An Invincible Summer - A Woman's Journey

Yesterday I talked with the daughter of my estranged brother. I hadn’t spoken to her in 15 years. It was an emotional and heartbreaking call.  That man, who makes it impossible to be in his life, is dying. Barring any tragic accident, he will be the first of the six of us to go. At the ripe ole age of 60. Anger, a two pack a day habit and enough weed to supply a small state has its way of taking its toll.  I am numb. Not sure what I feel. When I think of the little boy that was my childhood companion, my heart squeezes tight and the throat threatens to close up but that boy hasn’t existed for 50 years. He was fearless and reckless. Somewhere, I have a newspaper article of him, on some fancy bike my dad had purchased for him, jumping over 8 of his friends at a park. I think he took my fathers abandonment harder than the rest of us. It damaged us all, installing within us maladaptive life skills, but him far worse. He quickly aligned himself with kids that were getting in troubl...

Today is my Mom's birthday. She would have been 85. Almost 13 years ago we sat in the hospital waiting for the moment for her to be released from her earthly pain. Ovarian cancer is a brutal bitch that, while spending years quietly taking over cell after cell, when finally making itself known, makes sure that you don't spend another waking moment without the knowledge it is there. I am so thankful for having my family to go through that moment together. In that tiny hospital room, with my beautiful mom struggling for each ragged breath, and her thoughts being somewhere else (or was she still thinking....who knows the mysteries of death), there was 9 or 10 of us. We sat and spoke of our love for her and wondered if we knew how to do life without her. I still wonder that sometimes. How do you figure out life without the glue that holds it together? Well, we've done it, of course. Kept going.....but it changed things. The glue has loosened and the parts don't fit th...

My sweet mom suffered with ovarian cancer for over 7 years. When I say suffer, I mean suffer. When they first realized she had cancer, it was at a fairly advanced stage, which is not uncommon for ovarian. There are still no really good tests for it. Hers had grown and intersected her colon and bowels. The initial surgery require the removal of all things female and a portion of her intestinal tract. Massive surgery and then chemo followed right away. Sickness and all the things that come with chemo ensued. After that, there were the years of watching numbers go up and down and responding with new rounds of chemo. I think 5 total. All the while, she dealt with horrible bowel issues, weakness, loss of appetite, loss of hearing, chemo brain, recurring hospital trips for bowel blockages or dehydration.  She was nearly killed by an ICU nurse that double her morphine by accident, treated poorly by underpaid, overworked nurses and put up with God like egos from doctors. She also en...

Whatever you want to call them, I just had my latest mammogram.  I learned a few things today. I had always assumed that because my breasts are nearly NON-EXISTENT that I didn’t have much to worry about in regards to cancer. I just figured that any lump would be incredibly easy to spot, so that it would likely be caught early. Not the case at all. It depends far more on what type of breast you have: fatty, scattered fibroglandular, heterogeneously dense or extremely dense. The mammogram will spot a lump in a fatty breast far easier than the others because the others are made up of material that can sort of hide cancer in the screening. Good to know. I might be able to spot a lump easier myself but not so much the machine. Nowadays, they have ultrasound screening that can augment the regular mammogram for those with the breasts made of dense material. All my life I thought, “Well, yeah, I’m pretty flat but those gorgeous things that guys love so much could...