Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Summer, be gone!

Sorry for the lack of posts.  This summer has been, in a word, hell!  I've had to take a step back from some things (this blog for one) in order to deal with others. 

At the beginning of the summer I went on 3 weeks of IV antibiotics.  That was rather uneventful which is always good.  It was, as always, exhausting and painful but nothing unusual happened.

Right as I was finishing that up my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.  SCARY!  My parents came to Seattle for her surgery because they live in East Bumblefuck.  Before the surgery they didn't know it was cancer 100% even though the surgeon was pretty sure.  While mom was under they did a quick test on the tumor and, yup, cancer.  So they opened mom up some more and poked around looking for more tumors.  They didn't find any, YAY!  The tumor was about the size of a grapefruit and had just started attaching to her pelvis.  They dug out a chunk of her pelvis to be sure they got rid of that.  The plan was for mom to have six months of chemo.

It took about another week for the full pathology on the tumor to come back.  It turns out that they caught it very early, YAY.  It was also a very rare cancer that when caught early does not require chemo, SUPER YAY!  So mom doesn't have to deal with any of that mess!

Right as mom was getting this awesome news, word came down that a good friend of mine who had been dealing with breast cancer for a year and a half was stopping treatment.  She passed away on August 1st.  This was very hard for me.  Lisa was such a good friend and all around amazing person.  She was only 34, much too young for this!  The unfairness of it was almost too much for me.  Of course, there was the relief that she wasn't suffering anymore.  However when someone dies we're always a little selfish in that we just want them back with us. 

Not too long after Lisa died I had a dream that I got a tattoo of a pink daisy at the top of my right boob.  Pink daisies were her favorite flower and her cancer started in the top of her right breast.  I knew right away that this will be my next tattoo.  I'm currently shopping for an artist to do it.

The week after Lisa's memorial service I had to go on IV antibiotics again.  I only made it two months between rounds.  That had me pretty down for a while.  Now I'm starting to feel like my MAC might be back too.  I'm waiting on test results for that.

One of my CF friends passed away last week.  This is always hard.  I wasn't super close with him and I think, still a bit numb from Lisa's passing so it hasn't really hit me yet. 

So, as you can see its been a rough summer.  There have been some good things too, but right now I'm still in a place where the bad is easier to see.