This is a long, rambling email but it's therapeutic for me so if it's too much for you, just read the first two paragraphs.
So we saw the oncologist today and she set up my first chemo date for a week from Monday. That gives me another week to get ready. Check out wigs, get a port put in by the surgeon - it's outpatient but done at the hospital. My veins are tiny and one of the drugs destroys them. Lovely. Oh and the echocardogram showed that I have a mitralvalve thickening with nodular degeneration (whatever that means). So now I get to go see a cardiologist. Aren't you lucky to be on this email list and get all these details? (It does help me to report to you all and know you care - so just delete if things get too whatever.) Oncologist doesn't know about hearts but she thinks it's nothing and probably just some inflammation or scarring due to an infection I had at some point. Still, I'm going to the cardiologist to just see what he says. It won't postpone my chemo tho.
Geoff and I went out for lunch after the appointment at Severinos - very nice. Yesterday was our 20th anniversary so we went out. Surreal. It may be the denial but it's hard to really believe this is our life and we are now in this club.
You may know I used to enjoy using the Tarot. Well, you also may have learned from me how to figure out your Growth Cycle card (remember that? the one that you're in from one birthday to the next?) Guess what my card is until my birthday in May? The Death card! It's really funny because my teacher always said that people think the death card means they are going to die but when she studied this by looking in the obituaries, it turned out that people didn't die in their death card year but in their Lovers year (relationships become the focus) or the year that was their birth card (the energy they came into the world on, they left the world on the same energy too.) So I was thinking this morning about the death card when I was walking with Summer in the Pogonip and how much this is a Death/REBIRTH for me. How many times did I say to myself, I love to walk in the trees but I never do it and here I was this morning finally doing it because death is knocking on my door. Doesn't take many people to need that kind of a kick in the butt to exercise regularly or do things that they like doing, but I guess that's what I needed at least to go walk in the trees. Anyway, I definitely feel like this is a rebirth for me. Am I nuts? How am I going to manage the "chemo brain" and every other horror I keep hearing about? I don't know but each thing that comes before me I know I just have to go through. It's strange how the mind can deal with things. When first diagnosed, I felt like I would rather die then go through chemo. But now, I know I have no other choice (I'm really beyond a natural cure) and I have to go through that chemo gate and so I mentally get used to the idea. No breasts at all? Well, I'm getting used to that possibility too though I still have a slim chance of another story. I also still think maybe by next Monday I'll find some natural cure like the pepper, garlic sandwich I read about on the internet and I won't have to go through this chemo gate....and radiation gate and surgery gate. But first it's the port gate - oh, darn, no, it's the MRI assisted biopsy gate! Tomorrow! Fun.
But best of all, in a couple of hours, I get to go see 4 clients in a row and forget about myself for awhile and get absorbed in their sacred struggles. I'll end my day of work feeling refreshed, knowing I can really help someone else.
