It's Tough Being Friends with a Hermit Crab

               My grandma, who even does crossword puzzles in pen, says she will always use a pencil for my place in her address book.  She’s not questioning the longevity of our relationship, but instead says, “You move more often than a bored hermit crab in a cage full of shells.”  I can see her point.  In the past ten years I have moved thirteen times.

                Most of the moves have been out of necessity, others out of boredom or preference, but all of them performed with a sense of excitement and adventure.  Adam and I tell our friends we are moving and there are a series of groans and moans that I counter with, “Who doesn’t like to move?” 

                “We don’t,” they say.

                …despite that, they show up to help, and it reminds me how wonderful our friends really are.

                When you have moved as much as I have you have some great memories and some not so great memories.  The earlier ones were the hardest, because only now do I have a web of loving people in my life who can help me.  (I’m also only now happy.  I think those two things are connected.)  Then I got control of my life, or as much control as anyone can have, and made some much needed changes.  In that process I met Adam, who I fell madly in love with, and we started a life together complete with friends and family…and many different places to live.  Since then even the most pointless of moves have gotten easier thanks to some of the same people who are probably reading this blog.

                 The craziest of moves Adam and I have ever done was a few years back.  We lived on the third floor of an apartment in High Point, and we wanted to move to another third floor apartment.  Same apartment complex.  Same layout.  Same rent.  In the middle of summer.  The only reason we wanted to move is the new apartment would face some trees instead of a parking lot.  The idea of it now makes me laugh and I still have no idea how we convinced anyone to help us that day.

                Even though Adam and I have always had help moving in the seven years we’ve been together, regardless of situation, the easiest move we’ve ever made has been this past Wednesday’s move.  My biggest piece of advice I could offer anyone who needs to move is----get cancer first.  I have never in life seen a more organized group or had more people show up to assist.    It turns out when you have cancer and you need to move mid-treatments to save on expenses, everyone in your life will stop to help.  One dear friend put it perfectly when she said, “It’s hard to come up with an excuse not to help when you play the damn cancer card!” 

                We had so many people show up that the entire move only took three hours with several extended breaks in between.  It was one of my happiest days since the despair of being diagnosed with cancer.  I kept telling Adam I didn’t know if I was more excited about moving into an awesome new apartment or getting to see so many of my friends all at once!  I’ve have felt so disconnected from everyone, because I just don’t get to see them like I used to, and I had a whole afternoon of catching up…of laughing…of feeling normal.  All the people who helped may have felt like they were moving my boxes and furniture, but they were moving my spirits too, and I think I needed that more than anything else.

                I want to end this by sending out a few special thank you’s to some of the people who helped on Wednesday.  In case you are uncomfortable being mentioned publically I’m using your initials:

S.S.-Thank you for being the driving force, the motivator and the brute strength.  Also, thank you for showing up with dinner after everyone else was gone because you didn’t think we’d feel like cooking.  That was really very sweet.

S.J.-Thank you for being a work horse, for your awesome van and staying with us to help unpack.  Also, thank you for that quiet moment with your sweet gift.  It really means a lot to me.

M.R.-Thank you for giving up your day off, and matching S.J. in being determined to be the two quickest people at emptying an entire room.  Thank you for the laughs.  I’ve missed you so much.

J.H.-Thank you for coming in the middle of your work shift to let us use your truck and move large furniture in your suit and tie.  That takes some true love. 

A.V.-Thank you for being the first to show and get the moving party started.  Thank you for letting us muck up your brand new car with boxes and for not killing Adam when he messed with all of your seat settings.  You say it’s no big deal, but we all know that is annoying to fix.  J

T.D.-Thank you for always being such a major source of my entertainment and giving up a perfectly delightful vacation day to help us move.  Hope your knee isn’t too angry with you.

M.P.-Thank you for being willing to spend your morning/afternoon moving us when you still had to go work a full shift.  That’s not something a lot of people are willing to do and hopefully the sunburn didn’t make you too uncomfortable at work!

R.J.-Thank you for the food!  It is so sweet that you delivered lunch to everyone since you couldn’t be there to help move.  It was perfect timing and greatly appreciated.

M.H.-Thank you for coming after work and delivering coffee as we unpacked for our second wind of energy.  As always, it was so nice to see you and your sweet visit was the perfect end to moving day.  You mean a lot to me, Biscuit.

