The First Post from Spain: A Little Backstory

(Does this qualify as “little” or do I need an editor??)

It begins with Husband who misses his days of living abroad and perhaps slightly regrets getting hitched and having children.  (Just kidding, honey!!)  But he dreams of travel that involves more than just a week in a hotel in a foreign city with all the other New Yorkers on Spring Break.  He would much rather experience an immersion, and he wants that for his kids, too.  He relishes in the stories that his co-workers tell of their extended time abroad – when one moved with their three kids to Mumbai for a year.  “See!  It can be done!” he tells his wife.  Wife responds that his friend must have a screw loose and also probably dysentery.  “Plus,” Wife says, “what a logistical nightmare.  Especially with the kids.  Do you really want to add Logistical Nightmare to your list of things to do?”

Then, as though the Laughing Gods of Irony are listening, Wife gets breast cancer. Early in 2013.  Husband comes to her rescue and attends every doctor appointment, cuts way back at work, and their hectic, over-scheduled, over-planned, over-achieving lives in New York City come to a screeching halt.  (Wife writes a blog about it.  See previous entries.)  And after two years of surgeries, doctors, appointments, side-effects, and doctors and appointments for those side effects, Husband and Wife and their two kids have a new life together.  She is now living almost entirely in the present, something she's never been proficient in.  Gone are the lists of goals and dreams set in a future that never comes and she's not sure she'll ever experience anyway.  She plans what is for dinner and when she'll see family and friends but not much more than that.   And He is no longer tied up in knots, pushing himself beyond his limits.  They are both keenly aware that stress was perhaps where and how the Cancer grew.  (Full disclosure: they also both go to therapy and come by these new outlooks with a good deal of soul-searching, time, effort, and heartache.  New outlooks are not, unfortunately, found on trees nor are they available on Amazon.com).

And so, sometime towards the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015, Husband again brings up the topic of living abroad, if only for just a spell.   Lucky for him, Wife is in a better place to hear it.  They sit down one night and look at a globe.  They talk about what they might want to get out of an adventure like this, how long it would be for, and, of course, a whole host of other Logistics.  Two priorities top their list.  Husband would like the kids to learn some Spanish.  And Wife would like to live in a country that is fluent in coffee.  Asia is eliminated and they hone in on Costa Rica because husband enjoyed a semester abroad there in college.  And also because their friends Sue and Ward just moved there with their kids and Wife made the mistake of offering them packing supplies before they left so when they came to pick them up Husband heard all about their plans and suddenly had another family to point to who was “making it happen.”  (In the case of Sue and Ward, one year has become two and may well become three, four, all bets on permanence).  They love it so much that it must be Heaven down there.  Husband, Wife, and the Two Kids plan a trip for Spring Break to visit and see Heaven for themselves.

There are only three things you need to know about Costa Rica for the purposes of this story.  Uno: every day between 11am and 3pm, the heat gets up to 95 degrees Fahrenheit and beyond.  For a cancer patient forced into an early menopause with regular and formidable hot flashes, describing this period of the day as Hell is not an exaggeration.  Dos: lizards, spiders, general bugs.  Probably not necessary to go any further than these three words, but it’s worth pointing out that Wife discovered that living in Costa Rica is a lot like camping, which no doubt makes it a wonderful place for people who think camping is fun.  Wife is not one of those people.  Camping stopped being fun for Wife about 15 years ago when she discovered the comforts of a good hotel.  Tres: birds, monkeys, and other wildlife that are always so very cute and preciously god’s gifts except during early morning pre-alarm hours when they beat at bedroom windows, and afternoon and evening hours when they shit on your outdoor furniture and general living space.

Back in New York City, the Family sits down with the globe once more.  They’ve narrowed the world down to Spanish speaking countries so that the kids might learn a phrase or two.  Europe begins to gain advantage over the other continents when considering of all the countries accessible by train or quick flights on weekends.  So Spain is selected and they pull up Weather.com to find out what the temperature is like in Madrid in January.  They discover it’s nicer in Seville.  Flights are booked to Seville for the last week of summer break 2015 for one more reconnaissance mission.  All systems are go for a move that begins January of 2016.  Family is getting down to the wire.  They’d better find a city soon.  Preferably one with a school for their children and an apartment to live in.

