Cheers

I have to share something pretty amazing.  (And, by the way, Big Sis, I will post this at mid-night, but I was already in bed exhausted from my day while my brain kept running it's little cartoon of life.  So I am writing to shut off my computer in my brain.) 
   Back to amazing.  I went to a the Center of Integrated Therapies today.  I walked in the door and there stood five of the practitioners.  They cheered for me.  Like a real excited, smiles across their faces, arms pumping in the air, real live cheer.  Over come with a blush and a rush of joy, I felt amazing.  So that is my goal...to organize a spontaneous cheer for you.
   I laid there in my acupuncture appointment rambling on like she was my bartender or hairdresser and I was thinking about my buddy Dane.  Dane, 14, is just walking in the door of the cancer world.  I read these posts written by his mom, my friend, and his dad and am just blown away with the young man he is.  Boy, I thought I was a youngster, but to be a teen and loosing your hair....
   So, I dared him to dress up as Harachrishna (not sure how to spell that one) and run silly down Pearl Street Mall (Not from Boulder, Colorado?  You could run naked in January down the street and wouldn't be out of place.  Arrested, maybe, but not odd.)  I was joking, of course, but was envisioning people cheering him on as he ran down the street.  In the end it is all about the cheering.  It is pretty amazing. 
    I thank everyone who cheered for me.  I thank everyone who came to my birthday party just days before my surgery and laughed as I showed you the surgical maneuvers of Dr. Heartthrob on my ample breast cakes with cherries on top.  I only now realize how hard that must have been for you.  So thank you for laughing with me....maybe I wasn't really all that funny as I was pretty doped up on painkillers...but you laughed and smiled hugged and cheered anyway.  And, I know at least one of you went home to bawl her eyes out with her husband who in turn shared some pretty important words with me later.
   Thanks for coming to my next birthday party and gratitude celebration.  I know how your lives were all taking big hits at the time too.  But, you came, you cheered.  You stood for "another one of Sara's silly group pictures that she will probably want to post on Facebook."  And maybe more importantly, shared a round of cosmos with me.  Mark your calendars now because I am going to have a party every year.  Yes, it will be around my birthday which just happens to mark my years with cancer.  But, I want my party to be your party.  A party of gratitude that we are all still here cheering for each other.  Oh and my 40th...you betcha it is going to rock!  Who is going to help me plan?  Six years cancer free.
  As I am getting really excited with all this gratitude sharing, in the back of my head is the haunting image.  It is the image I see every three weeks as I settle down in a recliner at the Rocky Mountain Cancer Center for 2 hours across from some old bald guy.  Okay, not everyone is bald and not everyone is old.  But, some days, it feels like that.  I feel like the elephant in the room as I come skipping along trying my best to not let my reality get the best of me.  A friend who I have met recently asked me what an infusion was.  I tried to explain the science of it in a short manner.  You know, the analogy that I have these immature Jedi cells running around all over my body.  The cells may become strong with the Force.  Others, probably in my liver again, may turn into Anican Skywalkers and go to the Dark Side at any minute.  At any minute.  The Herceptin helps to shut down these cells by attaching to them so my body can go in to destroy them before they go to the Dark Side.
  Whant an infusion means is that I sit in a chair feeling drowsy and sort of anxious at the same time for a couple of hours and then go home to pass out asleep for three hours or so.  It means that I wake up totally clueless and foggy in my brain, feet tingling, headache and nauseated up in my throat.  I am hungry but not.  I am sleepy but not.  If and when I go back to sleep, it will get better in 24 hours.  My feet and left arm may swell up like balloons and feel very heavy whether the swelling is visible or not.  I feel a bit of a rush feeling in my chest, short of breath, and thirsty.  And yes, I am going to say it, then there is the diariah for a couple of days.
  An infusion means I am siting next to a woman with thin hair, in her 60s, who is going through her third recurrence.  It means I begin to worry about recurrence.  I don't want to loose my hair again.  It means looking at her giant swollen arm and having her tell me that she just stopped taking care of her Lymphadema and lives with the pain day in and day out.  It means remembering my cancer.
  Yes, I am strong again.  Yes, I can get my brain to work right most of the time when I am not tired or too much is going on around me.  Yes, for two weeks, I take my kids to school, bake bread, and clean my toilets.  Heck, I may even carve out time for myself to paint...the only true time I feel like Sara Lynn.  But then, in three weeks, I schedule, I plan, I prep the house, the kids, and my life.  I stop everything for cancer.  Yes, it is only maybe 48 hours.  But for those 48 hours, I remember.  I remember over and over and over and over again.
  So yes, thank you Michelle, Karen, Megan, Michelle, and Jane for cheering for me today.  Thank you!  Now, I think I can pull up my britches and set out upon the world as Super Mom Sara Lynn Broers Brown...well, for the next two weeks anyway. 
   I honor you.

Sidebar:  I decided today that what I am doing now, where I am on my path, is paving my road.  I have been bull-dozer, reaped, and the jungle grew back all wild and ugly.  The last few months I have made big leaps in my mind to come to terms with what is to be my life.  Now, just now, I am ready to pave my road.  What I mean is that I am educating myself with what to eat, not eat.  How to prevent the nausea (hoping to do pressure seeds before the appointment.)  And continuing to maintain the Lymphadema.  From what I have collected from doctors and patients is that once the Lymphadema gets out of control, it is too late.  It is very difficult to maintain and very painful.  So as long as I can keep up the Manual Lymph Drainage Massage (and it feels great too!) and wearing my compression sleeve even if the swelling isn't much, then I can keep it at just that, not much.  I don't want to look like that swollen 60 year old woman ten years from now.  Here is to hoping.

And to close with a funny:  So I go to the bathroom like every 15 minutes during infusions because of all the fluid and probably a little to do with nerves.  I go, come out, and stop by the nurse's desk.  "Shelly, um, I don't think it is quite right; I mean it seems odd; is there maybe a break room close to the bathroom?"  "What do you mean exactly?"  "Well, the bathroom smells like smoke, like cigarettes, and that is a weird thing in a cancer center, right?"  So she goes in to check and emerges laughing.  "Oh my gosh, you are right."   Fast forward to waiting for the valet to retrieve my car.  There is this women with crooked teeth there sort of on edge.  She is going on and on about the valets screwing up something with her truck.  I see her truck.  She almost totally crashed into me when I was trying to find a parking spot; before I gave up and left it with the valet.  She was going on and on about this to top off a bad day because her husband just got busted at the cancer center for smoking in the bathroom.  Narc.  I sure hope he doesn't have lung cancer.