Anniversaries

This month I celebrate being cancer free for three years. This past August, my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage.

Each is an accomplishment, and taken together, they are a sign that my little corner of the world is doing pretty well.

Getting a big disease like cancer can wreak havoc on a marriage. A statistic I saw recently said spouses are eight times more likely to leave if this brick comes through the window.

It's a big deal, no doubt, and I see now why it's included in traditional marriage vows.

I'm just very happy we've defied the odds. I think it helps that we were friends for many, many years before we got married. Honestly, I have trouble remembering a time before L. was in my life. Just as it seems like I've been a mom to S. forever.

Cancer has come, and hopefully gone, but it has changed our lives forever. Sometimes I think it's moved us ahead on the continuum of coupledom. It's like we're much older than we actually are and have covered so much more ground than we actually have. I feel we're like my grandparents and older than my parents in some ways.

It's a weird feeling, but a good one in that I know L. gets it. He gets that we will always have to worry about having insurance for the family. He gets that I am not crazy when I wonder aloud about ailments I've noticed. And he'll push me to get things checked out, because he wants me around for the family as much as I want to be around for them.

This all brings me to having my wedding ring redone recently--the original didn't fit after I gained weight from cancer treatment.

I could look at this new ring as just fixing more of the collateral damage, but I've decided to see it as a marker of what we've been through and a promise of many more beautiful miles to explore--together, as a family.

Maybe Movement Tomorrow

It's been well over two weeks now that I've been trying to get a doctor to endorse an acceptable yearly breast screening program for me and to schedule an MRI as part of it.

I have an appt. with my ob/gyn tomorrow. I scheduled it months ago to go over my pelvic ultrasound scans. Now I guess I'll also be bringing up the breast screening question.

Basically, I want to know who usually schedules and follows up on yearly breast checks. And, if it's the ob/gyn as I suspect, why that can't be the case for me.

If she isn't behind the mammo/MRI combo, I'll just ask her if she'd be okay with just a mammogram after one couldn't find two, 2.5 cm. cancer lumps in her breast.

I'll keep you posted.

Crisis Nurseries Rock!

I wrote an article about the crisis nursery in our town that took such good care of my child during my breast cancer diagnosis, treatment, etc., etc., etc. It ran in our Families magazine that circulated in the newspaper this weekend.

The nursery is celebrating 25 years of helping kids and families, which was the reason for the article. I really can't ever say enough good things about them. I was just lucky I knew about them before diagnosis so I knew right away to call them for help. No one at the clinic where I was treated ever mentioned them as a resource, though I'm sure I told everyone I saw during those early days that I'd probably need help with my son if I had to attend many more appointments (of course, that was just the start!!!)

Child care is another on the long list of additional issues young women with cancer face. The ACS will give you rides, but have nothing to offer in the way of help with children so you can spend hours at appts. or treatments on a regular basis.

Most people don't understand how time-consuming the early days of diagnosis and treatment planning are. I spent all-day every day for weeks running from appointment to appointment and scan to scan. And these are not run of the mill doctor appointments.

They are wait two hours because the doctors are trying to explain cancer to someone else before you get your turn appointments. And once you realize this, you are happy to wait however long it takes because you want the next person to show you the same courtesy.

They are doctors turning the legal pad sideways appointments because words aren't enough to explain how, why, where and when you got cancer and a straight-up pad just doesn't provide enough space for the story.

They are having every expensive scan in the hospital appointments and not wanting to ask or think about what they're looking for.

They are realizing you can't take the doctor they just assign you appointments and having to figure out how to do and what to make of second, third and fourth opinions.

They are just the start to a long course of treatment, reconstruction and maintenance appointments.

Even the most generous people would not be up for taking your kid for all of this for all the months and years it takes to come out the other side.

Plus, for me, not having to arrange child care that would jive with and be flexible enough to match specialists' shifting schedules was a lifesaver.

Honestly, I can never say enough good things about a place that took good care of my child, showed him a great time and told me on a regular basis how fantastic he is. That alone got me through.

When I die (hopefully at a very old age, of old age), I don't want flowers. Any money anyone feels compelled to part with can go to the crisis nursery.

Give a dime in my name to anything with cancer in its name, and I will haunt you forever!