The trip to Seville is lovely and busy.  Husband is in charge of the planning so the five days are chock-full and no one is allowed to sleep too much lest they not be able to sleep.  Or something like that.  Wife doesn’t get it, but she defers to Husband on this one because his Passport is twice as thick as hers.  Family visits two schools, two apartments, a Flamenco dance, and a horse dancing event that is borderline bizarre but historic and cultural.  Family walks the streets of Seville, eats ham, tours in a carriage, and tries to imagine themselves living there.  Then, the day before flying home, they drive to Ronda.

Ronda is a little Spanish town on a hillside somewhere between Seville and the Malaga airport.  Husband thought it would be fun to spend their last night in a smaller town before heading home.  And the evening changes their thinking a bit.  By the time they board the plane the following day back to NYC, all are in agreement that Seville is too big and that they would rather spend six months in a small town like Ronda.  Husband and wife confer on the plane, scanning their brains for another possibility.  Husband says he spent 24 hours in Granada once 20 years ago and enjoyed it.  Wife, tired of airplanes and time zones and itching to make a decision so she can get on with her life, agrees that Granada is the perfect place. 

“But you’ve never been,” he says. 

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” she says. 

“Get out your calendar and let’s find a time in October to visit,” he says. 

“No.” she replies.  “You get out your calendar and figure out when you can go see it.  I’ll get on the internet, watch some YouTube videos, and Google Map my way around the town.  I’m sure it’s lovely.”

Four months later they move to Granada, to a very old and beautiful neighborhood called the Albayzin with an amazing history and a series of alleyways they call streets.  They have a little yard.  It looks out over the roofs of their neighbors, towards the Alhambra and Sierra Nevada mountains.  They settle in for a six-month adventure.  And it is lovely.  

Venlafaxine. 25mg.

Happiness is such a funny thing, isn’t it?  First of all, the word itself should be reserved for children and the elderly.  And “content” is there for the rest of us.  I tend to think that people between the ages of 12 and 75 who claim to be happy are destined to be hit by a bus.  Because one day they will be so distracted by how “HAPPY” they are that they are going to step off the curb at the wrong time.  I also tend to think that their happiness is actually willful ignorance because you can’t truly be happy when 8 year-olds kill each other with 12 gauge shot-guns and there is a growing list of similar atrocities that pop up every second on the damn internet.  (Can we all please just go back to morning and evening news and call it a day?)  And by the way, why do good people die from cancer while shitty people get to run for President?  Come on, this Happiness thing is just a ploy, right?  It’s a full-on dream we’re chasing because we felt it once when we were seven making mud pies in the backyard.  

Unless you are a Gardener, who I understand are the “happiest” people in the world, as you should be and good for you.

To those of you paying extra special attention, you won’t be at all surprised to hear that I am currently taking 25 mg of Venlafaxine every morning - an anti-depressant with an anti-anxiety component (or is the other way around?).  Either way, bonus points for me.  And I will just come right out and say this, they really should put this shit in the water.

Is this too personal?  Am I verging on an over-share?  Maybe I should keep this dark little secret hush hush.  Everyone else does.  I had no idea, until recently, that the moms with their enviable easy-going nature, their ability to brush off the cries and nags of their screaming children, their desire to hang out with other moms and other people in general, those with the wherewithal to take it all in stride when nothing goes as planned, were also taking a mild dose of something every morning.

 

And I didn’t come by this little drug easily.  I have been working on my shit in therapy for years.  8 of them, give or take.  Obviously I don’t mind talking, sharing, hashing, and re-hashing (to a point) so I found an amazing woman who listens to me and we revisit my childhood and I have difficult heart-to-hearts with both mom and dad, accept where I go wrong, and then I work on it.  Scary and uncomfortable at first but I’m happy to have done it.  And I recommend it to all my friends as the healthiest thing you can do for yourself.  (Only the really smart people take my advice!)

One of the things that comes up all the time is anxiety.  I live in New York City, which has got to be the Anxiety Capital of the World.  My therapist has asked me a handful of times over the years whether or not I’d like to go on something.  I’ve always balked, saying I’d rather work on my shit and work through my shit than cover it up, mask it, or drug it.  She understood.  But she would go on to say that these drugs do not change who you are, they can just help alleviate the anxiety, giving you a chance to know what life feels like without it.  She phrased it as improving my quality of life and I swear I heard a little “ding!” inside my brain.

