What a year!

I belong to an RVing Facebook group, with many "full-timers" like us. About a week ago I put out this post:

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Jan, (2016) -- We bought our 40 ft. motorhome, with plans to travel.
Feb -- Sold our house in one weekend. (Yikes! We're really doing this!)
Mar -- I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Put stuff in storage, moved out of home, into motorhome.  Travel plans put on hold.
Apr -- Double mastectomy. Cancer gone.(Yay!) Recovery.
May-June -- Reconstruction process (post-surgery) with brief RV trips interspersed. New grand baby! (#8 She's adorable)

July, Aug -- Four week trip, plus several short trips. Purchased several acres in central Oregon for future home. (We've always lived in western Oregon.) Update: Property sale fell through. Learned that 5 min after posting this. 

Sept -- Youngest son's wedding.(Happy Happy! All kids married now.) Final surgery to finish reconstruction.

Oct- Nov -- Planning to hit the road!

WHAT A YEAR. A year ago, we saw NONE of this coming!

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You can also splice into the timeline, in April, the conclusion of a four-year church mission, which we DID see coming.  

It's been long enough now that the post finally sank out of sight into Facebook oblivion but all told, it garnered 149 comments, 556 "likes", and it kept my notifications hopping for days.  All of the comments were encouraging, cheering me on, and acknowledging how life does indeed, throw stuff at you.  But MANY of the comments pushed me right up onto a pedestal, with titles like hero, champ, warrior, and the like.   I tried a couple of times to ratchet it down.  It was, as I protested, a great year!  I wouldn't change any of it. 

Some shared their own cancer stories and my heart went out to them.  These brave women went through the ravages of chemo, radiation, and a genuine fear for their lives.  One lost most of her immediate family to cancer and another went through a divorce during her treatments.  And they so sweetly, so generously, counted me among them.  For which I deeply appreciate the honor, but honestly do not deserve.  

The reason for this reflection is that, if you notice on the timeline, in September, it says -- final surgery.  Well that surgery is now two days past.  I'm back in recovery mode, bandaged tightly, and staying well out of sight.  This is it.  Done.  And although cancer started it all with the double mastectomy, that same cancer vacated entirely last April.  This is just the last stage of the reconstruction or, in other words, my "boob job" ..... with apologies to my kids, especially my boys, who want as few details as possible.  (They prefer to know that I'm okay and leave it at that.)

This is my fourth surgery in about three years.  The first two were bunion repairs in my feet.  I always thought I lived an uneventful life where my health is concerned, but I guess not so much ....  To sum up my experience with surgery ..... for the first foot surgery, we filled the prescription for pain killers.  I'm still using up that first bottle.  I received new prescriptions for each surgery, but never bothered filling them.  When asked at the hospital how I tolerate pain, I said I don't know.  Who do I compare it with?  I guess I tolerate it pretty well, but I don't know ..... I mean, I just hardly ever hurt.  (And yes, I thank my lucky stars for that!)  The down side is that those pain killers are nice.  So relaxing.  I sleep like a baby while on them.  BUT, darn it(!), I can't justify them after a couple of days.   So either it's me .... or my doctors have seriously awesome skills.  

Am I a warrior?  As I said, my cancer is gone.  It's history.  Never to return again because you cannot get breast cancer if you no longer have the tissue to accomodate it.  I never had to take in toxic chemicals nor be nuked.  No followup meds for the next three to five years.   Yes, I lost the "girls" in the process, but they weren't that great to begin with.  Definitely not in the Marilyn Monroe category.  And the new versions ..... well, it seems a lot of women pay good money for these, although I'm not sure why.   But I basically got them for free since the surgery last spring used up my annual deductible.  So, you see, I don't feel like much of a warrior.  This has not been bad ... at all.  There were a few moments I'd happily not repeat, but still ..... no complaints.  

Just gratitude.  

Where love is ...

I am on Day Five, recovering from a bilateral mastectomy.  (See previous post.)  Any sense of glamour or physical appeal I may have mustered up in the past, is gone.  And along with the oddly-shaped alien who has replaced what I used to see in the mirror, for the first week or two, I have to wear some very unattractive appendages to allow for post-surgery drainage, that must be attended to each day.  The total ensuing package is not pretty, to say the least.

Physically, I could manage the post-op maintenance by myself.  I'm not completely incapacitated.  It'd be hard, but doable.  But I don't have to, thankfully.

I am learning yet again that I chose well, over 40 years ago and just shy of turning 21 years old, when I married the dearest man alive.    Wherever the wisdom came from that motivated such a decision in someone so young, I'll never know.   We walked into marriage about as naively as a couple of babies. And if I could go back and do it again, I wouldn't change anything ...... (Well maybe I'd rethink a few of my clothing and hair-style choices in some of the photos ..... but it was the 70s.  The whole decade was tacky.)

I am definitely not the cute young chick he married so long ago.  All the typical sagging, wrinkling, drooping, expanding, receding, and graying have taken their toll.  And now this.

Yet, I have never felt more loved.  This is the real thing.  It's not the "for better" that makes a marriage.  It's hanging in there through the "worse".  It's the trust to put oneself entirely in the hands of another who is there because they want to be.  It's feeling safe and protected while feeling vulnerable and needy.    Love is not flowers and candy, dinner dates and long walks on the beach.  It's taking care of each other by tenderly and willingly doing what needs to be done, and not being grossed out when most people would be.  It's being a team.  It's the long haul.  It's commitment in every sense of the word.  

So one of the many silver linings in this seemingly dark little cloud, is that love is real, powerful, and lasting .... and it's here in our little home-on-wheels.

The dreaded C word

I hardly feel like I deserve the title Cancer Survivor.  I simply found out I had breast cancer six weeks ago and now, one surgery later, I don't.  It's those brave women who endure weeks of chemo and/or radiation treatments with all the nasty side effects who deserve medals of gold.

"Calcifications" the doctor said after my last annual mammogram.  (With my family history, I was fairly vigilant about going in regularly.)  He pointed to speckles on an X-ray image.  Tiny speckles.  A biopsy confirmed the suspicions of the various physicians who suddenly crowded into my personal space.   Ductal carcinoma in situ, aka.... DCIS.  This is, I learned via my immediate Internet search, the kind to get.  I mean if you must get breast cancer, choose this.  Stage Zero.  Nothing bad mischievously sneaking off into unsuspecting lymph nodes or other various bodily crevices.  All things nefarious were neatly trapped in the milk ducts.  That's what "in situ" means. But it might not stay that way so those ducts and their residing speckles, had to go before they turned into something truly scary.  They and the surrounding real estate.  Therefore, my whole original *front porch* is now gone .... and construction has begun on a new and improved version which will not and can not go all kamikazi by trying to kill off the mother ship.   Can't complain about that.  No more worries about lumps or whatnot, and no.more.mammograms.  Another upside of this is the outpouring of love and prayers from my close little circle of friends and family.  There's nothing quite like the C-word to get people's attention.....even though, as I said above, I hardly feel like I qualify.

This has thrown a bit of a wrench into our travel plans so if you live nearby and wonder why that big ol' bus of ours never seems to actually GO anywhere.....this is one of the reasons.  T'was an interruption we didn't foresee when we started the transition into full time RVing.

All in all, I feel pretty darn lucky.   It's a glitch Dearest-Husband-Ever and I will get past together and THEN we will toe-test the water of venturing down the road, even before the new *front porch* is fully completed.  Afterall, the bus is as comfy as all get out and I can be home in my own bed .....wherever we go.