a trip to the circus

i'm sitting in a distinctly scandinavian designed chair looking out at the mess we have made in our temporary apartment.  toys strewn about the floor and me afraid of doing anything with them because i can't say what goes where.  william will have that all figured out in his brain anyway.  the suitcases i could do something about, and the rest of the dishes, that pair of socks on the table and all those clothes upstairs that need to be washed...

so our temporary situation is that we rented a place through airbnb, someone's beautiful scandinavian designed, inside and out, house, because, per agreement, we're moving out of our current house at the end of the week (though, practically speaking, we moved out on sunday... greg pulling two full suitcases in our ratty old burley, me pulling henry and a bunch of loose ends in the other.  all of our food, the last of our milk, balanced precariously in a box that didn't quite fit in my bike basket... the onions spilled out on the final stretch... william got a flat tire before we'd even hit the super best... it could have been a scene from the play, 'the grapes of wrath in modern day denmark' because clearly that's about as hard as it gets here and we're really the only ones on the road doing it).

though we could have stayed through the end of our lease which would take us through most of the summer, we are traveling to the u.s. for six weeks at the end of this week and didn't think it made much sense to pay rent if we didn't have to, and then very quickly (within 2 weeks) have to move out and move in somewhere else upon our return.  aside from saving a little money though, i'm not sure we made things any easier on ourselves.  now we are moving out, putting things into storage, flying away at the same time, flying back and moving into a new place on the day we fly back.  that's going to be one long day.  maybe we should try to rent this place that night instead.

other than packing up and moving out, i look at back at our calendar for may and i see play dates, dinner dates, birthday parties, enough medical appointments to make you think i'm 95 years old... no... scratch that.. if you're healthy enough to have made it to 95, you probably don't have as many medical appointments as i have... lovely visits from a friend and even family... a trip to the circus, a gymnastics morning (with one of those play dates while greg and a few friends moved the heavy things into storage), a parent-teacher conference, tutoring sessions, lease signings... i could go on.

but everything's good! well, we're stressed out, that's for sure, but i think the busier i am, the more energy i have (though tonight i've allowed myself to sit down to write this and well, i'm not the one getting the laundry done or even moving those socks off the table).  i feel really quite good lately.  i don't feel weak or necessarily all that wimpy or tired.  well, tired only because we're so busy, but not the kind of tired i've often felt for no good reason other than all my treatment.  i told someone the other day that in the same way the inuits have 50 words for snow, i know many kinds of tired... the go, go, go, then hit the wall tired, the low energy the entire day tired, the overwhelming muscle/joint tired, the mental tired, (etc.), and it's not that most people don't know these tireds, it's just that these tireds and i have become intimately acquainted over the past year.  that they are a big part of my everyday life. now it's usually the first kind.. i'm good until early evening and then i slam into a wall with the overwhelming muscle/joint tired with a good helping of mental tired thrown in... only for the past few days, it hasn't been so bad.  i feel it now, but it's less overwhelming, and also, like i said, there is a good reason for it.  i'm moving so much.  so, at least for cancer... at least for me... at least for now... expending energy leads to energy.  thankfully.  because there's no shortage of things to do right now.  and yet suddenly, on friday, we'll be sitting on a plane for 9 hours (or something like that) with nothing to do... well... nothing to do except keep these two guys entertained.

thanks to greg's uncle for capturing such sweet moments the other day!

okay... onward and upward!  

a little post

i have 15 minutes before i have to leave.  someone recently suggested perhaps i could do a 'teaser' post, as i keep saying (with absolutely no evidence to back it up) that i'm going to write a post again soon.  so here is the teaser so you know i haven't fallen off a cliff somewhere... maybe on that mountain you had to keep reading about.  the lion seems to have retreated somewhat since that last post.  or at least i don't see much of it.  i will today.  i'll just get a glimpse of it, as i go in for a 'routine' (?) CT scan.  that's why i leave in 15 minutes.

to explain, since i last left you, i had a PET/CT scan... why???... was it simply because i kept complaining about my lungs... crazy that i can't even remember why they ordered it.  i think it was to just look inside me and see how it all looked after all my treatment.  was the cancer in fact gone?  so... the answer to that PET scan was, 'yes.'  it's all gone... well, yes... except... there are a couple spots on your lungs that lit up and we don't know what they are.  which is how i came to be introduced to modern medicine's torture device #37, the bronchoscopy.  where they stick a camera down your lungs and your body hates it so much that it fights against it despite the fact that it has been drugged and you're supposed to be relaxed.  they did a biopsy of a lymph node and a lavage, where, as part of the torture that will hopefully work to save your life if it comes to that, they squirt liquid into your lungs and then suck it back out to get samples of whatever they can i guess, to biopsy.  and those came back normal.  hallelujah!  i seriously had not been so happy at any stage of this process than i was when my oncologist called to tell me that piece of news.  because finally, it felt like i was given a clean slate... for however long i'm destined to keep it.  it's what i've been hoping for, ever since i could see clearly that this is what every cancer patient wants.  but... of course, things are never truly over when it comes to breast cancer.  so i go in today for one of my 3 or 4 future CT scans in this next year.  just to keep an eye on those spots, since they were PET positive after all, to see if they grow.  because if they grow and if they're still PET positive then they will not take any chances and they take out that part of my lung... because well... i've got two after all... i guess... but seriously, apparently they have seen good outcomes on young people who have a metastasis in one place and they surgically remove it.  so my doctors are keeping a close eye on things for the first year or two while my chances of a spread are the highest.  until we learn to live with the risks.  not that having 4 CT scans a year doesn't come with its own risks, but those consequences won't reveal themselves for another 30 years or so.  well... 3 minutes left.  i'm going to end this teaser post so i can go get x-rayed.   goodbye and thank you for reading!  (and despite all my complaints, i really am truly appreciative of what modern medicine can do for me and do to this cancer.)