BE Rare, SEE RAre

This is cross posted at Stumbling Barefoot.

I was reading a devotional yesterday by Lysa Terkeurst  and in it she relates a conversation she’d had with a friend.  Her friend had been encouraging her to stay the course on something hard, not for outward rewards, but because she wanted to please God.  She said these words to Lysa:  ”Be rare.”

Rare.  I have a funny relationship with that word.  Most of you know that in June of 2010, when I was 16 weeks pregnant with my Lainey, I found out that I had a rare tumor called a paraganglioma on my carotid artery.  When the doctor called to give me the news he literally had to look it up on Google and Wikipedia to give me any information about it.  It was that rare.  I’ve read figures that say 1  out of every 100,000 people will have this tumor and figures that say 3-8 out of every million people with get a pheochromocytoma or a paraganglioma.

A year ago today I had that tumor removed at the National Institutes of Health (which is, incidentally 3000 miles away from my home  ).  If you want to read that story check it out over here.  Today is my Tumahversary.

Everybody feels ordinary sometimes.  Every body feels like they are ‘nothing special really.’  Like there is nothing notable about them.  When I was diagnosed, suddenly there was something notable about me.  It made doctors look at me with interest, scrutinizing me like I was a lab specimen.  I could see them get excited and could almost hear them bragging to their cronies, ‘I had a patient with a carotid body tumor today!’  I thought for a good part of the year that perhaps I had underestimated ordinariness.  Truly, I think one of my biggest lessons of the year was to NOT devalue those things that are ordinary.  That every moment is precious if simply because it comes around only once in all of time.  The ordinary moment truly is, it turns out, rare.  In this way I’m learning to SEE rare, though I do  so VERY imperfectly.

But I think another lesson that God is teasing out of me in all of this is the challenge to BE rare.  Just as Lysa says.  Do I want to be the Zebra the doctors get excited to see at office visits because of my strange medical history and dogged insistence that we continue to be vigilant?  No.

Do I want to be the girl who is less afraid to take risks?  Less afraid to stick her neck out?  Less afraid to play the odds and believe that they could fall in my favor?  Less afraid to try even though I might fail?  Yes.  That’s the kind of rare I want to be….  the kind of rare that Lysa’s friend was referring to.

Did I tell you that I started entering contests and raffles this year?  I always saw myself as the girl who didn’t have the luck for those sorts of things.  I always sat and watched other people’s names be drawn out of a hat.  I never thought it was worth it to play the odds until the odds played me.

Now I give it a shot.  I’ve even won stuff.  Free books, jewelry, raffle prizes at MOPS, giveaways.  I figure if I’ve got 3-8 per million look, I might as well try to use it in my favor.

I’ve learned to stick my neck out…  to be audacious.

I want to be like some of the incredible friends I’ve met on the journey.  For some of these people those ‘improbable odds’ really socked them.  Not only did they get rare tumors, but they got rare tumors that recurred, or metastasized or were genetic.  They had the odds stack up against them and survived over and over.  They hike mountains and go mountain biking and boldly knock on doors to fight for themselves or for others who also play the lottery of life and come out with the improbable.  I want to face the scary stuff of life and come out swinging and still loving life, like these friends.

I also want to be like the gentleman I saw in the Naval Hospital Pharmacy this week.

Everyone at the Naval Hospital Pharmacy is cagey, impatient, tired of hurry up and wait and then more waiting.  We’ve all been to our appointment, or waited in Urgent Care for too long.

But this gentleman had a sparkle in his eye and he spoke with  kindness and cheer to everyone he saw.  He made his way up to Carolyn and I (we were getting medicine for an ear ache after a trip to the Urgent Care) and asked her and another little girl sitting across from us if they listened to their mamas.  They nodded shyly and he asked them if he knew why they should listen to their Mamas.  And then he told them that it’s because their Mamas love them, and because God asks us to listen to our Mamas and Dads.  He pulled out two golden dollar coins and gave them to the girls for being good listeners and then turned to me.  He told me that he thought I had one of the hardest and most important jobs ever and that he was grateful that I did it and took it seriously.  He, a Navy veteran, essentially thanked ME for my service.  As he walked away I watched him approach other service members and retirees with a kind word for all of them.  He was very much like the guy in the short film Validation just walking around giving encouragement to people.

