I miss y'all!

This will be brief but I wanted to stop by and say HI and that I miss my blog family. Life has been a little busier than expected this year but for the past month or so it's been crazy. Also, it's cancer screening season so I've been poked, prodded and tested some already but I still have my regular blood test coming up right before Christmas. That means I should know the results of everything before the holiday. I started feeling bad earlier this week and assumed I was getting hit with the stomach bug (while I was still fighting off the remnants of my Thanksgiving cold) but I think my body is trying to tell me that I'm worried deep down inside.  Sometimes I'm slow to receive the messages but I can eventually get it.

As always, I will keep you posted on the results and, as always, I'll take any prayers you want to send my way.

I'll be back soon!
Love to all,
Andee

Blog Milestone

Good evening, friends.
I'm currently working on the cancer and body image post. I hope to get it done this week. Tonight, I wanted to jump on here and acknowledge a looming blog milestone. When I started posting here 3 1/2 years ago, I wasn't sure where my journey would take me or what this blog would be become, if anything. As I've said a million and a half times, I started writing to keep family and friends up to date, for my own personal therapy and to share my journey with anyone who might be interested.  If I had a goal for the blog it would be that it help provide guidance, information, comfort and support to someone else entering their New World...even it was only one person, it would be worth it. I've heard feedback from a few folks, so that's success as far as I'm concerned.  I just noticed that my little piece of the blogosphere is about rollover to 50,000 views.  That's nothing for a big time blogger but it's amazing to me. If you've been following along, I hope you've learned a little and laughed a lot (well, at least a little) along the way. Thanks for hanging in with me!

Love to all!
Andee

Dear Cancer...

You SUCK! Yep, I said it. Everyone knows that I worry about tempting fate when I get mad about you but I'm in a mood. I wish I had the nerve to sit here typing this while wearing my F#*K CANCER t-shirt but...no...

I had a long, rambling, angry post planned for today. I was going to let it rip. But that's not happening, not today. Our family has been touched by yet another loss to cancer. I've cried a lot, I've felt like screaming, I've wanted to punch something. I let sadness, fear and anger take over for a while. I was ready to write my fiery post. Then something special happened. My (newly) 8 year old asked me if she could write a blog post. She knows I (try to ) post to my blog and she has decided that she's ready to write for her blog. What happened next touched my heart. I thought she was going to write about her love for Hamilton, Monster High or give a detailed recap of her birthday party. Boy, did I underestimate her. She typed the first few lines herself and there was a lot of hunting and pecking. In order to speed things up, she asked if I would type and she dictated to me. Holy cow! They are the words of an 8 year old, but she said exactly what I needed to hear. She wrote about faith and love. She wrote about supporting each other and looking for the silver linings. She brought me to tears and  brought me back from my unhappy place.  My wise little 8 year old reminded me that cancer doesn't deserve all of the energy and attention. The people who battle this HORRIBLE disease do. Their lives should be celebrated and we should find joy in the fact that they were part of ours.

Today, I'm smiling because it happened. I have been blessed with a wild, wonderful and loving bonus family for almost 30 years (that can't be right, can it? 😊). I hit the jackpot in the in-law family department. I love you all as if you were my own. I'm sure I'll shed more tears in the coming days but I will try my best to remain focused on the blessings I have received instead of what has been taken away. I hope you can do the same.

Cancer, you still SUCK!

Love to all,
Andee

Life is short, so what are you going to do with the time you have?

Good evening blog friends! I hope everyone is well. I'm in the early stages of my annual summer colds...and summer colds suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. I am not going to let that stop me! We are are knocking out some bucket list level stuff this weekend and I'm so very excited. I'll tell you all about it in a few days.

Let me start this part of the post by saying that I have not received any bad news, I would tell you if I had. The "life is short" stuff has just been on my mind lately. Not because I'm doom and gloom, but because I've taken the time to evaluate what I'm spending my time doing and how it adds value to my life. The result is that I was spending way too much time on things which were NOT adding a great amount of value to my life. This is not a commentary on anyone else, it's all about me (insert my "All About Me" song here...if you don't know, I'll post a video someday so you can enjoy). Earlier this year I was in a situation at work which required that I work a lot...I mean A LOT. It wasn't just for a few weeks, it lasted months. I was truly concerned that it was going to have a negative impact on my health. I'm happy to report that I'm on the other side of that situation now, and I was able to put work and home life back into a reasonable balance.  Yay! Balance!  Once I was able to manage the work piece of my life, I took a good look at my personal life. Don't worry, no relationship concerns, I just took a look around me and decided it was time to make some changes. So began The Purge of 2017. I've been working my way through various aspects of my life and getting rid of things that I don't need. I started reading Marie Kondo's book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. It really is a fascinating read. I will spare you the details of the purge process (which Kondo says you should expect to take 6 months) but the number of trash bags and donation bags which have already been hauled out of this house is almost embarassing. I'm not a hoarder but dang! All of the family closets and have combed through and purged. I'm happy to say that I've kicked the "buy more storage options" mentality. If I end up with more stuff than I currently have places for, then I don't increase storage, I decrease the amount of stuff!

