What Are The Odds?

Today is Kentucky Derby Day, what are the odds your horse will win? My money is on Creator. I know nothing about horse racing but in my family we always place dollar bets on the Derby. The only time I ever saw my grandmother gloat was when she won $3 on the Derby.

With cancer, what are the odds your cancer will come back? With rheumatoid, fibromyalgia, or other chronic diseases, what are the odds your disease will progress quickly? I don't know. Nobody knows. Our doctors give us estimates on what could our prognosis be and suggest treatment protocols. They hope to improve our odds.

The media is also full of 'advice' on what we can eat, drink, or do to reduce our odds of any of these issues. We can drink red wine or skip alcohol. We can eat super foods, drink smoothies, and get our exercise. Or we can eat bonbons and drink sugary soda. Then we just cross our fingers and hope for the best.

I mean I can do everything I could possibly do but none of my ailments are going away any time soon. Cancer twice is etched permanently in my medical history. Then the degenerating disks in my spine and my knee with a full torn ACL aren't getting any better either. My RA and fibromyalgia are staying around too.

 So I do what feels right for me. What else can I do? I live with the odds. But I am going to enjoy myself and not stress out about them.

Resentment

Among all the other emotions for a cancer patient is resentment. First there is the resentment of why me? But the biggest problem is the resentment of others.

Why did X turn their back on me when I was diagnosed with cancer after all our years of friendship? This one is very common. I have lost more friends at the word cancer than I care to count. I hope they think they are better off without me and I certainly know I am better off without them. But it took a long time to get that way. There are numerous iterations of this passed around among cancer patients. We all have this happen to us.

But the bigger resentment comes when key family members, who we have relied on our whole lives for support, hide information about our diagnoses from us. Yes this happens.

I met a woman about five years ago. She was diagnosed with thyroid cancer when she was 18. Her parents never told her that she was diagnosed with cancer. As a result she never had any follow up treatment after cancer and experienced numerous recurrences and their treatments for decades. Her parents were scared of the word cancer and didn't want to admit it had happened to their family.

I know another woman who was diagnosed at age 20 with cancer. Her mother never told her. Her sister never told her. Her best friend never told her. Can you believe it? And her mother since passed away before she had a chance to come to grips with this. Her friends and family did not feel she was emotionally able to cope with her diagnosis.

I know someone else who's family were with her through her cancer diagnosis but never discussed it. For decades. It was sort of put to the side and was and is the elephant in the room that is never spoken of. How does that sound? How do you face your family when they do not choose to discuss your health for decades?

This kind of resentment festers and lingers. Its a huge emotional load for a cancer patient to deal with along side of life long health issues, side effects, and emotional drain.

Retirement

A friend emailed me yesterday and asked how is retirement? I can honestly say I have never been so busy in my life. This is my life: 

• Monday, Wednesday, Friday I go to the gym - the gym is now 25 minutes away so its not around the corner any more. And there is not another gym like it anywhere closer. Going to the gym is more like PT for me and is very important in my life.
• Wednesdays I do grocery shopping for us and my parents.
• Thursday I have my knitting group which is in the opposite direction 20 minutes away. 

Never mind any doctor appointments I might have - this week on Wednesday and Thursday. Or errands, the library, or anything else.

Today I am flat out: 830 am dentist, 10 am conference call to help train one of my replacements at my old job, and then 12 noon leave to help at the cancer center and my knitting group. I'll be home at 4 pm when I want to make a Cinco de Mayo dinner.

I also need to allow down time in my life so that I can actually rest to recover from whatever else I have been doing. Today, I will fit that in. Actually what I do is watch more Hallmark and Lifetime movies than I ever thought I would. I sit or lie on the sofa or bed and watch a movie (or DVR'd shows) so I can rest. This is when I get caught up on my knitting and reading.

When I have a busy day where I go to the gym and the grocery store and a doctor appointment, I take little breaks all the time. I sit in my car with my eyes closed and seat back for a bit. Or at the gym I lie on one of the stretching tables for a few minutes. And then I come home and collapse for a bit. The cats like this life style. They can take their naps with me nearby.

I do not know how I could work as well. Actually I know I could not work because I really can't do anything that takes more than 3 hours out of the house before I need to rest. I could have a job if there was a bed nearby for 30 minute rests after each hour of work. And if my work shifts lasted no more than 3 hours so I could go home. Working from home would be the same schedule which does not allow for much productivity. If you have a job that I could do like that, feel free to let me know. As long as it pays at least $30/hour.