What struck me in that drab environment full of impatient people just tired of waiting and barely masking their frustration in that was that this man was being rare.  He chose a different path.  Instead of blending in with the grey seats and the grey people surrounding him he was a flash of brightness encouraging those around him.

I’m on the cusp of a few changes that need to be made–as we all are often.  Hard changes, but the every day kind.  So many times I would get overwhelmed at the enormity of things.  Make excuses and say, “It’s unlikely that this will ever really work so why bother?”

It’s beginning to occur to me–I can make the choice to be rare.  I can let this challenge me to be audacious.  I can make the choice to stick it out.  I can make the choice to do the things I do, not for external validation, but to honor God.  I can make the choice to be a ray of light amongst grey drabness.  I can make the choice to stand up for what I believe in even when almost no one else sitting around me does.  I can BE rare in all these ways too.

Getting something “rare” is teaching me to BE RARE and to SEE RARE.  It’s teaching me to take the risks, and try, though it seems like failure is most likely.  It’s teaching me to SEE the exquisiteness of every moment because they all come around only once.

I’m one year out from surgery today.  It’s my Tumahversary.  And I am thankful that the lessons it took me so long to see and give words to are emerging.

Backwards Relief

If  you've been reading here long you know the question of whether or not Tomas and Pheochromocytomas and Paragangliomas in general are considered 'cancer' from the start has long bugged me.  The literature that can be found says 'benign neoplasm' and 'non-cancerous' over and over.  Indeed, some of the NIH's own informational websites even say 'non-cancerous.'  But...  Something has always struck me as troubling about that.

"Regionalized" disease does not necessarily mean that the disease will not become malignant.  It does not mean that the disease will not recur.  The NIH especially, and other institutions increasingly, admonish their patients to have LIFE LONG follow-up because the potential for recurrence and metastasis exists for years--even 20 or 30 years--down the line.

So I asked the Pheo protocol coordinator at the hospital where I was treated  flat out-- Is this stuff cancer?  When is it considered cancer?  Is it always considered cancer or is it only called cancer at a certain point?

And Karen called today just to address that question because Karen is awesome like that and she said, "It's metastatic when it's spread to a non-chromoffin site.  It's recurrent if it comes back in the same place or in another chromoffin tissue site."

And so I said--, "And is it cancer?"

YES.  YES.  YES.  It is cancer.  According to the NIH Pheo-para protocol, it IS cancer.  It IS cancer from the beginning.  And doesn't that make so much more sense than "Well it isn't cancer....  but it could be cancer....  and you really don't know if it's cancer until it spreads....  and then it's definitely cancer and we really have limited ways of treating it."

And so, I was relieved today to find out that I've had cancer.  My mother, who always had a colorful vocabulary would use the word 'bass-ackwards' to describe the fact that I am RELIEVED to know that I have had cancer.  That's MESSED UP, right?!!!

Except...  that when you have a disease that 'isn't cancer until it is cancer' you don't fit in any boxes.  And if you have a disease that Wikipedia and Google tell you repeatedly is a "generally benign neoplasm," when doctors are talking to you they tend to not be real concerned.  They tend to be a little lackadaisical.  They tend to tell you that you have nothing to worry about.

Which might be true.

Unless it isn't.  And then, you could find yourself in the position of thinking that you were in the clear for years and those doctors who were so confident in their 'almost certainty' that these tumors are benign could have pointed you in the direction of not needing regular scans, or of scanning just a part of your body and not the whole thing.  And you could find yourself with "All the way cancer," and you might have missed precious time to fight that 'all the way cancer' because of misinformation that told you everything was 'probably' over and done with.  (Edited to add)  I think it's a relief to me because some how calling it 'cancer' gives it the gravity and seriousness that I feel is warranted for this disease (whether it's been called that or not).  A doctor and a patient will react differently to a 'vague generally  benign neoplasm' than they will to a tumor that slow-growing and low metastatic potential not-withstanding is called cancer.

It is a relief to not be in the no-mans land of disease.  It is somehow a relief to know that 'cancer survivor' is nomenclature that describes me.

