Irene Peterson's Blog

August 24th, 2009

While Hell's Angels are cool...

8/24/09 11:24 am

Yesterday some of my best friends gave me a Remission Party.
It was fabulous.
It was so kind.
It was delightful.
I am blessed with some of the most utterly fantastic friends in the world, all over the country and from some foreign lands.

These people all helped me through this most recent bout of crappiness. Without their prayers and good wishes and, from some, white light (whatever that is), I would have been one miserable bitch and probably dead.
Well, I'm still a miserable bitch, but I'm alive to change my ways and live happily ever after.

Wait a minute. If I were really such a miserable bitch, I sincerely doubt I'd have such wonderful amazing friends.

Hmm. I'm gonna have to think on that.

Seems to me, in reading through the cancer blogs, that it is pretty obvious that lots of people care about me. Not just my super family, but people from Alaska to Florida. From Canada to Texas. And lots of parts in between.

Getting so many of them gathered in one place was cool. I wish all of them could have been there, but it just wasn't possible. Still, it was pretty spectacular.

And it occurred to me that I never, ever want to have to think of any one of them having to undergo the crapola that I've been through these long ugly months. I love them all far too much to even think of watching them endure such crud. The Cancer-Hitler is mean and nasty and cruel.

Let's change from the bad part to the good part.
People brought all sorts of salads and dips and cakes and cookies and there were burgers and hot dogs and sodas and some really good noshing going down. And as far asI could tell, the writing friends and the non-writing friends mixed and mingled and got to know a little about each other. The college friends and the family managed to celebrate my apparent recovery from death's door.
Yay for all of you.
Yay for me because of all of you.

I'm happy.
Everybody should have a good party like this, but not for the same reason. Yes. Everybody should have a good party.

Now, here's an amazing fact. A friend who could not attend because she was taking her first baby off to college, gave me a Stonehenge model kit. With this, I can have my very own teeny tiny henge to mark the solstices. The perfect gift for the woman who's mind is borderline sane. I fully intend to enjoy putting it together, somehow. I hope there are instructions because unlike those who built it in the first place, I am not driven by whatever it was that drove them. I'm just mental, remember?

Tags: irene's sanity, lymphoma, remission, stonehenge

July 2nd, 2009

Slowly getting back to business

7/2/09 08:32 am

Last chemo treatment was 30 MAY 09. That was a month ago. Give me 12 days after that to recover, sort of.
Let's see.
Update on coming off the chemo and the resulting problems of that.

1.) my appetite is coming back.
2.) I can certainly taste most things correctly.
3.) I'm really hungry at mealtime because food tastes good!
4.) the fingertips and toes are still pretty much numb, especially big toe on right foot
5.) still can't shower without someone in the room...when I close my eyes, I tend to fall
6.) can't walk for any distance, can't walk on uneven surfaces, like lawn or street
7.) head still stuffed up all the time. Got Flonase the other day, it helps.
8.) no clothes fit me
9.) the weight I lost must be all water because the fat is still there, hanging in a very ugly way
10.) still having problems concentrating and words don't come when I want them to
11.) improving on the reading stuff. I'm actually reading Charity's newest book, slowly.
12.) can't hold things very well, can't pull on things
13.) stomach problems
14.) urinary problems...every two hours? Is that really necessary? Every hour at night?
15.) can't remember my dreams
16.) only have to take pills I usually take, no cancer stuff
17.) I have gotten out more
18.) No patience left in my entire body, must have gotten peed out
19.) nose and ears still working overly well
20.) hair approximately 1/2 inch long

I think that's about it. My face is wrinkled far beyond what it had been 7 months ago. My body is wrong. My skin is wrong. I can't use a pen but I can use a keyboard, which is okay except when I need to sign things like checks and cards. My name is as distorted that way as my person.

And I keep thinking that if I had back my hair, I'd be in better shape. Like a female version of Samson. Lose the hair, lose the strength. In my case, it isn't so much physical strength as mental, because, let's face it, I've always been more mental than that other thing....

That's me.
Extremely mental.

