Salt Water

Salt Water

Isak Denison once wrote that the cure for anything is salt water: tears, sweat, or the sea

Gem and Daddy at Golden Gardens

Personally, I’d much rather take my cure from the sea, than sweat or tears.

Gem at the beach

We really should get out here more often.

Gem at the beach

This wasn’t Gem’s first trip to the beach; last time she was just a few months old, so it’s unlikely she has a memory of it.  But she took to it like it was already her favorite place in the world.  We didn’t tell her where we were going, but when she saw the water she immediately started trying to unbuckle herself, and yelling “Beach! Beach!” Either that, or she was calling me a bitch, but I don’t think she’d be quite so enthusiastic if that was the case.

Gem at the beach

My little girl definitely inherited her parent’s love of the sea.

Gem at the beach

Every day since she has asked to go back to the beach. Perhaps it’s time to go get some more cure.

Two

There are stairs on the other side of this platform, but she doesn’t care. She does it her way.

playground

Often that means the hard way.

Gem climbing

She loves to explore.

she gets exasperated by her dear old mom, with that obnoxious camera

gem playground

she vacillates between outgoing and shy

gem watching

and most any problem can be solved by some time in a swing with a dinosaur.

gem swing with dinosaur

My baby girl turns two today. I guess I can’t call her a baby anymore.

Happy Birthday, Baby.  (ok, I’m going to keep calling her baby till she makes me stop, and maybe, accidently, after that, too)

Not Now

Not Now

I get so tired of New Age Gurus and other “Experts” telling me I have to focus on the present. My memories are a great source of joy; they also contain the lessons I’ve learned that make me who I am today. The future is my goal, it’s why I endure today.

seattle houseboat communityBecause, let’s face it: sometimes NOW sucks. Sometimes it’s downright unbearable.

If I focused only on the present, I wouldn’t endure the hives that come with exercise. If now was all that mattered, I’d eat chocolate all day. I wouldn’t be taking classes required for graduation in subjects that don’t interest me. I wouldn’t have the goal of graduating. I’d never take the potential hangover into consideration when opening, or finishing, a bottle of wine. I’d spend my rent money on airfare to Hawaii, or France, or Greece.

If I lived only for the moment, I wouldn’t have gone through chemotherapy.

If I lived my life in the now, I likely wouldn’t have a family. My marriage started with the idea of the two of us spending the rest of our lives together. You have to look ahead to make those kinds of dreams. I would also be repeating the same mistakes over and over, because learning from those mistakes requires looking back.

I realize that there may be a time at the end of life when now is all I have. I’ll take that when I get there. Until then, I will continue to enjoy my memories, and reach for my goals.

I’m not opposed to embracing the moment. I’ve written about how my daughter gave me the gift of now. It’s important to live in the present, but it has it’s time and place. We need a balance. Each moment of our lives must be informed by our past, and driven by our dreams and goals for the future. Otherwise we’re just stagnant hedonists, and that’s just pathetic.

Dear Gem – Month 23

Dear Gem – Month 23

Today is the one year anniversary of my cancer diagnosis. This is actually a big day for me. It’s the anniversary of the day my life was turned inside out, and it has put me on a wild emotional roller coaster ride.  Thinking about this cancerversary has eaten up all my energy and focus lately – right in the middle of midterms for my school and due dates for my other writing projects, as well as finals for daddy’s school, and his preparation for teaching classes next quarter, and all the other urgencies and emergencies we tackle day after day.  Here we are less than two weeks away from your second birthday, and I’m just now getting around to writing this letter for your 23rd month. I haven’t even started planning your birthday party.

Don’t go thinking you are being neglected. You are by far the best part of my day – the one I will drop everything for, no matter what.

Dear Gem

But it’s important to know that there are times when life is like this.  There are times when everything seems to be coming at you from all different directions, right while you’re dealing with an emotionally heavy load, and you just can’t seem to get anything done. Forget everything, it’s hard to accomplish even one thing. It’s hard to focus; when you react to one urgency, 3 more show up right away from other arenas. You bounce from crisis to crisis, putting out fires without ever touching those all important items on your to do list…

Yup, everybody has days like that. It’s part of the human condition.

That is the most important thing to know about this situation. That when you are overwhelmed like this, you are not alone. Everyone else has been there, they know what it feels like.  The details may differ, but the everything-all-at-once-ness of it is universal.

Dear Gem

Lately, you’ve taken to holding your little hand up, palm out, and telling me to “Stop” when things aren’t going quite the way you think they should.  I’m not quite sure where you got that from, it’s not something that I do, but that idea might be right where you need to start in order to get through a situation like this.  Well, without the hand gesture. Most grownups don’t respond very well to that particular gesture. But take a minute. Stop everything.  You might even need to tell people that unless someone is bleeding or on fire, you need 5, or 10, or 50 uninterrupted minutes to sort things out.  Lock yourself in a closet if you have to, and take some time for yourself.