It's backwards that I'm relieved that it's true.  But I am.  And as a patient I wish that this was the accepted definition of Pheo and Para from the start.  I wish that understanding would would start to trickle out of the NIH and into the consciousness of Endocrinologists and Head and Neck specialists the world over.  If it WAS the accepted definition from the start I suspect that fewer doctors would allow themselves to be so lackadaisical about it.  My second surgeon who I saw before our decision to go to the NIH--and this guy is one of the world-class head and neck surgeons and one of the most respected head and neck surgeons probably in the country--told me that the procedure to remove Tomas was basically "Elective."  That my tumor didn't really need to come out because it was "probably harmless," but because of it's location near nerves and blood supply that it was considered best practice to remove them anyway.  I think he said it to make me feel better.  Instead I felt dismissed and confused at the vast chasm of difference in the concern about these tumors that I was seeing between institutions.

If it's backwards for me to be relieved that I've had cancer (and I'm as relieved about the 'had' word as I am about the 'cancer' word), then I'm ok with that.  I WANT doctors especially to know that we NEED to have continuity in understanding about these tumors.  We need to have a standard understanding.  If the NIH Protocol defines Paras and Pheos as cancer from the start, I am ok with intellectually accepting that definition too.  After all they have seen thousands of the things where most specialists have usually only seen a handful.

I had cancer.  I survived paraganglioma.  I am a cancer survivor by the NIH's standards.  And while perhaps that should scare me under a rock instead of settling something deep in my brain for me, I'm ok with it.

    

The Long Short of It

Just so I have a summary of the whole story some place...  Here is the summary of the Tomas the Tumah blog in a long but shorter form.  ;)

In the spring of 2010, soon after I found out I was pregnant with my third little girl, I noticed a lump on the right side of my neck.  I tried not to worry too much, figuring it was a lymph node.  At my first OB appointment when it was still there, I asked about it and was told to give it another month. Sure enough, a month later it was still there.  So my doctor who was a great mix of watchful and proactive ordered a neck ultrasound he told me to rule out lymphoma.  During the neck ultrasound I remember the ultrasound tech asking if I felt the pulse in my neck in any strange sort of way.  I thought it was a weird question but told him I didn't.  My doc called a couple of days later and told me I had a carotid body tumor/paraganglioma.  It still makes me laugh that as he was talking on the phone with me he was looking it up on Wiki and Google himself to find out what exactly I had.  

We decided to call the tumor 'Tomas the Tumah' because we are weird and twisted and because it is more fun to laugh then sit there scared.

I went through a few referrals with doctors who hadn't had much experience with paras and pheos and someone  with either Pheo Para Alliance or the Troopers reccommended I check out the NIH.  I haphazardly sent Dr. Pacak an email just asking for his opinion about how to proceed and was gobsmacked at the quick response I got and their willingness to take on the case.  We evaluated our options (since we live in WA state and the NIH is all the way over their in Maryland ;)) and decided to go there.

In the meantime, I had the rest of the pregnancy to contend with.  I was initially told that since CBTs are usually non secretory it was a non issue.  Some chats with the folks at NIH and one visit with a really rude anesthesiologist later resulted in me being referred to a high risk OB in Seattle, so we started the weekly two hour trek to see her.  The concern was that the stress of labor would cause a hypertensive crisis either from compression of the artery, or from Tomas the tumah 'waking up' as they sometimes do.  Luckily the doctor was amazing, truly amazing, and despite a snowstorm the day of my induction, a flat tire on the way to the hospital, and a long painful induction (36 hours)  she was born in the early morning on Thanksgiving 2010 while snow fell outside.  

Two and a half months later, we flew out to NIH for a whilrwind week of testing followed by surgery the next week to remove Tomas.  I ended up with a ruptured ear drum and an ear infection during the week of testing and a bladder infection the night before surgery.  Small potatoes in the long run, but at the time it was just so frustrating.  The surgery went well and we flew home.

