Cancer is ugly.

This is ugly.  This whole thing is ugly.  It's exciting for all the wrong reasons.  Its the kind of drama that people feed off of when at a comfortable distance.  I get it but that doesn't mean I'm handling it.  By no means have I dealt with my pain in a healthy manner.  I have no clue how or what to do to make this paralyzing fear go away.  The me that lives deep within has been screaming something primal from the moment this began.  I have yet to silence her.  At times shes sneaks out, short bursts of realness, but I carefully remind her to know her place.  In the beginning, that first week, it was just me and my mom and somehow I was able to cope so well.  I had this glorious ability to ebb and flow.  She gave me permission to breathe, speak gibberish, get mad, throw things, and cry so hard.   Somewhere along the line I lost that.  I went against my bodies natural ability to heal me, I chose to smile instead.  I tried on slap on some happy and cover up the ugly.  Not well, might I add.  I'm not good at it.  I've never been good at pretending everything is okay and I don't want to be.  I'm healthier this way and I'm real.  I am going to cry when I want to cry, get mad when I am mad, I am going to scream when I want to scream!  The freedom to heal my way is liberating, life changing.  Because the truth is, there is no right way to cope.  It's not going to be pretty, these emotions are messy and that gets to be okay.  It's time that I nurture that screaming girl inside me, it's her turn to breathe.

Cancer stole my ordinary everyday.  This monster consumed me, took whopping chucks out of every aspect of my life.  I have so desperately missed my normal.  Although simple, my exquisitely average life has been gone for months.  All I want back is my normal.  My normal is dinner around the table, high-low's of the day, and spilled chocolate milk.  My normal is baking cookies, "Family Activity Jar", and bored games (even when dad complains the whole time).  My normal is homework, baths, and brushing baby teeth.  My normal is laughing with clients, dinner with girlfriends, and putting on too much makeup.  My normal is fighting over video game ratings, chores, and eating enough vegetables.  My normal is tears, hurt feelings, and forgiveness.  Even though cancer took my normal for awhile, even though I am spending every second fighting to get it back, I still acknowledge what cancer has given me.  Cancer gifted me a heightened awareness of just how valuable my time is and just how lucky we are to be alive.  

I will have chemo every Wednesday for year but not all of it will be the kind that makes me sick.  Currently, I have 2 more Red Devil's left.  Whats good about this round is that I only get the Red Devil cocktail on every 3rd chemo.  This means I get a week and a half that I feel almost human.  Its amazing how much energy I have, feeling well has me down right giddy.  Since I know that feeling good will be short lived, I am compelled to pack as much as I can into those 10 days that I am healthy and able.  Knowing that a week from today I wont be me, I'll be too sick to even speak.  So, I have to make sure that I snuggle enough, cook enough, laugh enough, play enough, hug them, clean enough, and kiss them like crazy.  It's probably over the top, but hello?  Have you met me?

Yesterday, I felt so good that I busted out all my fall and Halloween decorations.  I even made a wreath for the front door.  Yeah, that's right, I MADE it.  I stole stuff from all around the house to add some finishing touches and had Zoie helped me glitter up some of our old plain looking pumpkins.  It's good to be back....even if only for a week.

16,000 views.

Almost 16,000 people have read this silly little blog of mine.  And although I am pretty sure more then half the page visits are from my mom I am still completely blown away.  It's hard to understand why so many have cared about what I have to say.  It's humbling to know that I am worthy of your time and prayers.  But mostly I want you to know how incredibly surrounded I feel by love, kindness, and friendship.    People I barely know and even complete strangers from the other side of the world have let me know that they are rooting for me.  Countless voice mails, text messages, facebook comments, and letters have not gone unnoticed.  You've all had my back and I have never felt alone.  That has been huge for me.  Thank you.

This week was a rough one, the roughest one yet.  There were night sweats, day sweats, cold sweats, hot flashes, vomit, nausea, mouth sores, abscesses, kidney pain, neuropathy, and my fingernails are falling off.  I have no energy and my brain feels like its been microwaved.  I am miserable.  I have 2 more of these particular "Red Devil" treatments left and I don't know if I can do it.  It's just too painful.  On the flip side, my symptoms should be easing over the next couple days and I will get a few good days before going back into The Matrix.  To top it all off, my insurance turned me down for several insanely important procedures that I believe could help save my life.  One particular procedure takes a piece of your tumor, slices it up and tries all different medicines on it to see what works the best for your cancer.  Cool right?  Regardless, I am determined to get it done!  I need to know that I tried everything, left no stone unturned.  Whew, got a little carried away there, this completes the complaining portion of today's blog.     

