“Your odds are good, but I wouldn’t go to Vegas if I were
you,” said the oncologist with the best bedside manner NEVER… At least
according to some patients – but he and I shared the same perverse sense of
humor!
Twenty-two years later… I’m thinking I should have gone to
Vegas!
January is my Breast Cancer Anniversary.
Before the movie popularized the term “bucket list,” I had
one! Luckily, I had checked the really death-defying ones – sky diving, for
example – off early. Back when I was young,
invincible, and coordinated –and before a husband, children, and a reason to
live!
This year I decided to celebrate life in 2016 by stepping
out of my comfort zone and doing something fun once a week – or at the very
least once a month. The only thing that’s kept me off the couch and out the
door so far is my daughter Tabitha.
One week we hiked and
last week we went ice skating for the first time in years.
It is becoming clear to me that the longer I live the more
death defying things I used to consider fun have become. Even hiking my neighborhood is beginning to
make me feel like a wuss. Not just the actual hike – which is the equivalent of
walking up the black diamond of a ski slope – but the wild animals my neighbors
keep reporting they’ve seen! Anyone else seen, The Revenant?
In 1994, I remember bartering with God and suggesting he let
me live long enough to see Tabitha get married.
She’ll turn 26 in April. Perhaps this sheds a little light
on why her mom, unlike my own mother (who never missed an opportunity) has
never ever demanded she catch the bridal bouquet.
Yesterday we had our first snow, and the roads off our
mountain were impassable. Snow days make it easy for me to stay home and write;
unless I’ve found a lump in my breast and I’m scheduled for a biopsy.
In January 1994, that
is exactly what happened. The snow could
not melt soon enough that year.
I recall lying on the examination table of the doctor’s office
where I had gone for my biopsy. Thank goodness he had removed the needle, before
I heard Tabitha howling in agony!
My husband had dropped me off and taken our children to get
some breakfast. Tabitha had insisted on
a chocolate (no shock here as she’s my daughter) milkshake. It was still freezing
cold outside and her fingers had stuck to the milkshake cup.
Nope, she was not wearing gloves, and more than likely she
had argued about wearing a coat too. Her
argument being that the inside of it was too cold.
I’m sure every woman between Mickie D’s and the Doctor’s
office swooned at how adorable it was that my husband let her get away with
this sort of thing. However, I can tell
you, I would have and did receive the stink-eye every single time I allowed
either kid to win one of these arguments.
Present-day, Tabitha has been assisting me with the
manuscript of a children’s book I wrote for her years ago. I had all but
forgotten about it, but it was one of her favorites. It is a feminist fairytale about a hard-headed
princess and her adoring father.
How did I ever come up with that idea?
There was no Queen in the story. One can assume she died from breast cancer.
Lucky for me, my life was not a fairytale, but more like a
sitcom. Long live the Queen!