A few things came together at once.  I learned that depression may run in the family, so I’m essentially wired to be a sour puss.  And then I was at lunch one day with a friend, a mother of two young kids, one of the kindest and most even-tempered people I know.  I’ve never seen her get rattled.  I’ve seen her get pissed off, but even when she’s pissed off she’s calm.  I mention to her that I’m thinking of taking something and she tells me she’s been on something for years to which I said, "But why would you take anything, you’re so….”  Ah…  Oh…. Got it.

Then there was one last hurdle to cross – the anxiety over unnecessary chemicals in my body because chemicals cause cancer.  Oh wait.  

Fuck it.  Sign me up.

(And by the way, I am fully aware, and have made peace with the fact that everything, anything on this planet could kill me at anytime.  That bus.  Your car.  A biker in Central Park.  The air, water, sun, non-organic fruit, milk with hormones, dairy, meat, fish with mercury, gluten, sugar, Twizzlers, Fig Newtons, and that 8 year old in Texas with his father’s loaded revolver.  See how many goddamn things could kill me?  Death by anti-depressant might not be such a bad way to go.)

You would never know it by the snarky tone of this entry (sorry!), but these days I am content, calm, and present.  This is a brand new feeling for me and I don’t know how long it will last, but I wanted to let you know that I am enjoying it.  

And, I have a little help. :)

Done with Lupron

It's probably not "best practice" to type out a blog post on your iphone. You never know what auto-correct is thinking. However, it probably IS "best-practice" to write on monumental days of this never-ending story:

I AM DONE WITH LUPRON!!!

(Does anyone know where caps lock is on the iPhone?  That took me half an hour to type). 

It's snowing here today, and not in a nice way. It's slushy and rainy and a painting the ass (I am not going to fix that auto-correct because I love how it makes me sound Portuguese) but most people are being a little extra patient, which is nice.  I am in the midst of co-chairing the PS3 Auction again this year which is to say that I am up to my eyeballs in to-do lists and reply-alls. I'm just setting the scene for you here: Auction Madness plus Snow plus Cancer Center. Last night, that equation equalled 3 hits from my pipe plus tincture.  (More on the topic of stress in my next post).

Anyway, for my appointment today I knew I was in for a Lupron shot in my ass and a sit-down with my oncologist, Dr. Ruth. But they sent me to Ruth first:

Draw blood, weigh-in, undress from the waist up, vitals, and then Ruth checks out my boobs.  All good.  "Put your clothes on and meet me around the corner.  Let's talk,"

On my list of things to discuss were:

How much longer do I have to get Lupron shots?
How bad is Lupron going to be for my bones?
Here is my bone density work - what do you think?

Out of the gate, Ruth wants to tell me that the study results are in and there is no significant gain to staying on Lupron for longer than one year.  Particularly for my type of cancer.  She asks if I want to go ahead and finish out the year with Lupron and I ask her if she is smoking crack.  Then I ask her if she thinks it's ok for me to stop now and she says: "I think you can stop."  And I have not known such joy in an awfully long time but this time I do not cry.  I simply rejoice.  And hug Ruth.

Going off of Lupron but staying on Tamoxifen.  I will start to ovulate again, but in all likelihood I will continue to experience hot flashes.  Oh, and one more thing: I absolutely cannot, under any circumstances, allow myself to become pregnant.  Tamoxifen is detrimental to a fetus and I would have no choice but to terminate.  So what are my plans for contraception?  Figure it out soon.  Tamoxifen makes it easier to get pregnant. 

Add it to the growing list of ironies.

 
 

The Kids are Back in School

It's September.  The kids are back in school and I have a thousand things I want to do which is a pretty good indicator that I'm feeling like myself again.  Having energy is quite a gift and I am incredibly grateful.  But I still hit the hay at 9pm.  Otherwise I'm not a very happy mommy in the morning.  At one of my doctor appointments this summer, doc was checking in on everything and when I told her I still felt pretty tired at 8pm, she said that had nothing to do with cancer or chemo.  That was just me getting old.