I've also taken a look at how our family spends our time. When the kids started school this year, we decided that weekdays would be tablet free. No iPads, no Kindles, no TV. Our goal was simply to try to ween the kids off of the devices so they would focus on school but we've gotten so much more. The kids don't complain, they've found other things to fill their time. They get their homework done, they play games with each other, they ride their bikes and enjoy the outdoors. Some of the things we didn't expect - the kids go to sleep faster and with less fussing. they don't seem to stall as much as they used to. Bonus!

I also had to take a look at my own situation. With a husband, 2 kids with (limited) activities, a full time job and long commute, my personal time is limited but valuable. I realized that I was spending a ridiculous amount of time on social media, having conversations about things I saw on social media, etc. When you do the cost/benefit analysis, you realize that makes no sense. I love keeping up with people and seeing pictures of friends and family, but it isn't something I need to do throughout the entire day, everyday. I removed Facebook and Twitter from my phone, though both apps remain on my iPad for my evening entertainment. I find that I'm picking up my phone less. I'm not completely distracted by those little numbers on the badge. I don't have to live my life through my camera and share it with the world. I can keep those memories as my own, experience whatever it is with my full attention instead of trying to document it and share it with the world. I'm not saying I'll never share with the world again, but I'm going to live my life in the moment. That's the priority.

There's still a lot of work to be done but I like my progress this year.

I'm under the weather so I'm off to bed but I leave you with the same question with which I started. Life is short, so what are you going to do with the time you have?

Love to all,
Andee

Perfectly Imperfect - Part I

It's been a while. it's a pretty long (and not so interesting) story so I won't bore you with the list of reasons why time to blog has been...well...lacking...since early this year. Things have begun to normalize over the past month or so, so I'm going to try to dive back in to some regular (probably not daily) posts.

I thought it was time to write about my scarred up old body. For any BC followers, this is going to be one my, long lost, really real truth posts. For others, you will either find this interesting or solidly in the TMI category. To me, it's just me, so read on at your own risk. 

To recap, I had a double mastectomy in April 2014 and then had to wait a year after radiation ended (in December 2014) before we could start reconstruction.  The reconstruction process started in January of 2016, took a year and included 4 surgeries and about 6 months of tissue expansion in the middle. Since I'm now over 6 months beyond the last of the big procedures, I've started getting questions about the process and the results so it's time to share! Don't worry, as always I keep things family friendly - there will be diagrams but no actual pictures. Just for you, I took the time to map my scars. I realized that I put the port scar on the wrong side but you get the idea. So here it is...my map to the scars!

The abdominal scars are older and unrelated to breast cancer, same for the scar on my throat. I just wanted to show that I'm not kidding when I say I'm all scars. The scar on my back is what is left after my lat muscle was released and pulled around to my chest along with a football shaped piece of skin (hence the shape of the scar on my chest). 

In real life, the implants turned out great! I'm very pleased with the way they turned out - I had nothing for more than a year and a half so I'm thrilled! But, as the diagram shows, they're never going to be "pretty". It's always interesting when my (non-plastic surgeon) doctors see them for the first time. Not for any other reason than to hear someone who knows where I came from comment on how great they look. lol  If you saw them in person you'd probably be thinking - "Holy crap she's right! Frankenboobs!" 

To be continued...

I'm baaack! : Let's talk about 2017 so far UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Good evening friends. It has been WAAAY too long since I've posted. 3 months and 3 days, to be exact. That's unbelievable. I'll spare you the details on the boring reason why I haven't been on here and get right to the updates. 

I was so optimistic in my January 4 post. I was looking forward to a year of no procedures and some personal rebuilding. Yeah, so that didn't quite work out as planned. I provided an update on January 15 that brought you up to speed on my newest issue but, believe it or not, things got more interesting from there. First, I will close the loop on that story. I'm happy to report that the biopsy results were negative for cancer and abnormal cells. YAY!! At the same time I received my results, I was advised that I needed to schedule a D&C sometime in the next 6 weeks. BOOO! So much for that whole "no procedures" thing. As far as procedures go, it's not a bad one. Recovery time is super quick, no stitches, no new scars (BONUS!) and, sadly, it wasn't my first rodeo.  The procedure was completed in late February and I got my results back in early March. Another all clear!! 

That should be enough excitement to start the year...right?  Well, not in my world. We had another cancer scare in the time between my appointment and procedure...I found a lump.  No, I am not even joking. I will fill you in on that drama tomorrow.

To be continued...

New posts coming soon. Stay tuned!

New stuff is coming!