T.L.-Thank you for always being my ray of sunshine, even if only for a brief hello.  J

Thank you all so very much…

My Wall of Love

I call it my wall of love…I sit and stare…I look at the pictures…I read the words…my very own wall of love…

                I’ve spent the last few days packing.  My husband and I will be moving down to a smaller apartment next week to save on expenses.  I do my third chemotherapy tomorrow and by the time I start to recover it will be time to leave.  We knew all along this might be a possibility, and at first I thought I would be sad to say good bye to our place.  It’s been a very happy home these past two years with some wonderful memories, but it turns out I’m not sad at all.  Quite the opposite, actually.  The new place is smaller, yes, but that means less to clean, less to trouble with, less to distract. 

It turns out I care very little about which four walls are surrounding me.  I care very little about how far those four walls are spread out or where those four walls are sitting, because those four walls don’t make me happy and they certainly don’t make memories.  Those four walls don’t make a home.  Home is Adam.  Home is our kitties.  Home is our friends and family who love and support us.  And that’s a home my husband and I will always have no matter where we live.  We are really very fortunate.

                In the process of packing, I became overwhelmed with a need to say thank you to all of the people who have helped Adam and I thus far on our journey.  Everywhere I turned there were tokens of your love, and every packed box has a hint of your support.  I began to wonder if you knew how much your gestures mean?  If you knew how much you were loved in return?  If you knew the smallest hello can mean the biggest source of comfort?  Maybe.  But maybe not, and I want you to know all of those things.

                I am not going to attempt to recount and thank all of the gestures that have moved us.  It would be impossible, and I’m afraid this blog entry would be too long to comfortably read in one sitting.  We are talking countless meals, many of which have been delivered to our doorstep.  We are talking beautiful bouquets of flowers to cheer to even the dreariest of days.  We are talking care packages of such thought and beauty that I’ve literally wept when I opened them.  We are talking conversations…simple words that many of you will never even know how much they meant to me.

                No, I cannot recount them all.  But I still want to let you see into this window.  This private window of what happens after your part supposedly ended… 

After you’ve hung up the phone. 

After you’ve walked away. 

After you’ve hit send on your computer. 

After you’ve left the post office. 

After I’m sitting here alone in my world. 

I want you to know your part hasn’t ended.  Your love, your beauty, your support, your understanding…it lingers.  I want you to know about my wall…

                It started with a trip to the mailbox. We received a card.  One beautiful card wishing us the best and sending support as Adam and I began our battle against cancer.  We read it and we smiled (which is no small feat when you are first introduced to cancer).  We put the card on our refrigerator for safe keeping.

The next morning I woke up and I re-read the card as I sat drinking my coffee.  I realized this one little card I could read over and over again and feel touched that this person reached out to offer their love.  I said my quiet thank you and went out to check the mail again.  Among the sea of medical bills I had yet another surprise…two cards.

As the days continued to pass and the mail continued to come, our refrigerator door became full.  The cards grew out onto our pantry door and then eventually even the door couldn’t contain them anymore.  We got push pins and started pinning them on the kitchen wall.  Before I knew it we had a whole wall of cards and notes from people like you…our friends, our family, some who have sent multiple cards, and even some from people we barely knew.  Each card filled with as much love as the first.  I called it my wall of love.

My wall of love is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.  Each card represents a personality of someone in our lives.  There are so many different colors, pictures, and handwritings and when you put them all together your heart beats to the rhythm of love, happiness and peace.

Not only is my wall of love beautiful to see, but it’s beautiful to read…  

I want you to know when I am happy, I read your words and I find strength. 

I want you to know when I am sad, I read your words and I find support. 

I want you to know when I am angry, I read your words and I find comfort. 

Basically, I want you to know I read your words and I find your love…so much love. 

I don’t feel I could ever thank everyone enough for the things they have done.  I don’t think I could ever show how much each gesture or thought means to Adam and I.  But I can tell you that in the process of packing up my wall of love, I read each card, I felt each of you packing with me, and I cried as your words carried some of the burden of my journey.  Even now, my wall of love has been turned into a box of love, but it sits here beside me…a part of our home for our next set of walls.

"Cancer" guest starring The Perky Pepper

          The Scene:  A simplistic rugged town is being controlled by a god who convinces them that life is ruled by partying and promiscuity.  The townspeople have seen their beloved god and follow this horned phenomena into a whirlpool of drinking, sex and destruction.  In hopes to save this town and convince the people to follow a different way of living, an unaffected man tries to present himself as the town’s god.  With just one look, a man in the crowd says, “Bullshit.  God’s got horns.”