On post-op day 16 I noticed a lump at my incision site.  I went to the doctor the next day and was put on anti-biotics.  The lump kept growing and getting more painful.  The doctors at our local hospital didn't want to touch me so they told me to head up to the ER in Seattle.  By this time, I looked like quasi-modo only with a lump on my neck.  It was really grotesque and upsetting and also painful.   I waited 9 hours in the ER without pain meds (because they were afraid to give me anything between the possibility of surgery and me breastfeeding) for the ENT surgeons to decide what to do with me.  Just as they decided to open and clean the wound there at the ER bedside, my incision burst open.  Then they finished the job and cleaned it out (which hurt.  As bad as natural childbirth.  I'm just sayin').  They put me on massive doses of antibiotics and I hung out in the hospital for a couple days to make sure the infection was gone.  On my return trip to the NIH I was told that a post op infection after a CBT had never happened to ANY patients the doctors there had ever seen.  We have started playing the lottery.  ;)

We found out at that time from NIH about a nodule on the other carotid artery.  We finally were able to navigate the insurance gauntlet of military medicine and got a referral to a great endocrinologist and found a local doctor which I saw for the first time last month.  They evaluated the nodule on the left carotid and told me that they believe it to be a lymph node.  I'm really happy with that news, BUT cautiously optimistic.  I am determined to be vigilant to make sure that's all it is and to ensure that nothing else 'pops' up.

So far I'm not a 'mutant' (no genetic mutation has been found) but we're waiting for results of more genetic testing to come back.  

Even though I've 'only' (perspective is a funny thing isn't it?) had this one tumor on my right carotid so far, it's been a pretty bumpy ride.  I'm always in awe of the people in these groups and how much they have endured.  For now I am trying to grasp the idea that I am a survivor (and I am PROUD to be a survivor!), and move forward with optimism and positivity.  I don't know if this will be the only chapter in my paraganglioma story or if there's more to come, but I'm grateful that I've been given the chance to see the amazing doctors that I have and I'm grateful for the support and amazing friends I've found in online support groups for this zebra of a disease.

Really, Really, Really, Really Good News! REALLY!!!

16 months ago I was told I had a tumor on my Carotid artery.

8 months later, I had surgery and I thought I would feel relieved because my tumor was gone.

Except I found out at the same time about this nodule on my other carotid artery.  A nodule that I was told was 'definitely something.'  And I tried not to freak out.  And I tried to be happy, but I had this shadow of fear and dread about having to do the whole thing all over again.

Four months later I got the news that I didn't have the SDHD or SDHB mutation.  And I was amazed and taken aback and confused because...  I had another nodule and it just didn't make sense.  And I tried to be happy.  But I had this other nodule, which I was sure was another tumor.  I asked people 'what else could this be?' and I never got a satisfactory answer.  All seemed to point to this being another tumor.

A week and a half ago I met doctors on this side of the country that I loved.  And I was happy about that, but revisiting that dread feeling because...  I had a nodule.  And what else could it be?  And I was going to have to do it all over again.....

Tonight.  Tonight one of those wonderful docs from UW called.  She said she'd reviewed the scans I had earlier this week.

She said she had some news about that nodule....

That nodule she said...  Doesn't appear to be a paraganglioma.  

That nodule she said is most likely NOT a tumor.

It appears to be a lymph node.  A NORMAL lymph node.

She waited for me to cheer and get excited or at least sound happy, but all I could say was, "Are you sure?  And...  Do I need to be worried about this lymph node?"

And then I got a little happy.

And then I hung up the phone.

And now I am looking at Andrew in glee and disbelief and yelling at random intervals, "I DON'T HAVE A TUMOR!!!!!"

And for the first time...  For the first time in 16 months.  That feeling of dread has lifted.  And while I am still maintaining an attitude of cautious optimism....  And while I want to have this corroborated by the NIH....  And while I will still need follow up likely for the rest of my life....

For the first time in 16 months, I go to sleep out from under the shadowy spectre of a Tumor named Tomas....

The journey isn't over, but the burden has lifted.  And I am so happy.



As a post script, I just have to mention how sad I am to learn of the death of Steve Jobs.  Steve's cancer, like paraganglioma, was a neuroendocrine tumor.  It was a NET arising in the pancreas.  These tumors and diseases are so slippery and I am sad that he gave his life in the fight.  My news tonight is good, but it just as easily could have gone the other way.  I add my condolences to his family and I pray that they would be comforted in this loss.

Bailing out of the River DeNial and Back into Appointment Land

I was having a lovely time floating in a river called DeNial and I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to stop my float, but alas, it was necessary and the outcome of bailing out was ultimately positive.