Lets be honest, I've seen better days.  This is not the peak of my physical appearance.  My eyelashes and eyebrows are almost gone and I am as bald as a bowling ball.  As much as I am striving to find my confidence and gain compfort in my new skin, I am not exactly yearning to be on display.  But, this weekend I am going to slap on my big girl panties, paint on some eye brows, comb out the ol' wig, and get my booty to this FREE event-

  
Seriously, come hang out with me.  

Meet my Wigs!

There is nothing fun happening here today.  I am getting my second dose of "Red Devil" and I am not happy about it.  Since I don't want to think or talk about it I figured I would show ya'all my wigs.  I have named some of them after the people I think they look like.....  Get ready for selfie city!  Which Kara is your favorite?

The Eli

The Soccer Mom

"The Stephanie" with a little of my hair tied in (when I had some)

The Stephanie all down

The Kara.

Just for fun, this is a picture from the day before I started chemo....Looks a little different, eh?

The day that changed everything.

People always ask me the same question.  How did you find it?  So here it is friends.  For those of you who would like to know how I found my cancer, here is my story....

Around January of this year I noticed a small marble sized lump in my left breast, I immediately hopped on google and diagnosed myself with a fibroadenoma which is basically just a fancy word for lumpy boobs.  Cancer didn't even register, I had read that 80% of all breast lumps were benign, 1.8% of women in their 20's develop breast cancer, and I had just finished breast feeding my daughter for 9 months.  So it had to be a pesky harmless cyst, right?  I wish.  I have always had a good gut, I go with my instincts and trust myself completely.  I know what you are thinking, obviously I don't have that great of a gut if I didn't know that there was a massive tumor growing inside my body.  The truth is, for a half a second I did entertain the idea of it being breast cancer but as far as I knew women in their 20's didn't get breast cancer...they got other types of cancer but not breast, right?  I simply wasn't aware that this was a possibility.

As the months went by my left armpit began to get irritated by my bra, I had felt around and thought maybe my lymph node seemed enlarged.  The lump in my breast had definitely gotten larger and the combination of the two had my head spinning.  As a recovering drama queen I was careful not to blow it out of proportion.  Besides, it cant be cancer.  Maybe a large mass that would have to be surgically removed, but not cancer.  Then I started to obsess, which by the way is totally normal for me.  I was thinking about it a lot, I checked on it every morning, every shower, and every time I got dressed.  I made my husband feel it, my mom feel it, my grams feel it, and I even forced a few of my clients to feel it!  As much as I wanted to, I couldn't tune it out.  (That ol' gut of mine ain't so bad it seems.)  So at the end of April in order to end my obsessing and appease my mother (who had been nagging me to have it checked out) I finally made the doctor appointment.

I know it seems silly to put it off for few months but that's exactly what I did.  You see, my husband and I had been scrimping and saving for 3 years to buy a new home.  I had better things to do, all of my thoughts were tied into paint colors, dishes, and fabrics.  We were in the middle of buying this perfect little house and it seemed silly to take time and money away from the house just for a stupid little knot in the boob.  Thankfully, the mind is a powerful thing, so at the end of April I went in.  My OB/GYN told me that with my age and excellent overall health not to worry about cancer but that I should error on the side of caution I should have a mammogram.  So I did. 

On May 1st, I went to get my mammogram, alone and in between clients at the salon.  I figured they would call me with the results and since they said it would only take a few minutes so I saw no reason to bring support.  WRONG.  The radiologist came in right after, told me flatly that I had cancer and then walked out.  The walls came crashing in around me, a burst of electricity shot down my spine and suddenly I couldn't breathe.  The room had no oxygen and I needed to get out of there now.  I ran out of that place gasping for air and trying to will it away, I just wanted to undo the last 5 minutes.  Somehow roboticly, I made it back to my salon, dumbfounded and by now, hysterically crying.  I had a mobile notary waiting for me at my salon so that I could sign my house papers and get my keys, the moment I had been so excited for.  It was this intensely surreal experience where two emotionally opposite moments of my life came crashing together.  Congratulations on your new house and by the way you have cancer happened in a span 20 minutes.  My brain was in overdrive and flat lining all at the same time.  "How long do I have left?".  "Should I even be buying this house?"  "This is supposed to be a happy day!!"  "Am I going to lose my hair?"  "How the hell am I going to tell my mom?"

 And that is the story of the day that my life ended and began all at the same time.