Tags: irene is at it again, lymphoma, remission

June 23rd, 2009

On trying to be all the things people want you to be

6/23/09 01:59 pm

Several times I have mentioned that some people have written to me that I am some kind of hero to them.
That's mindboggling, to be sure.
I'm the least heroic person I know.
When it comes to this cancer thing, all I did was what I figured every other person in the world would do...fight it with the help of God and the doctors.
I mean, what choice did I have?

Far be it from me to roll over and play dead, or wait to die. Not when there was a pretty good chance of beating this type of lymphoma. Of the 43 types of this particular disease, I guess I must have had one of the easier types to lick with chemotherapy. I dunno. But I'm thankful that whatever one I had was one that the poisons could wipe out.
No matter what they did to the rest of me.

I am certainly no hero. I cried, mostly right when the doctor told me I had pancreatic cancer. I know for a fact that unless caught extremely early, there's little chance of a cure. Those PSAs that Jimmy Carter and Matthew Modine have put out, and now William Hurt, well, they are pretty much doom and gloom. And obviously, they let the world know that more money is needed to pay the doctors and scientists who are looking for a cure.
When I heard that that was what I had, man, my whole world collapsed. I might have died right there. It would have been a whole lot easier than slowly dying from the cancer. But, somehow, I just didn't think that was right. I knew in my heart and my mind that something just didn't jive, that I couldn't die from that. Nope, not me.
Even when that gruesomely smiling pain doctor visited and told me he'd keep me comfortable to the end (in months, cheer up, kiddo, you won't feel much) I just couldn't accept the thought of dying. My kids. My Mom. The rest of my family and my friends. Nope, I couldn't picture me telling them I was going to die.
Thankfully, I didn't have too much time to think about it.
After that awful news, why, Herb and I clutched each other and cried and worried, but I don't remember how the rest of the hours went. I remember the pain guy coming in, and how I really disliked him but figured I'd better be nice so that when the end did come, he'd make sure it didn't hurt too much.
GOD. Having to think of stuff like that.

Then my angel. My angel came and took away all that fear.

And it was an angel, to be sure, because she turned out to be right.

And I was brave when they put the needles in me and through me. I was brave when they carved out a bit of my pelvis for the marrow sample. I was brave when I had my heart tested in some machine and I was brave (but pissed off) as I waited in the basement hallway while some other less fortunate person had a CT scan in my time. Brave?
No. Tolerant.
Brave is fighting off hordes of people with guns and swords or bombs or grenades. Brave is hoisting the flag on Suribachi. Brave is slogging through jungles. Brave is watching someone you love die a horrible death but not letting on that you know they are dying. Brave is helping the elderly with their daily chores. Brave is donating body parts you can spare, but only just, to strangers. Brave is so much more than tolerating something.

That is, I guess, what brave is to me.
But to someone else, maybe what I did or how I handled this latest crud really was brave. Maybe it was something they thought they couldn't do themselves.
However, if they have not been in the same position as I was, they just wouldn't know.
Had they found themselves faced with the pain and ugliness and fear of cancer, maybe they would have responded in the exact same way.

After all, what choice is there?

Roll over and allow the disease to win without a fight?
Or fight with every last bit of strength one has within until the bitter end.
Bitter end. Or sweet end.
You can't know what kind of end it will be unless you get there kicking and screaming and fighting with every ounce of anger and love and hate and fear inside you.

It should be there inside everyone. I think it is. I'm not special. Yet it was in me, so I figure it is in everyone of us.

And I have news for everyone. These last few days while I was waiting to hear how the PET scan went? I was plenty scared. I cried on Saturday while discussing the future with my husband. I cried in my sleep. I cried when I was alone and after each phone call I got from anybody asking if I knew how the test had come out.
I cried when I thought about dying and how everyone else would go on living without me and I wouldn't be there to see what was going on in their lives. I felt hollow and alone and on the very edge of the end.
But that little Irene voice in my head wouldn't let me give up, no matter how low I felt. Hah!

The character played by Alan Rickman in Galaxy Quest said it best.
"Never give up, never surrender."

Grrr!
Anybody reading this who doubts they have hero in them, I suggest you look a little harder. A little deeper.
It's there.

Tags: anti-heroics, cancer, heroism, irene is at it again, lymphoma, remission, true confessions

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