beating cancer | Uncommon Heather

Going through my photos from 2018 has reminded me of how many good moments we had throughout the year, and how much I have to be grateful for.

The year kicked off in a dark place with Mom’s cancer diagnosis, but after chemo, surgery and radiation (and now oral chemo), we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. The experience, plus some other incidents this year, taught me that no matter how much you may try, you’re never really in control of your destiny. An illness or an accident can so quickly end or derail whatever you’ve got going on. Worrying about that happening doesn’t do any good either – you just have to swing at the curveballs life throws at you and hope for the best.

This year I got out and did some exciting things – I marched in marches, and I ran in 5k’s. I learned how to cut glass, make a slumped glass vase, make fused glass ornaments and I am currently working on my second stained glass piece. I travelled to Vermont lots of times to visit Mom, Indianapolis for a work trip, Maine for a family get-together, and the grand finale of course, was our impromptu trip to Costa Rica!

So, despite whatever bad things happened in 2018, they were far outweighed by good things and positive experiences. I’m sure 2019 will be the same – while you might not be able to control your destiny, you can certainly control your attitude along the way.

Here’s to a fantastic, healthy and happy 2019!

January 2018 – Hartford Women’s March

February 2018 – Zentangle Retreat

March 2018 – Hanging with Mom after chemo

March 2018 – Watercolor Zen

March 2018 – Winter on Lake Champlain

March 2018 – 4 weeks on WW and 5 lbs lost!

March 2018 – Hartford March for Our Lives

March 2018 – Hiking in Roxbury, CT

March 2018 – We learn how to make our bodies less hospitable to cancer

April 2018 – 10 lbs lost on WW!

April 2018 – 5K # 1 – The ACS Fun Run in Indianapolis

April 2018 – The cats still hate each other

May 2018 – 5K # 2 – The CT Breast Health Run in New Britain, CT

May 2018 – I get new glasses!

May 2018 – Tornado strikes near us! (While I was trying on my new glasses…)

May 2018 – We start a raised bed

June 2018 – I’m the life of the party at work

June 2018 – Sunset on Lake Champlain

June 2018 – Road Trippin’ with Kris

July 2018 – DC trip

August 2018 – Autumn encounters a watermelon

August 2018 – Enjoying the fruits (veggies?) of our labor

September 2018 – Truckin’ in Maine

September 2018 – Visiting mom after her mastectomy and building cairns on the shore.

September 2018 – I try my hand at glass cutting!

September 2018 – the results of my labor

October 2018 – 5K #3, Wallingford CT (I stopped running the minute I crossed the finish line! haha)

October 2018 – Hartford Habitat for Humanity 30 Year Anniversary Dinner

October 2018 – Dad and I make stained glass leaves!

October 2018 – I make a fused glass wind chime (and struggle to photograph it decently)

November 2018 – Dave and I go to Costa Rica again!

November 2018 – Wherever we wander, it’s always good to come home.

December 2018 – I make fused glass ornaments for the fam!

December 2018 – Christmas with the bros

December 2018 – I try a larger stained glass piece…

Howdy!

So much for my “life purpose” of sharing my experiences so others can know they aren’t alone. Failure!

I won’t bore you with excuses for why I haven’t written all summer. None of them are really valid reasons. The truth of the matter is that I am just lazy and unorganized.

Today I write to you from the shores of Lake Champlain. I am up here to help my mom recover from her mastectomy. She is doing really, really well. It’s so awesome. The chemo was incredibly challenging, especially the last couple of doses of the cocktail I mentioned in my last post called the Red Devil.

I had been worried about her all throughout chemo, because it is really hard for me to accept that in order to fight the cancer, they have to practically poison you to death to do so. The Red Devil was no joke. She felt worse than ever. Her blood counts were incredibly low. After her last dose, she had to get a blood transfusion because everything was so low. However, within a few days of the transfusion, she was feeling much better. She said she went from feeling like 40% of herself to about 70%, and that now (5 weeks post-chemo) she feels like her normal self again!

Obviously chemo is a tried-and-true method, because her tumors shrank significantly, and one of the smaller ones disappeared completely. The cancer that had been in her lymph nodes was nowhere to be found at the time of surgery.

As for the surgery, they removed her affected breast but only took out a couple of lymph nodes. This made the surgery a lot less invasive than it could have been. It also means she won’t have to worry about lymphedema, which is a condition that can develop if you get all the lymph nodes taken out of an area.

I can’t believe how well she is doing for someone who just had a part of her body removed. I was expecting her to be bedridden and immobile, but if you saw her out in public you wouldn’t even know she’d had surgery less than a week ago. Well, unless you saw the drain poking out of her shirt. Ew!

Well, time for me to take the doggie for a walk. One of my goals this week is to get back into the blog and plan out the content for the next few months. I’m taking requests! Let me know if there’s an eec-related topic you want me to talk about, or if you would prefer I philosophize about some aspect of life in general, I could obviously do that too.

Later!