This is by far my favorite quote from True Blood.  The beauty of the statement lies in the simplicity of reason.  The man has seen his horned god, and feels that this is standard criteria for anyone who would like to claim god stature.  I find myself quoting this man often when something in life presents itself as another thing it very clearly is not. 

Most recently I’ve noticed myself using the quote every time I see cancer portrayed on television.  Cancer in Hollywood is a lot more graceful and dignified than it is in real life.  It tends to be a common theme, but strangely it’s a cancer only unicorns and rainbows would seem to get, and I’m calling bullshit.

I’m not naïve enough to suggest the True Blood town saw a horned god and that must mean all gods have horns.  Likewise, I’m not about to suggest all cancers present themselves with the same characteristics mine has.  But I have in fact seen cancer, and I have in fact talked to others who have had different cancers, and cancers of all varieties seem to have a much harsher experience than what I see on TV…

The Scene:  A loveable quirky man has just been diagnosed with leukemia.  The prognosis suggests maybe a twenty percent chance of recovering, but the man and his small group of friends are determined to fight and overcome.  After the diagnosis the patient is seen lying in a hospital bed in the middle of his treatments.  He is hooked up to IV and looking sleepy.  He gives a heartfelt speech about friendships, cracks a joke or two, and then in the next scene his hospital bed is empty.  He’s fully recovered.

                “Bullshit.  Cancer’s got haze.”   

                I can guarantee there are no profound or life altering speeches about friendships in the middle of chemo haze.  Don’t get me wrong.  Cancer has made me evaluate the relationships in my life, and I’m often pressed with the need to express my gratitude for those I love, but these are moments best saved for days and days after treatment.  Until then I have the brain capacity of a zombie and I’m lucky to manage to moan simple requests such as “water” or “medicine.”  I imagine if I tried to give a heartfelt speech to a friend anywhere close to within five days of chemotherapy it would more likely come out like, “Friend.  Watermelon.  Who are you?”  Then I’d smile at them with watery eyes, feeling a real sense of accomplishment before I fell back over into a drug induced hibernation.  As beautiful and sentimental as that sounds, I’m just not sure it’s up to par with the man who had leukemia in a television episode.

                “Bullshit.  Cancer’s got time.”

                I know cancer is too complex of a disease to fully capture in a thirty minute episode, but when you are dealing with a recurring character I don’t understand the rush to have the illness resolved after one little episode.  Cancer takes up a lot of time.  Personally, the amount of time dedicated to getting better is the most daunting aspect in my world, and I’m looking only at a five to six month run.  By all accounts I’m fairly lucky, because a lot of people have it worse than I do.  Showing one sleepy scene and then a full recovery suggests that cancer is about as easy to fix as a headache, and this simply is not true.

                The Scene:  A sassy, beautiful, privileged woman is diagnosed with breast cancer.  It takes almost the full season for her to recover, but in the mean time she is seen going about life and running around town with different wigs on because she has lost her hair.  Her hair falls out over night, but she is left looking just as beautiful, vibrant and healthy otherwise.  She gains even more sass and learns to find some internal beauty that would match the outer beauty she’s always had.

                “Bullshit.  Cancer’s got patches.”

                I have heard one person say that their hair fell out over night, but for the most part this is not a beautiful transformation process.  My hair started to get a little thin.  Then one morning I took a shower and suddenly I had hair in my eyes and throat and sticking to my body.  It was absolutely everywhere, and my ten minute shower got turned into a thirty minute hair battle I wasn’t sure I would win.  Finally the hair stopped falling and I sighed in relief that at least it was over.  I stepped out of the shower and looked in the mirror.  My heart sank.  The battle was nowhere near over.  It had only just begun.  My hair had only fallen out in patches.  I still had whole clumps of normal looking hair, and then complete spots of white shiny skin.  Each day after, when I took a shower more hair would fall out, and I called it “the mangy squirrel look.”  I was pretty sure all I needed was for only one of my eyebrows to fall out and I could have pulled the whole image together, but that didn’t happen.  Even now, nine days after my second chemo, I still have about 200 hairs that are determined to stay around.  I can tell if they fell out I would look pretty good bald, and I’m hoping chemo number three will help me out with that situation, but for now I’m sporting a head that reminds me of a opossum’s butt. 

