house ready to put on the market. We unloaded loads and loads of stuff to Goodwill and various organizations. (FYI: looking for a simple, free-of-charge way to renew your spirit that I guarantee will work? GET RID OF JUNK YOU DON'T NEED! I didn't really realize we had a "situation" in our house and basement until we started unloading crap. But how much of that stuff do you really need? NEED? So donate it! Consign it! Have a garage sale. Someone out there does NEED it. It feels so fabulous to have open space and order and organization in my life. (I'm sending my resume to Martha Stuart after I finish tapping out this post.)

1b-I GOT OVER IT. I finally finished unloading all those boxes of kids' clothes I lamented about a few months back. The ones that I was saving for the theoretical third child. And I felt fine doing it. It's just stuff. It's just stuff! (Especially since I'm giving about 300 outfits to my cousin, so they're all "still in the family", which somehow makes me feel happier, as I'll someday soon see them trotting around again on a new lovable human.)

2- FRIEND IN REMISSION! My friend, "A", the one I wrote about a year or so ago, the one who shared my stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis, and who came to all my chemos, is finally, after 12 sucky months, in remission herself !!! So keep hanging in there, fellow fighters. Medicine is improving literally every day. My own doc told me my odds for long-term survival have improved since this time last year. (I made him give me the numbers-- he is not normally in the practice of doing that, but I wanted some science behind my good feelings).

2b- On the topic of health, next steps for me will be a scan in mid-August to judge the effectiveness of my CyberKnife(s). And of course to see if anything new has grown. Until then, I get to stay the hell away from the Cancer Institute for a while-- at LAST.

3- SWIM! My daughter did her first freestyle recently--well, using the term "freestyle" extremely loosely, but hey. And we're going to be hitting the pool a ton this summer. Want a fun, productive goal for the summer that will help others? You can sign up to be on our Swim Across America team (you can be on "Team Shelly"!) Choose between a half-mile or 2 mile distances, in Lake Washington, on Sept 10th.

4- CAMPING TRIP! As I am holed up in a corner hurriedly writing this, my kids and husband are rushing about me, packing up our gear, since we're headed out for a camping trip on the Sound this weekend. Tidepools. Tents. Stars. The sea. We are so excited.

5-OHIO!! We are headed back to Ohio to see the family and friends this Tuesday-- for 12 days! We can't wait for the heat and all the fun back home.

Must run. My husband is being patient, but I'm not holding up my end of things today, so I gotta run. Hope you are all doing well, too. Go out there and get 'em today, tiger.

Friday, June 10, 2011

T.G.I.F. - Thank God I'm Finished

It's Friday night. The last of my three Cyberknife treatments concluded today. Amazing: Three days ago, I had a little cancer. Tonight, I probably don't anymore.*

Amazing. You lie on a table for an hour a day, for three days, and KAPOW! Gone. No pain. I bet back in the 1950s, they envisioned something like this would be possible in "the future", and if you step back and think about it, doesn't the year "2011" sound sort of futuristic?

If you are just tuning in, and you want to know what happens during a Cyberknife session, check out my February 28th, 2011 entry entitled, "Meet Lenore".

Helluva week. Nitey-nite.



*This statement blows my mind so thoroughly, I had to leave it dangling there, alone, on the end of the paragraph. Because what can I add after something like that? "HOLLA!"? "THAT'S WHAT I'M TALKIN' ABOUT!"?

Woefully inadequate. So for once, I'll just say nothing.

Thursday, June 2, 2011

My life as a rich, older gentleman

Last Thursday, I had my planning CT scan for this week's CyberKnife. All went well, and I'm set to get my lung 'Knifed this Wednesday-Friday. It will only take an hour a day. Then, as the informative marketing video states, "(I) can go play a round of golf afterward!" (I get the impression most people dealing with this procedure are men of a certain age.)

The pneumothorax biz-nasty is a thing of the past. After my recent two week (+/-) stay, I know half the staff at that hospital. Truly. I walk down the halls and find myself high fiving, pointing, smiling, and stopping to field questions, like some wealthy old codger roaming the halls of his beloved country club at cocktail hour. I even introduced one O.R. nurse to a CyberKnife tech, and suggested they grab lunch in the hospital cafeteria sometime. (I think those two would hit it off.) It's weird, I know... but I guess you gotta make the most of your days, no matter where you spend them.

That being said, I'm doing fabulously now. In fact, last weekend was jam-packed: Friends, dinners out, yard work, pool time with kids, lap swimming, big stadium rawk concert, Mariner's game, birthday party-- all in two days! All I missed was some time out on the back 9, and I'd really have been living large.

All right. Gotta run. This french toast isn't going to cook itself. Sometimes kids can be so neat!