Girly girls

Been pondering beauty in general and a couple of babes have reminded me lately that my mind is everywhere at once about this stuff. And I'm kind of okay with that.

On Friday I opened a package from my babelicious friend Karen. She sent me the sweetest trove of cosmetic goodies from the beauty mecca that is Sephora, with the most thoughtful note attached. Beyond reminding me what a lovely person she is, inside & out, I got a most needed nudge of "good god, Carissa, you're still a girl and should play a little more with making up your mug." I adore products, I adore Sephora, I adore looking pretty. But with the eyebrows disappearing, the eyelashes not growing back when they fall out and the skin generally looking not up to scratch, I've begun to ignore myself a little, relying on the yoga pants equivalent of lazy makeup sessions in the morning.

No more, KD. I've been laying on the scrumptious gels, liquids and polishes since Friday and will no longer leave the house with a see-through face. Thank you, gorgeous girl.

Then there's my equally babelicious friend Susan. She has been raking in the donations on her path to this Friday, when my homegirl will shave her locks for the love of a friend and the loathing of cancer. Susan is a hairdresser, so getting all bald and stuff is like an architect burning down his showhome. And yet, I know the selfless, unbelievably thoughtful and rama lama ding dong friend that is Miss Susan, and she likely never thought of how this whole plan might affect her business. I'm tickled she's doing this, and I'm hoping to take a swipe on Friday, but man, this girl has months of awkward grow-back to deal with, without the handy excuse of cancer to explain away any beauty question marks.

On any given day I feel puffy, bald, pale, shrunken, or just plain beige. There are a billion things to say about the pressure to look great, even when you're blasting away the cancer cells, but I'm seriously stoked about getting a bald sister on Friday and plan to look dead cute when I go to the head shaving extravaganza.

Getting over the fear of failure

If there's one theme for me in the "figuring out shit" chapter in my cancer book, it's getting over my lifelong fear of failure. Listen, I know this is not revolutionary stuff, people. Saying you have a fear of failure is like saying you like the Beatles or pizza. No controversy here. And yet, if I'm going to busy myself looking for personal roadblocks, this one smacks me in the face over & over again.

Pete and I went on the Victoria Art Gallery's House Tour yesterday. I had been looking forward to it for a long time, but got more out of it than realizing that painting your rooms good old white can look fucking awesome. The last house we went to was an artist's home on Old West Saanich Road, overlooking Elk Lake, the ocean and a lovely rural landscape. The rooms in the house were beautiful - all white & stainless steel, artifacts collected from around the world, polished caramel-coloured floors and the most touching prints, paintings and sculptures.

We were promised that the artist herself, Telma Bonet, would be downstairs if we wanted to meet her, and I was so overwhelmed with love for her art that by the time we got to the studio and I saw the petite, middle-aged Argentinian woman lovingly making prints, doing what she loves, I was all verklempt.

Pete chatted with her in his adorable technician's way and I had to bend down to sift through her prints for sale while I wiped away some embarrassing tears. By the time I pulled myself together I had decided to buy a small ink print called "Girl Riding a Horse". The scene looks like something out of a dreamy Isabelle Allende book - a faraway image of the back of a long-haired girl on a horse in the middle of a grassy plain, stopped on a bit of a hill. In other words, nothing to do with me or my life, but I was inexplicably in love.

Pete and I talked on the way home about Telma, about making art and how it's so difficult to get over the fear that no one will care about what you do if you decide to go public. I have this thing about writing. I've loved doing it since I was a girl, but the more books by Atwood, Munro, [insert the names of 300 other authors here] I devour, the less I feel qualified to imagine writing creatively for a living. Like, who do I think I am to be considered in the same profession as these people?

But then, isn't there room for everyone who wants to be in the club? Haven't I just been talking myself out of something instead of just getting over myself and just writing? Indeed.

Thanks, Telma.

The hierarchy of sick

My mom and I were laughing the other day about people who like to compete with their feelings of sick - "You have a headache?! I've had a migraine for a week now!" - and how cancer nicely quiets those conversations. But this weekend I had a rare moment of just being tired of the whole game.