We've been on a search for local docs.  Call me crazy, but I thought it would be kind of convenient to have docs on this side of the country to visit with when needed for follow up or emergent situations that don't need the complication of last minute airline tickets.  So we slogged through that ridiculous referral process and twiddled our thumbs waiting for the appointment.

Monday was the day of the appointment, and I was feeling quite grumbly about it.  Andrew thought my grumbliness was a little over the top until I told him that the reality of the situation was, I didn't want to go to the doctor at all because I didn't want to have tumors at all, and I really didn't think it was so unreasonable to not want those.  He left me alone after that.  (Smart man!)

But alas, I'm on the Paraganglioma-train and I may as well get used to it.

So away we went.  Good things came of it despite my grumblings.  The first doctor who came in was a "Fellow."  It was abundantly obvious immediately that Fellows at UW are vastly different than Fellows at the NIH.  The Fellows at NIH are amazingly smart people, but because of the whole structure there, they come off to me as something like a 'minion' to their Attending Docs.  This Fellow though, Dr. R, set me at ease right away, earned my respect right away, and showed me immediately that she knew her stuff.  Plus, she reminded me of my dear friend, Barbara Harroun, which really cinched the deal that I was going to love her.

The most exciting thing to me about the appointment was that they asked me questions and talked about things that I hadn't even thought about. I mean...  I hadn't even considered them.  It felt lovely!!!  You gotta understand, it's not that I think that I'm such a know-it-all...  It's just that hasn't happened much along this journey outside of the NIH.  Dr. R, knew the symptoms of all the different genetic mutations and probed for hints about whether or not I might have one.  She listened to and answered my myriad question (Well...  there might have only been 12 or so).  After getting my story, and checking me out thoroughly she went to chat with her Attending.  She came back in with him (Dr. D), a few minutes later and they BOTH took on my questions and bulldogging for information.

The direction we're headed on as agreed upon that day (and may I just say that another thing that I loved about Dr. D. and Dr. R. was that I very much felt like part of my own treatment team) looked something like this:

1)  I went immediately downstairs for some more genetic tests.  We haven't ruled out all the possibilities for a genetic tie predisposition.  I could still be a mutant.  In fact, the docs at UW kind of hinted they would maybe be surprised if I wasn't.  It was really strange to just be told to go downstairs and get tested as in the beginning of this journey I was told over and over again how 'unnecessary' said testing most likely was.

2)  I have scans next week to see what is going on with Tomasito (Remember--he's the little guy who may or may not be hanging out on my other Carotid artery).

3)  They're not super concerned with my Thyroid as the biopsy I had at the NIH indicated it's probably not related to the Tomas and his kinfolk, but we're keeping an eye on it with ultra-sounds, and I'll have one of those next week as well.

4)  I'm going to meet with an ENT surgeon, not because another surgery is on the horizon, but just so I have some 'face time' with whoever may be performing a procedure to deal with Tomasito or any other Tomas kinfolk in the future.  That appointment will happen in early November.

It was such an encouragement to find folks on this side of the country who are willing to have my back.  It was reassuring to hear a plan, for scanning and surveillance.  It's also just such a comfort that they're extremely knowledgeable, competent, and compassionate.    I wish I hadn't been so ignorant as I was  searching for doctors and referrals from the get go as I'm sure I'd have found the Endocrinologists at UW to be fabulous even at that point.  I'm still grateful for my experience at the NIH and for the doors that has opened and continues to open for me.  And I'm thankful that I have those incredible doctors and medical professionals on my team as well.

The phlebotomist taking my blood was kind of fun.  He wore really colorful Converse Sneakers and when I asked him if he spent the whole day with folks who didn't look at him (because they didn't want to watch themselves get stuck with a needle), he confessed that he didn't like looking at the needle stick either.  I raised my eyebrows and said that I certainly hoped that he'd kept his eyes open when he'd stuck me!  He then offered to try again, blindfolded just to see if he could do it.  I politely declined.  :)

Let me just say though...  I <3 UW.  My experiences over the last year have all been so positive there and this experience only strengthened that feeling.  It is an incredible institution.


We'll be anxiously awaiting the results of these scans and tests and then we'll know more of where we're headed.  In the end, I guess if I had to bail out of DeNial, I'm glad we found some great doctors to make the trip worthwhile.

Where's the Tastier Tasting Food and The Smellier Smelling Flowers? What am I missing here??

