Mahalo for the break

Hawaii was lovely and hot and relaxing and filled with nothing resembling green juice. I didn't get a shitload of time to ruminate/meditate/discombobulate on my own about life like some kind of has-been actress shuffling through her mansion, but I did get to think. And I do feel a little shinier than before.

Does work eat up time now that I'm back? Yes, but I'm enjoying myself. Do I still struggle to get permission from my girls to go to the bathroom by myself. Balls. You know the answer to that. My life is what it is. Part my design, part the design of the beings I've chosen to surround me. And I like it.

I've got plans, though. Especially now that I'm back on the juice every morning, have lost the puka dog, beer and chocolate-covered macadamia nut weight, and feel this strange surge beneath me (don't get dirty). I feel partly responsible and partly propelled by something else that will smack me in the face sometime soon. I hope it isn't another cancer. It feels like a good thing, but sometimes I can't trust that feeling.

What I know for sure? I wrote an article for work this week about my own personal cancer fun fair and felt that delightful rocket ship of love again from my colleagues, which included a few new branches out to cancer cousins. No matter what awaits with leather gloves to wring my neck or drive me fast around the next corner, I know there's purpose out there.

New Carissa? Perhaps not. But I definitely said aloha to the spark of something I didn't have before.

Caught in a bad routine

Six more sleeps until I say Mahalo to my old life and Aloha to the new Carissa. I'm positive it has taken much less than a two-week vacation in Hawaii to change a person. And here's the thing. I'm doing a lot of shit in different ways, but a lot of shit the same way, too. And that needs to end.

I've been back to work for three months and oh how easy it is to slip into le routine. And routine isn't all bad. Teeth brushing. Looking both ways. Self-examination. Those are good routines. Becoming resentful about meal planning, endlessly juggling pick ups and drop offs, ignoring my running shoes. Bad routines.

It's so fucking easy, you see! People ask about my "new perspective" and "not taking things for granted" and it's true. After cancer, some things you'll never see the same way again. But 39 years of conditioning, personality development, reinforcement and comfort are hard to shake in a year, even after touching one foot over to the dark side and being terrified with what I saw.

Some of the me stuff I'm okay with. In fact, more than okay with. Like yesterday, I went to a birthday party with Frances and it was one of those "parents have to stay" dealios. Loathethoseparties.com. If I don't find someone fun to talk to, I get restless and agitated and well... I'm pretty okay that I'm like that. No need for therapy.

But then I pull some passive aggressive shite or get impatient with one of my girls over nothing and think, that's garbage. Why do I still have to be like that after all the bloody perspective I've supposedly gained?

It's not that I need a bucket list or anything trite like that, but in a way, I do. I want to know that if I go to my oncologist tomorrow and she says, "It's back" that I've lived with fucking purpose. I know this can't equal climbing mountains and birthing baby donkeys every day, but it has to mean more than dinner resentment and hanging my fine washables on the line.

So my list begins today. And it starts with two weeks away with my entire family in a tropical paradise, with nothing to think about but what to do with the rest of my life.

Oh, and did I mention I'm going to set off every metal detector in the airport with my tissue expanders? Hello, TSA!

I think I'll die another day

One year ago today I was picking hairs off my pillow, off the couch, off my caviar & blinis. Everywhere. I had the short buzz still, not yet Six Flags bald, but quickly heading in that direction. Everything's different today at 39, but I feel the same Rod Stewart fierceness to keep yelling at the c-dawg to get off my damn lawn. I'll never stop being cranky about that.

I'm not going to be all "I'm just happy to be alive" today, because aside for a few moments of sheer dark terror over the past year, I was always determined to make it, for however long I have. So I celebrated longevity by eating a scandalous amount of garbage food (with some green juice to keep away the guilty conscience) and enjoyed every last minute of my birthday. I'm a chocolate-loving human girl after all.

Aw, hell. I am kind of happy just to be alive.