I did my usual feel up after showering yesterday, to see if my two lovely lumps were smaller? same? mutating? I rubbed my head dry and glanced in the mirror quickly and felt so exhausted. Give me a normal headache, a regular bad day, a run-of-the-mill sleepless night. I need a break from being cancer girl.

I think it's been the week of delivering Stella to school and seeing the moms I haven't seen all summer and facing a barrage of hair loss questions and sundry. I really don't mind the curiosity and feel fortunate every day for the support I get wherever I go, but man, sometimes a girl just likes to take a nice walk with her daughter and talk about everything but the c-dawg.

Part of it is my own fault. I could have gotten a wig that looks like my hair - to pass a little more often - but that is tiring in a whole other way. So I wear a scarf every day. It baffles my neighbour, who asks me every time I see her about some aspect of the wig alternatives available. "Are there just no good ones out there? Are they too itchy? Too expensive?" They make me feel like a fancy girl, and that's great sometimes, but eventually it feels like wearing high heels to watch TV.

The scarf is an easy option, but it's the signpost to cancer, no? Even the cleaning lady at our hotel in Osoyoos said to me one day, "Do you ALWAYS wear that scarf?" Everybody's a fashionista.

We're at Sunday and both my girls are sick, and man, what I wouldn't do to brag about a good old-fashioned cold or flu about now.

Work it, girl

I've been meaning to write a post about work for a long time, but my thoughts come in spurts rather than wholly formed sentences and for a writer, that's just plain annoying.

I had lunch with three rockin' colleagues from work yesterday and it was lovely. They gave good talk, good laughs, and bestowed me with the kind of open-armed generosity that gets me all choked up later (cuz I'm Italian) but lets me be all stoic in person (cuz I'm also Irish and Danny Boy wasn't playing in the background). When I'm in my rocker watching reruns of Murder She Wrote, I'll never forget the awesomeness of the people I work with. It makes me speechless.

Leaving my job so suddenly in June was hard for me and I continue to think about the stuff I did and still want to do that gave me pride, the opportunity to connect with peeps across the country and still live in the city I love with the people I love. There's really no other place like it. What I let myself do b.c. (before cancer), though, was tip the scale way too far in the work direction while forgetting how to do the things in my personal life that let me feel a sense of patience, quietness, friendship, love, freedom and ultimately health.

And let me be clear. I let this happen and I'm by freakin' far not the only sap who does this on a daily basis. Shite, man, we all do to some extent, and I let that extent be maximized instead of under my control. Did I ignore the signs because I didn't prioritize them? Um, yes. Am I bonehead for doing that? Doublemint yes. But a big part of that idiot died on the day of my diagnosis.

I am in the infancy of trying to figure out what kind of person will come back to work when the time comes. And I'm a zygote when it comes to figuring out what work in general will mean for me in the bigger picture, post-cancer, and how I want to contribute to this world and still pay my bills.

This shite has made me question everything, but one thing I'm sure of as I look forward to another meet up with colleagues on Saturday? That in my kindest of writing moments I could not have made up the giant orb of support I get every day from work. It's baffling and wonderful and deserves a giant breakdance of love.

The connection

Part of this whole cancer mess comes with the oft-asked question "anyone else in your family have it?" Yeah, you could say that.

My dad's mom died of breast cancer after barely finishing raising a huge brood of kids. My mom had breast cancer less than five years ago and it was discovered only because of other medical issues hitting her over the head that would no longer be ignored. It was whipped out of her quickly with a lumpectomy and radiation but she continues to deal, first with a bout further south and now with ongoing hormone therapy. There's my dad and his incorrigible Irish skin and various touch-ups from the dermatologist. There's my brother and his wily digestive tract with pre-cancerous hoo-ha. I had a very minor tussle myself with some pre-cancerous partygoers before Stella came along, but I had those babies smoked out.

Then there's my mom's mom. She died of brain cancer when I was eight. It's not something I like to think or talk about much, lo 30 years after the fact. She died in the room next to mine while I was at school with my cousins. I have memories of headscarves, a weakening bladder, her fear of a car wash once, increasing episodes of tears and frustration from a woman I otherwise never saw cry.