Everyone asks the same question, “Why don’t you shave it?”  The answer is that chemotherapy has the side effect of making your skin very sensitive.  Combining sensitive, tender skin with the fact I need to avoid getting any cuts that might get infected because my immune system is weak takes shaving my head off my table of options.  Some venture, “Why don’t you use a number one blade and just trim it even shorter.”  The answer to that one is not medical.  I am just willing to admit that while I am confident I can pull off bald, I’m not sure having stubble is any better than having half an inch of hair.  Seems like a lot of careful work to look equally as awkward.

“Bullshit.  Cancer’s got debilitation.”

Even if I forgive this woman’s graceful transformation in to baldness, I cannot forgive the fact that this is the only transformation she needs to take.  Cancer is a lot more complex than just losing your hair, and I think it’s a lame cop-out to simply give someone a bald head and call it cancer.  This is more symptomatic of confusing a bottle of hair remover for shampoo in the morning.  An unfortunate mistake, I’m sure, but overall not so bad.  There is such a wide range of physical side effects of cancer, and yet this woman looked healthy and strong and energetic and beautiful.  Yes, there are many days where I feel healthy, strong, energetic and beautiful, but let’s call chemotherapy what it is and acknowledge I also have a lot of days where I look exhausted, sweaty and have as much energy as a hamster left too close to the air conditioning vent.  There’s just no shame in that.  It’s called cancer.  It doesn’t get cured with a red bull and a trip to the day spa.

The Scene:  A lonely man is diagnosed with cancer, and he acknowledges that the battle before him is one he cannot face alone.  He hires a beautiful nurse to help take care of him, and he quickly starts treatment.  He loses his hair.  He becomes exhausted.  His physical appearance diminishes with each passing scene as his body reacts to chemotherapy with extreme nausea and vomiting.  Despite it all, the lonely man and the beautiful nurse connect and fall deeply in love.

“Bullshit.  Cancer’s got more…”

This was a movie that seemed determined to show a dirtier side of cancer, and at first I thought it was on the right track.  There wasn’t a miracle over night cure.  The man genuinely looked exhausted and lost not only hair, but lunch as well.  Then I became disappointed when I realized the battle was going to stop there.  They ventured to show more than most people are willing to, but why not go all the way?  Some people would argue time constraint, but you’re wrong.  Instead of four scenes where you watch the man throw up, you could have four scenes that depict different aspects of chemotherapy, because nausea is just the icing.

I’ve already discussed briefly some of my experiences from the first chemo, but the second chemo was harder in my opinion.  I have experienced a lot of common side effects that just are not being depicted in even the bravest of films. 

What about the mental side effects?  I have so much confusion associated with chemo brain.  Sometimes I literally just sit and stare at space, because I’m honestly not sure where I am.  I become so forgetful that walking out the door without my pants on is suddenly a realistic fear.

What about the physical side effects?  For two days it felt like my skin was covered in shingles.  I couldn’t move or shift without searing pain.  On those same two days it felt like every bone in my body had been shattered and then glued back together unevenly.  I’ve had mouth sores that make even watermelon feel as rough as a brick.  About seven days after both treatments my legs ached from my hips to my knees and I felt unstable when I stood and walked.  My eyes get so dried out and irritated, that it starts to appear like I’ve been crying, which makes people treat you nicer, but it’s just not a great look.

What about the emotional side effects?  Cancer is a tough thing to handle.  I am one happy person and it has always taken a lot to shake me down.  I spend most my time feeling positive and even my low moments are more sarcastic humor than they are full on negativity.  However sometimes I’m absolutely fine one moment and the next it feels like some rhino just walked in the room and decided to take a sit down on my chest.  The pressure is just too much and I explode in to a squealing, crying mess of a person who’s furious at the world.  It can take up to an hour before I calm down again.  Then I laugh at myself and get on with life.

It’s great that the man and the nurse fell in love, but can love blossom only in the face of vomit?  Of course not.  That’s silly and a little gross.  Love can just as easily grow in the face of confusion, pain or crying as it can in throwing up and losing your hair.  Nothing could be lost by showing a more rotten side of cancer.  Could it?

                I think I know why people are afraid to show a more realistic portrayal of cancer and it’s fear.  Fear that their dramatic and inspirational show or movie will somehow be transformed into a horror story.  But I ask, “Can it not be both?”  In real life it is both.  I may have done a better job thus far in this blog of describing the more negative aspects of cancer, but not a day goes by where I don’t also feel hope, happiness, love and depth in my life.  I just don’t feel the need to diminish the bad in order to shed a light on the good.  If anything the positive only shines brighter against the shadows of the negative.