Hot flashes remain my constant companion and they are loyally accompanied by cold flashes, as I think I've mentioned.  Cold then hot, cold then hot.  Sweater on, sweater off.  Sweater on, sweater off.  Shirt off.  Naked.  Naked with fan.  Naked with fan and ice water.  Shirt back on.  Sweater back on.  Add a scarf.  In August.  Who's the weirdo?

Chemo hair - my other nemesis.  Short, thick, course, and curly.  Wiry, one might say if one wanted to be cruel but accurate.  Yes, I've dug into my bag of old tricks - the flat iron, the curling iron, the hair dryer and straightening brush - but the results are comical and except for making me laugh not worth the effort.  New hair products include olive oil, straight up out of the bottle from the kitchen.  I also bought myself thinning sheers and when the spirit moves me I chop away at Chemo Hair and fill a small trash can.  I haven't given up scarves yet, though more and more I forgo the full-on kerchief and go for a thin width of fabric that ties at the nape of the neck.  A few bobby pins keep the wild sides in place and the scarf reigns in a few curls at the top.  It's not a look I would choose out of a magazine, but I'm also not six feet under, am I?  I'll take the Chemo Hair over the alternative.

Psychologically I think I am repairing.  I spent the summer with family.  My kids, my husband, my moms, my dads, my siblings, the new baby.  They are my loves.  We planted our garden and then we ate it.  I cooked.  I baked.  I read books.  I took a vacation from thinking.  I took a vacation from worrying.  I took it down a notch.  Several.  I did not live at the break-neck pace of city life.  And now I know how good it feels.

While I was in Crested Butte, Colorado, where pot is now legal, I browsed the shelves of the Wellness Center and found some interesting products.  Salvation balms, tinctures, muscle relief lotion.  All infused with THC.  For healing, don't you know.  Those interesting products found their way into my medicine cabinet.  My favorite: "Calming Crème."  Ingredients: Lavender, Chamomile, Frankincense, Cannabis.  I rub it on my temples at night.  And also on my forehead.   And cheeks.  Chin.  Neck.  My whole head really.  And then I sleep.  Calmly.

https://www.apothecanna.com/
www.DixieElixirs.com
www.DixieBotanicals.com

(just in case you're curious!)

(And this is Dad having a sympathy hot flash with me.  He's the greatest.  Love you, Dad!!)

i'm here. still here. just having trouble writing.

see? 

Hot Flash News Flash

Nothing feels better than sticking your head in the freezer during a hot flash. Nuh-thing. 

One Year On

Do you know what day it is???

Me neither.  But it's somewhere around the beginning of March and my birthday is coming up which means that sometime, right around this time, one year ago, I was taking my kids to get their teeth cleaned when I got a call from my doctor to tell me that I had cancer.

My therapist reminds me that there is a reason that anniversaries are significant.  They hold weight, whether you want them to or not.  The past month has been one long "Cancer Anniversary" because I don't know (and don't really want to know) what day marks the scariest time of my life.  Was it the February day in Mexico when I found the lump?  Was it the day I went in for a mammogram?  Was it the day in March when I went in for a core biopsy and nearly fainted?  Or was it the day my doctor called me?

Two weeks ago, Michael and I took the kids to the Bahamas for their week-long winter break, the same winter-break we were on last year when I was lounging by a pool and casually brainstorming episodic sitcoms that I was going to write and finding lumps in my breast.  I was experiencing some version of post-traumatic stress for days leading up to this trip.  What was I going to feel?  How was I going to react?  Was I going to have involuntary fits of hysteria??  None of it came to pass, partly because of my recent aversion to drama and excitement, and partly because I left my purse in a Bahamian taxi.  Bear with me.

I realized I'd left it about fifteen minutes after checking in and the taxi van was not a van that belonged to the hotel.  It wasn't even a van that the hotel usually hires.  It was a driver that the company that the hotel hires out, hired out.  Michael told me to forget it, it was gone.  Try to enjoy the vacation.  But I couldn't forget it and I felt like I had to act quickly.  I sent him off with the kids to jump in the pool and start their vacation and then I enlisted the help of the woman who was working the bell hop desk and she tried to get people on the phone for me.  We waited on hold for eternities.  When someone was finally ready to talk to me, I couldn't understand a word they were saying.  (They do speak in English in the Bahamas but it is the fastest English you'll ever hear and not every word is a complete one.  One Bahamian described it as "We speak the way you text.")  Anyway, I decided not to wait and hope for my bag to turn up.  I asked for a taxi to take me back to the airport.  I was going to find the van.  It was ludicrous, but that's what I did.

