Month: July 2019

Does anyone recognize this title? I received this book when I was 12 or 13 years old for hanukah. Side note, I wasn’t going to divulge that I was raised Jewish, but cat is out of the bag. If you are a neo-nazi or just an old fashioned, run of the mill anti-semite move along please.

Anyways, I received this from my Dad and his girlfriend at the time. My Dad told me awkwardly that I should read the book and if I had any questions to ask his girlfriend. I think that is the closest I had to getting the “birds and the bees” talk from a parent.

You may be wondering, where was your mom in all of this? She died when I was 11 years old. Of cancer. Hers was ovarian. That is a blog for another day, though.

Back to this cringe-inducing book. I don’t remember what I said when I received this. I do remember the embarrassment I felt as well as the discomfort. Ooh gross. I don’t want to discuss this stuff with anyone!

Even to this day, the title just makes me cringe. Bleh. Anyways, at the time, I moved on to the presents I actually wanted. Steve Madden slippers with paw prints on them is the only gift I remember getting that year. I know I got about eight, though. Did I mention that I have lived quite a charmed and privileged life, yet? Well, I have.

I hid that book in my closet. I think I dared to maybe look at it once or twice. Even in the privacy of my bedroom I felt ashamed for looking at it. I don’t know how I had ingrained such shame and hatred for my body at such a young age, but there it is. I think it is probably society’s fault – yes – let’s blame society!

Anyways, dear reader, there is a point to this little anecdote I promise! The point is I used to hate my body. Many of my female readers (and male readers too) I’m sure can relate to this.

When I was an adolescent I was too skinny and I didn’t have boobs! Then when I went through puberty (later than everyone else I might add) I wasn’t thin enough anymore! I never knew the right clothes to wear, but not for lack of trying! The clothes I did wear never seemed to fit my body right the way they did on seemingly every other human.

My hair was too frizzy. My arms too hairy. In high school I was on a date with a boy; we were sitting on a bench in the center of town (we called it The Center – how clever!) and he said in exclamation – wow, your arms are hairier than mine! I could have died.

I’ve straightened my hair. Bleached my arm hair. Shaved my legs. Waxed my brows. The list goes on and on. I’ve tried to exert control over my body to get it to submit to my will. Spoiler alert, it did not comply. In the loudest way possible, it did not comply. I got the BRCA-1 mutation and breast cancer at 30 to boot. While pregnant with my first child, I might add.

The funny thing is, is that I’m starting to actually appreciate my body and not feel shame or hatred towards it. Now, when I look in the mirror I see a bad-ass part-cyborg warrior. It helps that my hair is growing back and that I have lost all of the baby weight. My body has housed and birthed a human being and then two weeks later sustained toxic insult after insult in the form of chemotherapy. I’ve been sliced open to birth my child and hacked at to remove my deadly breasts. I’ve had radiation beams targeted at my chest to kill any remaining, rogue, cancer cells.

Spoiler alert, it didn’t work and I am now living (and I might go as far to say thriving?) with stage 4 breast cancer. It helps that the things I used to be so self-conscious about aren’t as noticeable now. For instance, my arms aren’t as hairy after the chemo. Thanks chemo!

I think the big change now, though, is I am less harsh on myself and my appearance. When your husband has seen your head buzzed and then watched that hair fall out, making you look like a balding middle aged man, you are forced to let go of some vanity. You also realize that your husband must love you for more than just your looks.

I highly recommend it. Not the cancer or chemo part. But the relinquishing of some vanity. Not all, but just some. Maybe just hate your body and appearance a little less. I bet you are all more beautiful than you give yourselves credit for.

Until next time. Follow me on Twitter @reluctantoptim. Love and light to you all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time lately. How much time I have left and how I want to spend that time. How my time is finite on this earth.

In all honesty (and I will always be honest with you readers) I have always thought a lot about time. I have felt like I haven’t had enough time since my high school days. As an A++ overachiever, which is what my social worker/therapist refers to me as, there wasn’t enough time for school work + cross country/track + babysitting + dance.

To give you an idea of how intense I was even as an adolescent – I sacrificed my lunch period so I could take both acting and choir along with all my required classes during my freshman year of high school. I mean really, come on, thats just excessive. I didn’t even enjoy either of those classes that much! Certainly not more than I enjoy food!

If I could go back and give myself some advice I would say “you have nothing to prove, don’t push yourself so hard… enjoy your life!” I could go on about how there didn’t feel like enough time in college or medical school or residency, but honestly I just don’t feel like it. It would probably be boring for you to read and for me to write.

Furthermore, since we are on the topic of time, I don’t know how much time I have to write this blog entry before my sweet boy wakes up. I actually started writing this yesterday morning, but my baby boy woke up two sentences in. I never found the time in the day to return to writing.

How do I think about time now? Ironically, it feels endless to me now. This is counterintuitive I know, since if you read my first entry you know my life expectancy is about 1 – 2 years. But, for the first time since I was a child I am spending my time the way that I want to. How fortunate! There are very few people on this earth who has the means to do this. Please let that sink in.

My days now consist of rolling around on the floor with my son laughing and playing with blocks. It includes play dates with close friends and their children. My husband and I go on walks with our son in the stroller every evening that the weather permits. I am on the precipice looking out into the abyss, but I am living my life. My time feels like it did when I was a child – mine to do with what I want.

Of course, I am still a mom, so there isn’t enough time to ever get caught up with the laundry or dishes. But, who cares? I’m alive and I know love.

This seems like a good place to stop for now. Who knows how much time I have before my baby wakes up? I’m going to enjoy that time to myself.

Until next time dear readers. Don’t forget, you can follow me on twitter @reluctantoptim. Love and light to you all.

I cannot live in the in-between, or the upside-down with the demagorgons – shout out to stranger things! Because of this I am living my life as though I have stage IV breast cancer. A PET scan done last week showed a few sub-centimeter spots in my chest that are in the radiologist’s words “highly suspicious” of metastatic disease. In layman’s terms – shit just got real and my cancer has spread to my lungs.

Metastatic breast cancer is a terminal disease. It is treated as a chronic illness – that sounds much more manageable to me. I met with my oncologist a few days after the scan to talk next steps. The urgency I felt and still feel to move on with my treatment plan is not the urgency felt by the medical system.

My oncologist said the time frame would be a few days to get the tissue sample from my chest, followed by a few days to wait for the pathology to come back. After that she can start me on a PARP inhibitor, which I am hopeful is my magic ticket out of this shit ride. If and when the pathology comes back positive for cancer, my oncologist will send my original tumor from my mastectomy in February for genomic testing. This will help determine whether or not there are other treatments available that my specific cancer will be responsive to.

This is what my oncologist thinks the time frame is and should be. In reality here is the actual timeline of events. My PET scan was performed on July 18th. My procedure (an IR guided FNA) will be performed on August 1st. Based on my estimates, it will be about a month from the knowledge that there is a high suspicion of metastasis before I can start treatment.

You, the reader, may be wondering but isn’t this a deadly disease? And, aren’t we pretty certain that this is metastasis? Why, yes, reader, you are correct. But we are hurrying up and waiting. This is what I have started to respond with when friends and family ask what my new treatment plan is. Well, I say, we are hurrying up and waiting.

I won’t get up on my soap box about the medical system just yet. I likely will at some point. But, I am frustrated. At the same time I am trying to apply some of the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous and only control what I can control. Not that it should matter, but I am not an alcoholic, but I am picking and choosing some of the twelve steps as part of this journey I am embarking on.

Tangents galore! Hope you enjoyed my middle of the night stream of consciousness. I certainly did. Until next time my friends,