Starving the c-dawg: one year later

As I await the latest banana bread incarnation to emerge from my oven, willing it to taste good despite the addition of protein powder and the subtraction of sugar, it feels like I'm just beginning the food journey that has seen me try out shit like this over the past year and still hold out hope.

A wiser woman would say, "give it up - if you're gonna eat it, eat the good stuff", but I honestly don't see the "good stuff" as good anymore. I'm pretty close to realizing that I need to eat good stuff regularly, so I have to CSI some reasonable facsimiles wherever I can. Yes, it means I make some craptastic recipes sometimes, but the great big try continues.

One year ago I was recovering from my first chemo cocktail and diving into every book I could find on the link between cancer and nutrition. A few good ones below:

Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips
Crazy Sexy Diet
Fit for Life
The China Study
A Cancer Battle Plan
Juice Yourself Slim
Detox 4 Women
What to Eat if you Have Cancer
The Complete Natural Medicine Guide to Breast Cancer

None of these books alone blew me away. I'm not the kind of gal who reads something and has an immediate and profound change of heart. I'm pretty measured in my beliefs and like to think about shit before I commit. And even then, I like the occasional guilt-free out. But I had to shift my mind to something proactive while I was waiting for the drugs o' death to do their work, so my mind was open back then and I was ready to imagine a new existence that would see me move beyond my 40s.

Since ingesting all the good and bad from those books and countless websites, discussion forums, videos and lectures, I feel closer to understanding how disease takes over any body and how to manage and ultimately curb that process.

Simply put, it's about eating your vegetables. And lots of 'em. But in that simple statement lives a crapload of work I've had to do around eating meat, dairy, sugar and white flour. I've cut out most of that stuff, but I do eat fish, some chicken and the odd piece of bacon and slice of cheese. I also eat a square of dark chocolate (a single square, mind) every freakin' day. Yes, I will die if I don't. It's in my contract.

And I feel not a shred of guilt about it when I do.

I have this ideal state of eating in my mind, based on all the research I've done, with these main points:

Veggie juice, water and green tea until noon
Raw until dinner (salads, nuts & seeds, olives, hummus)
Grains, protein & veg at dinner (heavy on the brown rice, beans & quinoa, lite on the potatoes)
High fiber in the evenings (fruit, muesli) 

With this ideal state, I play the field a lot. But 95% of the time I stick to the first and last points (juice and muesli), which makes me feel better about the stuff in between.

I don't want to obsess. But I do want to continue to make progress. I ask for stuff at restaurants now (no cheese) plan my holidays differently, and think a bit more carefully about what I eat at parties, but I don't deny myself. If someone bakes a gigantic loaf of bread and gives me a knife and butter, I'll eat it and love every minute of it, but I don't do it every day.

We all know this is one big experiment and no one will know how it all turns out until I kick off and donate my bod to science. But in the meantime, I haven't had a cold in 9 months, my weight has reached the sweet spot where I don't have to think twice about calories or fat intake anymore and most days I have the energy of jackrabbit.

I'm definitely not done, though. There's the ongoing sugar addiction, there's the continuing challenge of getting enough iron, and there's that odd-smelling banana bread that has five minutes left in the oven.

Remains of woman found off Ten Mile Point

I’m always looking for any new excuse to give cancer another kick to the nards. So last Sunday, after downing a dozen raw oysters and a couple of kir royales, I went to the same post-diagnosis beach in Ten Mile Point that I cried my sorry eyes out one year ago and tossed my beloved/despicable chemo sweater into the ocean.

The plan was to build a sacrificial fire, but Pete and I decided to heed the warnings to avoid having Bif and Fifi come out of their beachfront mansion to wag their perfectly manicured fingers at us.

So I spread my long grey sweater on the shore, grabbed a big rock, tied the nubby sleeves around and around it and stood at the edge of the water while Pete took pictures.

 

After a couple of good swings, goodbye sweater.