The woman driving the taxi was name Christine, and, lucky for me, she was a friendly and out-going woman who, due to her nature, knew everyone on the island.  I jumped in and told her I had to get back to the airport to find the man in the green shirt who had put us in a van that had driven us to The Reef.  I didn't remember much, only that the driver was a nice man in his mid-fifties maybe.  And Michael remembered that the van was dark and there was a sticker about God on the windshield.

"You mean, Mr. Woods?" Christine asked me.

Mr. Woods?  Ok.  Sounds good to me.  Let's go find Mr. Woods.

Christine got on her phone and started making calls.  We talked about all of the likely people it could be and I tried to jog my memory for any other tidbits of information.  But then the excitement died down and we had a half an hour drive to the airport.  We talked a bit, but I also had a lot of time to think.  And I thought about how ridiculous it was that I thought I'd be experiencing post-traumatic stress in a fucking luxury hotel in the Bahamas.  Instead, hyper-focused and on a mission, I realized none of this was a big deal.  If I lost my purse and my wallet and my phone and my glasses, so what?  It would be a pain in the ass, but I would replace them. 

Christine kept telling me not to worry, we were going to find it.  "We can't let your vacation start like this, oh no we cannot!!  Lordy, we are going to find that purse, yes we are!!"

"If we don't, I'll be ok.  I'd like to find it, but I'll survive if we don't," I told her. 

"You sure?"  she asked me.

"I had a rough year this past year, so all of this kind of pales in comparison."  It was hard to believe I was saying it, but it was true.

"So you had cancer?" she asked.  "You know, I was thinking that when you got in my cab because I was looking at you and I was thinking "American women don't wear their hair like that.'"

"Ha, ha!  Some do!  Ellen does."

We pull into the airport.  Christine drives me through the parking lot where the taxis and the vans wait to be called and asks me if any of them look familiar.  Then she pulls into the Arrivals lane and we spot Mr. Woods' van.  She pulls over and I jump out and nearly get hit by a taxi.  I look through the windows of the van, then I get in the van, but it's completely empty.  No black purse.  I jump back into Christine's taxi and we keep going.  She's calling out the window to her friends "You seen Mr. Woods?  You seen Mr. Woods?"  Finally someone points off into the distance and we look to the left and there is Mr. Woods and he is carrying my purse.  I scream.  I jump out and give the very stoic Mr. Woods a bear hug and I don't let go when I should.  And then I ask him to wait while I get something out of my purse for him.  I hand him a "thank you" and then I give him a kiss on the cheek.  I get back into Christine's taxi and she takes me back to The Reef.  We are both in utter disbelief.

Christine, who is now my Facebook friend, said over and over on the cab ride back that "God loves you, Lauren.  He pulled you through cancer and he found your purse and God is great.  God loves you!"  And I believe her, though I don't think I believe in exactly the same God that she does.  I hadn't put it into words until recently, when, for some reason out of the blue, Willa asked me who god was.  I told her god is an idea or a force or an energy and everybody thinks about it in a different way but they call it the same thing.  I think the closest I've come to understanding my own understanding of god is in this past year.  Thinking back on the past twelve months is almost impossible.  So much of it is so unbearable to think about and go through again, even if it's just in my memory.  But if I close my eyes and feel what the last year was, I know what it feels like.  It feels like my family and friends, my husband and kids, my dads and moms, my sisters and brothers and aunts and uncles and in-laws who all came to my rescue and loved me and cared for me and healed me.  I don't think that I ever knew, until this past year, how much love there was around me.  It was eye-opening and life-changing to have all of that love directed at me at once. 

I don't think that god returned my purse to me in the Bahamas.  I think a whole lot of very nice people reached out to help a stranger and that's how I got my purse back.  And all of that energy, all put together, that is god.