Once again, I am an idiot

I spent a long time working on my SSID application. I made notes, talked and talked about it to figure it out. I talked to my doctors. I met with Social Security to make sure my application was complete. I was rejected.

Then I was talking to the lawyer yesterday and realized I forgot to mention my knee with the torn ACL which cannot be repaired due to my rheumatoid. I am an idiot. It like to swell up and cause pain. It does not have side to side stability. My 'good' knee has a partially torn ACL which I am not even bringing into the equation.

The lawyer agreed that it would be a good item to add to my medical record with SSA. Now I have to add it to my documentation for my appeal.

You may call me a moron if you wish.

Talcum powder and other safe ingredients

I have seen some crass ads recently about 'if you used talcum powder and got cancer, you need a lawyer'. I had no idea what they were talking about it. Until I saw an article about how Johnson & Johnson has lost yet another lawsuit regarding talcum powder.

Supposedly talc is a carcinogen and if you used J&J baby powder it could have caused your ovarian cancer. J&J of course claims that it is not. But now lawyers are involved and it is in the hands of the courts. Since J&J has now lost two cases, it does not look good for them.

This brings me to the issue of supposedly safe ingredients that turn out to be really bad for you. If you think about it, this has been going on for eons. Think about what used to be in so called 'patent' medicines. Everything thing under the sun. Many of them were found to be harmful or even fatal.

Now in modern times, the lawyers run everything.

But the harm has been done. I used to use J&J baby powder regularly. Is that why I got cancer twice? I give up. I have no idea why I am so 'healthy' but I will assume talcum powder is not what did me in.

Being Open About Cancer

Here's a question: how open are you about your cancer diagnosis? I realize this is a matter of choice. I think of myself as being fairly open about talking about my cancers, but it took me until my second diagnosis to learn to talk openly about it. But I never mention it with  new people unless I am in a cancer 'situation' such as at a cancer patient event.

I think learning to talk to your cancer diagnosis is part of learning to accept it. (Remember those five stages of acceptance???) But as a result of seeing friends run for the hills at the word 'cancer', many of us learn to keep quiet about it.

Last week, my husband and I came to the realization that our lawn is not going to mow itself and we need a new lawn mower. I started doing some research and shopping online to get some ideas of what we want/need.

I decided if I am going to be able to do anything about mowing the lawn, it has to be easy to use. Self propelled is a must for both of us - our lawn is on a hill. An electric start means I could actually start it myself. There are many things I cannot do around the house because of my health so if there is a possibility I could help with anything, I try to make it possible.

So I started doing my research and looking for what is available with the features we want vs. the ones we can afford and found this in a real Troy Built mower review at Lowes:

"I used to use a Troy Built push mower, but when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and started chemo, I began to lose the strength I needed to do my entire lawn with my push mower.
I decided to buy the Troy Built electric start self propelled mower.
Just let me say, I can now mow my entire lawn with strength to spare"

I was quite taken aback by this. I mean how many people would include their cancer diagnosis in a lawn mower review? If I had written it, I would probably have said "but when I was diagnosed with significant health issues and its treatment caused me to lose strength...." or something along those lines.

Anyway, I brought this up with a group of friends with cancer and asked them how open they are about their cancer diagnosis and what they think of this guy putting it in a lawn mower review. There were some snickers and then we decided:

1. None of us would have ever put their cancer diagnosis in a product review, much less a lawn mower one.
2. It must partly be due to the fact that it was a man who was probably less sensitive on his medical issues. (Not to be sexist but men tend to be more open and less concerned with the responses to what they say than women.)

We did agree that it really depends on the situation and who we are with on how open we might be. But how open are you about your cancer diagnosis?

I'm not missing

I am taking a few days away with my husband. We haven't gotten away together for a few days together since we moved - and that was stressful (because the cat got lost and lawyers and bankers and realtors were idiots) and I had a horrible cold.

This is more fun. We are down by the ocean having fun. I'll share some pictures later. And we have a house/cat sitter while we are gone - so burglars don't get any ideas. The one concern I am allowing myself this weekend is that will the cats get out - something our cat sitter says she won't allow? One of them sits and meows non-stop until he can go out.

We are having fun. I am staying off line for the most part because I want to do things - like have fun, talk to my husband, etc. Also, I am pretending I am a healthy person again. I may pay the price for this later but sometimes I need to stretch my boundaries.