In the middle of one night, closer to the end, she was calling my mom's name over and over again until I finally roused myself to plod down the hall to see what she needed.

"Irene, I have to use the bathroom," she said when she saw me. I was more than a little freaked out that she didn't recognize me, but marched over to my parents bedroom to get the right relative.

I'm glad I was at school when she died, but for several nights I had visions of her at the end of my bed, in her headscarf, coughing her cancer cough.

It's the thing that terrifies me now in my quiet moments when I really get a look at my bald head or think of what the end looks like. She was in her 60s, also far too young to get the hell out of here.

So yes, cancer does pop up in a few other places in my family, thank you very much.

Round two: giddy up

Just finished the obligatory post-chemo soup and toast (thanks, S), but because I don't feel crappers yet, I really wanted Pete's sushi (although perhaps not the octopus balls... do octopi have balls?).

My second chemo session finished at 1 pm and felt pretty similar to the last one - no pain, no reaction. Which is good. This morning was a bit of a clusterfuck. I have this shiny new anti-nauseant called Emend, which is the Chanel of pre-chemo drugs. I'm supposed to take the first of the three pills one hour before chemo. My appointment was for 11 am, which really means chemo starts around 11:30, after all the nurse chitchat and vein warming shenanigans. By 10:15 I was still at home and hadn't heard whether my white blood cell count was high enough to go ahead with the treatment.

So like any pushy broad, I called every number I had at the Agency and left multiple terse messages. No way I was taking a $33 pill for fun and no way I was leaving my house for the appointment until I heard back. Finally, at 10:55 I get a call from a confused woman at reception asking what I needed.

"Counts, man, counts"!

"Yes - they're all fine. You better hurry and come in if your appointment's in five minutes!"

She has obviously never met Pete and his ability to outrun all these stinkin' Victorians in his beat-up Acura. I downed the Chanel pill and dashed out the door with my other meds, some crackers and a pulpy book, making it to the Agency at 11:01. Sweet driving (bonus: no kids in car).

I arrived at the chemo reception while a gaggle (drone?) of nurses were discussing my multiple messages and the complexities of the phone forwarding system. After listening for awhile, I told them I was the "Ms. McCart in question" and they looked embarrassed and apologized.

"Unless you hear otherwise, your counts are fine."

"I don't like that process. I want to hear from someone that all is good so I'm not wondering if someone has forgotten to call me in time."

"We'll see what we can do."

By the time I was getting the first uber-syringe of Doxorubicin injected into my IV, the chemo nurse assigned to me was explaining how from now on I'd be getting a call the afternoon before my next chemo to tell me whether the light was green or red on my white blood cell counts. Victory, beyotches.

So pre-chemo round one, my count was around 5.5. When I had my test yesterday, it was 2.5, still acceptable to go ahead with chemo (1.5 is the lowest I can go and still proceed). Pete was documenting it all on his iPhone while I enjoyed the familiar, tinny taste of the Dox and subsequent slight blur in my vision.

Beside me was a younger, bald guy - mid-30s (testicular cancer?) - who was on his fourth treatment. Jealous. He was complaining about losing his eyebrows. Joy. And about not really enjoying solid food anymore. Oh, the anticipation.

At my last onc visit on Wednesday I asked about seeing a nutritionist - not because I'm having any eating issues, but because I have a gazillion questions about things like acid vs. alkaline, taking garlic pills when you have low platelet counts, those powdered "greens" I've read so much about lately, and immunity-boosting foods that don't involve breaking out the juicer and risking botulism at a very inopportune time. I swear, if I get the "just eat a balanced diet" line I might maim somebody. I'm beyond balanced diet, dolls - I want the diet that will starve off all future cancer cells so I'm not doing this again. And there is tons out there on the subject.

So I wait to see what kind of nausea this round will gift me with and count the minutes until I can take my first rescue pill at 3 pm. Send your non-vomit vibes my way!