I read an article recently that was titled something like, "10 Things I've Learned From People Who've Had Cancer."  It was about what you'd expect:  stuff like, "People who have cancer cherish every moment of every day.  People who have cancer don't mince words they tell you what they really mean.  People who have cancer don't care what other people think.  People who have cancer notice that flowers smell smellier and food tastes tastier."

I've decided to think of my experience with paranganglioma--since thus far mine has been/is localized--as  'pseudo-cancer.'  I didn't do chemo and there's a lot of fuzziness about the benign/malignant classification in general, but it was a tumor and I will always be looking for recurrence and metastasis.  Pseudo-cancer is how it feels.

So anyway.  I've read some of these articles and I've read things from other survivors who I really admire and I hear this theme emerge.  It's the smellier smells, tastier tastes, more colorful colors theme.

One of the reasons I feel like I haven't found my story is this:  I haven't had this major epiphany that other survivors have.  I still spend too much time on Facebook.  I still take my kids and my husband for granted too often.  I still forget to stop and smell the roses.

And so I kind of feel like:  What's wrong with me?!

Why haven't I had this experience of enlightenment?  Why am I not blissed out all the time just basking in the blessings I've been given?

Am I the most ungrateful brat of a Pseudo-cancer survivor that anyone has ever met?  Is that it?

Throughout the experience I really have tried to focus on gratitude.  And my family is pretty darned important to me and while my kiddos can and do tromp all over my very last nerve on a regular basis I adore them and I'm surprised by my delight in them daily.  Still, I get bogged down in the banal and frustrated with the tiny and frankly I don't feel like I've had a major shift in my experience and perception of life.  The changes that I sense in me aren't nearly so inspiring and touchy-feely.

My sense from these articles and from the stories of some cancer survivors that I've read about though is that they keep themselves in that head-space of sweetness and ultimate perspective.  I don't feel like I've developed any heightened sense of that perspective and I am easily led astray into being stressed out about my dentist appointment (two fillings today...  ouch!) or my lost keys or whether or not I paid the credit card bill last month.

I feel like there must be something wrong with me for not reaching this zen post-pseudo-cancer experience place of clarity.

I don't know.  Maybe I'm just not there yet.  Maybe it comes after some of the shock and fear and the initial looking over your shoulder and just plain tiredness start to wear off.  Maybe it's part of the reality that we all 'feel and deal' differently.  Or maybe it's part of the overly idealized cancer survivor story culture that has been created.  I'm just not sure.

I think that part of me is afraid that I've missed a big God message here.  Was there a sign in the sky that I was missing to tell me what the positive nuggets of this experience were supposed to be and how my character and my world-view should have been transformed?  Did I miss the boat?  Because instead of having this new higher-level perspective I just feel more boring.  I don't laugh as easily, I'm more serious and sober.  I don't quite do 'just having a good time' very well anymore.  I'm no Eeyore.  I am still looking for the 'gratefuls' and holding onto faith while I "Count It All Joy," but my happy-go-lucky got up and went elsewhere.

So...  Am I missing something?

I hope that God will fill in the gaps, if the gaps do indeed exist.  I hope that He will continue to help me make sense of it all as I process all this.

In the meantime, if you know the trick to making your food taste tastier and your flowers smell smellier, could you let me in on the secret password?  This experience was big and hard and scary enough....  I don't want to have to go through a hairier one to get that point!

How do I get to "Normal" from here?

I stumbled upon this article today with a sigh of relief.

You mean I'm not the only one?!!!  Paraganglioma not quite exactly being cancer notwithstanding, I find that I'm relating strongly to stories of how people feel after surviving the Big C.

We evicted Tomas in February, had our follow-up in March and in the meantime we've kind of been marinating in this new space.

I wish I could tell you we were marinating in normal.  But I don't feel normal.  I mean...  Tomas is gone and we finally got the genetic testing results and they were unbelievably--NEGATIVE?!--at least for the two most highly suspected mutations.  And yeah I've got little nodule Tomasito on the neck but here we are in a holding pattern which means that I should just be sprinkling fairy dust and rainbows of happiness behind me with every step I take, right???

Oh.  I wish.  I just don't work that way.  I mean....  I can be whimsical, but I've never been light enough in any sense of the word to do the whole Tinkerbell routine.  It's just the truth.

