What a difference a year makes

So last Thanksgiving i headed up to my sisters in new Hampshire. I had just learned of my diagnosis and had not told everyone. I remember thinking i should wait until taking Laura back to College to tell her as i did not want to ruin her Thanksgiving. Boy was she pissed. I guess I learned that my kids are not quite as fargile as i think. I stayed a day or two extra at Peggy's and we drank wine Thanksgiving night. We probably split a bottle with Peggy having one glass and me the rest. I woke up with a terrible hangover but of course at the time forgot that it was a hangover and assumed the cancer had moved to my head and stomach overnight. hadn't quite gotten over the shock that sometimes things are the worst imaginable.

This year once again I head to New Hampshire, home of live free or die and the chickens mentioned earlier. No we are not eating them. I like going to Peggy's anyway because it is like my country retreat. But thanksgiving is even better. She invites her whole family, which includes the ex-husband who she has a great relationship with- kind of like that show the new adventures of old christine- and his family. I love Mike's family but they make my family look sane, which is no small feat. So last year I was all philosophical and thankful that I had what I had in that minute, not really sure how transient this life could be.....now this year, i am thankful for being free of cancer, starting out fresh, well as soon as I take care of a few really concrete things that I didn't waste time worrying about when getting rid of cancer was the only thing that was important. Now these little day to day things like old bills and a house that I just can't seem to get rid of have to be dealt with on some level.

Next week i am going to California. Just for a week, or even a little less since it will take half the day to get there- the price I am happy to pay for really cheap airfare- really it is cheaper than staying home. May be time to look for some sort of job before my California nursing license expires. Really, I could commute cross country and work per diem at Mclean while I get set up in a job out there. I had always thought I would stay here until the boob surgery but then I think what the hell, southern california has to be a plastic surgery mecca and I would probably get more stripper-boobs there than in conservative Boston. it is a thought. Of course my original venture to California was because I had nothing much keeping me here in Massachusetts with laura in college and although meghan and Chris are here, they do fine with a mother/mother in law in a far away state. But now Meghan and Chris have bought a house, which was the last thing they had to do before getting pregnant. Of course they will probably take their time with that, and even once it happens, there are still nine months and by the time my little grandchild arrives, i could be all set up in Cally and able to commute to the east coast for long periods of time to impart my wisdom to both parents and child. If they let me near it. Already i am being told I have to stop swearing, because apparently Meghan thinks she can raise a kid who will go through life without ever hearing the word fuck. A kid related to me. I guess it is possible but not likely. However, I do not have a problem refining my dirty mouth, as I intend to interview for jobs at really classy places that celebrities go to in southern california. What's great about having mcleans on my resume is that the rich and famous really do go there for treatment, just not to the part i work at (usually.) But because of patient confidentiality, i can't talk about who my patients are anyway, so who's to say that the patients I can't mention are just your average person on the street or rock stars.

So my point was.....what was my point? oh yes, not having cancer is more complicated than having it. You still have the live life in the moment mentality that you learned when you could die at any time, but with it is the real stuff that you could ignore until you realize that you are most likely going to be around a while. Not that I am complaining. better to have to deal with shit than to have avoided having to deal with it by dying.

So last thanksgiving, scared of having cancer. This thanksgiving, scared of dealing with stuff I have to deal with because I don't have cancer. Yeah. i will take this year's fear over last year's any day. I really have something to be thankful for. Also, I do not have to cook. That is something everyone can be thankful for.

So tomorrow I am going to a bar to watch Oprah. Not a football game, Oprah. maybe there will start to be daytime tv bars like there are sports bars. Not to mention sports bras. because despite what some less open minded people than me, yes I am talking about you, T-dawg, you know who you are, I think it is cool that someone I know is going to be on Oprah even if it is an unusual topic. Hey there are studies about spirituality and medicine and it scientifically shows...well something or other, i forget exactly what, but it is good.

So anyway, that is my day off. Hey, maybe we should order water and see if we can turn it into wine?

ps

Just a funny thing- on the old cell phones before they had keyboards (I am so state of the art) or keypads or whatever, and you had to text by pressing numbers and the phone would suggest words, if you wanted to type in boobs it would suggest first "bombs." And with the patriot act and everybody monitoring your calls and all....

Fame by proxy better than fame by cancer i guess

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vcqL-_Ev7U

Don't know if that is how you cut and past the right link, but if it is, my nephew is now a movie star. Think he got that talent from me.

And, a doctor i work with is going to be on Oprah on Wednesday the 17th. Although I gave him permission to mention my name, i fear he may not have done so. Anyway, it is supposed to be about spiritual healing- not voodoo, Mark, in case you accidentally stumble upon my blog which I don't think you will. So anyway it may be of interest to people interested in alternative medicine and cancer. of course he is a psychiatrist.