It sank like a hot damn and I felt a little lift inside of me. Four months of layer upon layer of clothes to keep warm while the cocktail of death beat the cancer out of me. Hair in the shower drain. Hair on my pillow. Hair on the deck with an over-eager husband and pet clippers. Endless scarves and hats and an eternally cold neck. Stubborn veins. Sickening smells. Doubts and death thoughts and miniscule victories. All wrapped up in an ugly Gap sweater on sale for $9.99.

I hope someone finds the blasted thing in a few weeks or months and thinks some woman must’ve jumped or fell. I hope someone feels a moment of horror as they imagine there are limbs or hair or bloated skin inside. It’s a little piece of cancer in there and it’s floating out to Japan.

I thought about my new cancer cousin, who has recently begun downing the chemo martinis and how it seems endless when you’re in it. There is so a series of little endings, and for me it looks something like this beach in Cadboro Bay.

Cancer anniversary

So it’s been a year. Twelve months since I held that magical lottery ticket in my hand, the numbers already drawn, and yet was still hopeful there had been some terrible mistake. The stupid thing is, I expected my name to be called eventually and now ask myself, was I okay with that happening at 50, 60 or 70 instead of 37? Ask my mom how she felt when she got her cancer suitcase handed to her and if there wasn’t the same anger and fear there. Circumstances different, yes. But the news is never welcome and the whole scene never plays out like you think it will.

And while I feel like I’ve learned a shitload and made some fantastic changes in my life to try to ward off the beast for the rest of my days, there’s ever more to do.

And there are more women going on this trip every day. Four in my immediate circle alone – all ranging in age, all varying in circumstances, but all faced with uneasy decisions, clearcutting treatments and vague promises from cancer land. I think about these women more than myself these days and feel a fierce mother bear thing about what’s been taken away already. The physical stuff we all deal with somehow, but the feeling that something is always resting on our shoulder, to varying degrees, will never go away for any of us. It can colour a good day, slap your face while you’re laughing about something, kick you in the ass when you’re making plans, and trip you up when you dare to imagine there could be a day when the c-dawg will be put to sleep forever.

I keep writing cuz it never leaves me. And I’m not bright enough to deal with it any other way. If I spell it out, it’s less scary and the hands around my neck loosen a little more.

But I live my life. I drink my green juice, eat my veggies, cut back on everything acid and try to fit rebounding and running into every spare second. I’m more patient, more open to people and things and experiences and focus less on retirement and more on the next six months. The mental shift continues and I’m always trying to find ways to balance the immediate with the plan and enjoy the in between as much as possible.

And really – I’m lucky that I even have the opportunity to ruminate about all this stuff. None of us know what’s around the corner. None of us can plan the end. None of us, when it comes down to it, have the luxury of time. We all have cancer inside of us – and I mean that literally, not in some new agey way. The cells are there. They’re waiting to misbehave and form alliances. We know (or at least I’m fuckin’ telling you) that living well – eating whole, staying alkaline, being active, loving & being loved – is the key to warding off all disease, so I’ll keep going as long as this stinkin’ world will have me.

Scan-free, free as the wind blows

I've finally reached another big milestone in the cancer awards ceremony. No more scans. All the results may not be in, but as far as I'm concerned, it'll be slouch-sock day in hell before I get another tin injection, breath into a tube or have a host of electrodes taped to my chest. I'm done.

My veins are calloused now, like for reals. There is no such thing as a painless poke anymore and likely never will be again. So although I still have a handful of Herceptin injections left to do over the summer months (nothing zexier than an IV bruise and a bikini), and perhaps one more bloodwork request, I should be free of all extraneous pokes. I can live my life in blissful ignorance again - pretend I chose the pixie hair and was born with tiny boobies. Act like it was all bloody up to me.

With my last test yesterday, I was waiting for the show to begin and heard the song Judy in Disguise playing in the lab. When I was six I used to shake my hips to that song and swing my Holly Hobby purse like a madwoman, demanding my parents watch me until the music stopped. Riveting stuff. If I can grab a baby toenail amount of that innocence back and erase every hospital visit from my memory in the meantime, I'm golden, Ponyboy.