Don't get me wrong I've got the important kind of joy:  The kind that is unshakable in the face of even things like Tomas and worse because I know that I am Abba's beloved and He cares for me.  But I find that outside of that particular stream of joy the rest of my emotions can be rather variable.

I'm a girl who battles depression off and on.  And this was a tough year.  A really tough year.  And as I mentioned in the previous post there are still plenty of loose ends.  By and large I just keep waiting to feel happy and relieved and instead I find I just feel discombobulated.

I can't just "Go back to normal," because I'm a different person now.  I'm a person who has not just been hit with a serious illness as a family member, but now the dragon of cancer or at least pseudo-cancer has come knocking at my own door.  No, I didn't go through radiation or chemotherapy, but from diagnosis to surgery it was 8 full months.  Plus the post-op infection and now...  Tomasito.  That's a long time to live in the shadow of an illness.  I didn't come out unchanged.  Neither did my family.  We know now for better or for worse--and yes, some of it is definitely for better--that ANYONE can be that 1 in a million person.  We just can't take it for granted that the crazy story or difficult misfortune won't happen to us.

(On the flip-side, we're now more likely to sign ourselves up for drawings and take those surveys they give out at restaurants with the potential promise of gifts and good-fortune....  You gotta make the Zebra luck work for you once in a while!)

But I've survived.  I am surviving.  I am a survivor.  And isn't that a happy thing?

Yes of course!  But it's a sober kind of happy.  It's a deep breath, long sigh, look over your shoulder kind of happy.

I resonated so much with the article, but especially with this:

  Time to celebrate and move on, right? At least that’s what I was hoping, but it didn’t work out that way. I was glad the cancer was gone, but instead of feeling elated, I was like, “Now what?”...... Everything had changed, and I had no idea how to get back to “normal.”

I looked different. I felt different. Yet I was told to “move on.” Certainly everyone around me had done so, and they wanted me to as well. But I didn’t know how. I was confused and had no one to talk to. I felt guilty holding on to my cancer experience when everyone else was elated at my “survival,” but when it came down to it, I had nothing else to hold on to.

I can't tell you how emphatically I nodded at these paragraphs.  I mean, you could hear the proverbial BBs rattling around the boxcar of my brain I was nodding so hard.  It's hard to explain, and yet she did.  I feel guilty holding onto my experience while everyone else has moved on or is in, "You should celebrate," mode.  But I haven't made sense of it yet.  I haven't processed it.  I take a looong time to process things and I don't do a good job of attending to that job when I'm *in* something.  I need time and distance to start looking at things and figuring out how they integrate into who I am.

I subjected myself to a Mary Kay makeover done by a very good friend, yesterday.  As my girlfriend chatted about the importance of eradicating the wrinkles and 'lines of emotion' on our faces, a small part of me couldn't help but think, "Hey look--I may only be 30 and I may be Queen Frumpy who specializes in Goobie Headed fashion, but Darn it, I earned these wrinkles!"  I feel like an old 30.  A sober one.  Life has piled up high in it's sweetness and it's goodness but also in it's difficulty and it's travail.  If I have wrinkles and grey hairs already, it's because I've earned them.

I'm not saying it's all long-faces around here.  I try not to be TOO morose.  I've learned to whistle in the dark and talk in humorous terms about things that are serious, and quite frankly, scare the pee-wadding out of me. I've been told I've even elicited a giggle or two out of this-here blog.  All that said, I'm still not necessarily sprinkling fairy dust over here.  I may be even more thinkative than before--if that's possible!  I am processing life with yet another pair of lenses.  They are lenses of survivorship, but maybe survivorship isn't so much about feeling invincible after facing a challenge.  Maybe it is more about knowing your own vulnerability and the vulnerability of the ones that you love and walking on anyway.  That kind of thing is heavier than pixie-dust, and doesn't look as smiley sometimes, but I think it's still good stuff.

So I'm working on finding my way to Normal (I'm told it's a town not far from my Sister-in-law's place in IL....), but I know from previous walks through difficult times that it will be a new normal.  I can only hope that I will like the Val of the new normal a little better and that God will use the hard stuff--has used it, is using it, will use it even if there is more to this story--to His glory.