So although I have not yet become famous with my own reality show- and I have to admit, I am probably past that window of opportunity because i am far less funny without cancer- my would be fame is apparently spreading to people around me. Right. This is all about me.

And once again, I must reluctantly admit that it is probably better to be cancer-free without a reality show than cancerous with one. And of course, i still have boob plastic surgery to look forward to. not that I am actually looking forward to the surgery part, just the drugs and having big boobs part, but plastic surgery does seem to be a big reality show theme. OK, a person who was funnier when she had cancer but was less funny when she got cured gets plastic surgery and lets wait to see if she is funny again? A pretty lame premise, even I have to admit but it has more of a plot than the Kardashians. If only i was having the plastic surgery on my ass......

Now i remember a cancer-related thing i wanted to complain about. I discovered that I had showtime- probably by mistake, as I am now cheap- so I watched a bunch of episodes of "The big C," which I always want to call, the c-word, which is a different thing altogether not to mention what my old boss is referred to in my cell phone, but i digress. The big C is a show about a woman who has cancer and from the previews, sounded like it would be funny because she goes out to eat and just has alcohol and dessert, which is something I always advocate. In fact when i heard about it, i thought showtime had stolen the idea from me, making cancer funny and all, who does that? But it is not even that funny? Granted, this woman, I guess, has a worse kind of cancer and I guess is supposed to die, so it is probably not going to be one of these shows that goes on for years and years. But like one of the things she decides she has to do before she kicks off is make her teenage son clean up his room and not turn out to be a slob when he grows up. Really? You have six months to live and you want to spend even a second of it thinking of housework? Totally unrealistic, not to mention stupid and of course, not funny. I would take the kid and travel the world, with a maid and live-in bartender- for me not the kid, and of course our home quarters would be at Disneyworld. Now that would be a tv show. At least in the last episode i watched, she has an affair with a really good looking black artist with an accent. Well, been there, done that, but would do it again. Of course, with her kind of cancer, she has two good boobs. Which of course I will have soon too. OK, Jamaican artists, start lining up. or not.

cancer causes you to be funny.....

Not as funny without cancer? Shouldn't that be the other way around? I am very glad to not have cancer any more but notice that i am starting to worry about all the things i worried about before cancer- money, the future- you know, stupid shit like that. I would like the cancer mindset back without the cancer. Live for today. Maybe I will make an exception only for the dreaded dentist, who is now my friend as i can see something good coming out of that experience. To date, i have done nothing I planned to do after getting cancer-free. No non profit organization for less glamorous cancers than the one i had, no becoming wise and grounded, doing yoga on mountaintops. Mostly I sleep, go to work and eat cookies. I hiked once but then it rained. Mayybe I am just in an adjustment period. Yeah, that's it! i had such good denial skills that going from being healthy to having cancer was no big deal. So now that i have to adjust to not having cancer I decide to have a crisis of sorts. Now I am just a normal person. I cannot refuse to take out the trash because "My oncologist specifically forbids me to take out trash," or cook or clean out my car or work overtime, etc. Come to think of it, adjusting to being normal is a lot more traumatic for me than adjusting to something else, life-threatening disease or not. And of course, i have to be careful to not go back to any cancer-causing habits that might have gotten me sick in the first place. I had narrowed it down to a few things i had done that probably caused cancer- exercising, wearing pink, and not ingesting enough chocolate and wine. Well, i guess the worst post-cancerous thing- and really how bad can it be, since it is not worrying about whether or not i have some life threatening disease anymore, but i suppose it gets back to what is really important in my life, which is how i look. I am sorry to say that I have bad hair. It is long enough that it no longer looks growing in from the bald chemo look- which, as I reflect on pictures of me from that time, was really not a good look at all! People must have lied to me to make me feel better but i did not look good bald. I thought that looking like i had a big head was a bad thing, until i saw pictures of me with a tiny head, and believe me the tiny head was worse. So now my head is no longer tiny, but it looks like i have intentionally cut it extremely short and the color changes on a daily basis because i used those semi-permanent hair dyes. And I am afraid what color it will turn the next time. Oh, fuck it, i still have the purple dye from haloween. I ruined two wigs trying to spray them brown to look like Sarah Palin. Clearly I am just undergoing a short adjustment period and I will be funny again. In the meantime, i am grateful to be cancer-free, grateful that the democrats pretty much won in Massachusetts and that the yankees did not win the World Series and in fact I kind of like the team that did. Not necessarily in that order.