Taking a long walk is also a great option, if you’re in a place where you can do that. An outdoors walk is best. Yoga is also a great option for releasing nervous energy and helping you regain focus.

Then once you’ve expended a good bit of that nervous energy, come back and pull out a notepad and start writing. Write whatever. Anything and everything that comes into your head. Just dump it all. Let it all out. I call this the brain dump. I got the idea from the Artist’s Way, where you start each day with writing time.  The idea is that all these little stressful bits and pieces of everything that you’re carrying around with you are keeping you from connecting with your creativity. While I don’t necessarily do pages every day in the morning, I do agree with the general idea.  I find that all that crap floating around in my brain gets in the way of my productivity as well. So just empty your brain onto the page. Shred the pages when you’re done if you like, this is for you and no one else. You’re just clearing your head of all the noise and static.

Now you can start writing your to do list and prioritizing items. This whole process could be done in half an hour or less, but would likely be more effective if you invested a little more time.

Of course this wont make all those emergencies go away. But it will help you dodge, parry, duck, or deal with all the crap that comes flying at you.

I went through that process myself today, and as a result, I’ve decided that your birthday party is not going to happen in March. And since I have a conference and finals in April, it might even be later. I suppose we could just cancel the party altogether, but I do love getting all our friends and family together, and it doesn’t happen very often. I have also been looking forward to using your birthday party as an opportunity to say thank you to all the people who have been so supportive of us through this entire cancer ordeal (and I can’t bear the thought of missing one of your birthday parties). I still don’t know what I’m going to do as far as that is concerned. I just know I’m not going to put the time and energy into a party for this month.

Dear Gem

I have already started rounding up and just telling people you are two years old. There’s a part of me that resists this still, but you are behaving like a two year old. Yes, the temper tantrums, and the back arching, and the constant testing of boundaries, but also a more sophisticated sense of humor, you can count to ten, know all of the letters, and draw these amazing little smiley faces.

We’ve had a rough, and very busy month. You even had your first Emergency Room visit with a significant fever and cold. But we got through it all, and we had a lot of laughs, too.

You bring so much joy to our lives. I’ve had a very difficult year, but there has not been one day since you were born where you did not brighten and improve my day.

I love you so much.

Mommy

It’s Not the Same

It’s Not the Same

Yesterday I spent the day manning the door at a wine-tasting representing 16 different local wineries. Every year, this  event chooses a different charity to which the proceeds are donated. This year, the beneficiary was the Seattle affiliate of the Young Survival Coalition, which supports pre-menopausal women with breast cancer.

Most people, as they came through the door, were thrilled to learn that the proceeds of the event would benefit @YSCSeattle. One woman, however, was not.  She took exception to the fact that this charity focused on the needs of young women. “It’s all the same!” she insisted. I started to launch into the standard spiel, when she fixed a look on me that clearly said she would not hear more  on the issue, and any further discussion was unwelcome. I let her pass with a smile, and turned my attention back to the door.

Since she wouldn’t hear me then, ya’ll get to hear me now.  I’m here to tell you, it’s Not the Same. (Just let me be clear here: these opinions are my own, I am not speaking as an agent of YSC Seattle.)

It’s not the same

Cancer affects everyone differently, and it’s a devastating diagnosis regardless of age. I don’t know exactly why this woman took exception to the age focus of the Young Survival Coalition.  I would have asked her, had I been able to engage in conversation; short of that, I can only guess.  Perhaps she felt it was an issue of ageism, that young women are perceived as more valuable than older women. I can imagine her frustration if that is the case. But understanding how a young woman’s breast cancer is different from an elderly woman’s cancer reveals issues that are much more complex. An elderly woman’s life is just as valuable as a young woman’s life, but the issues they encounter as a result of their cancer are quite different.

We go through a number of different stages through the life cycle, and cancer affects people in each different stage of life differently as well.  A three-year-old diagnosed with breast cancer may relate better to other toddlers with cancer than a group of 30-year-olds or a bunch of 80-year-olds.  Regardless of where we are in the life cycle, we tend to relate better to peers within our own age group who have similar experiences and challenges.

The truth is that the vast majority of the services provided for women with breast cancer focus on elderly women.  Aside from those sponsored by the Young Survival Coalition, I was the youngest by a good 20 to 30 years at most of the cancer related activities in which I have participated. Young women with cancer have different needs, socially and medically.

Lets talk about that for a minute

  • Young women with breast cancer tend to have much more aggressive cancers that are diagnosed at a much later stage, meaning it’s more frequently deadly.
  • Most studies exclude women under 40, meaning those with the more aggressive cancers are not included in much of the breast cancer research.

Well, that’s a little frustrating.

There are other issues as well.  What happens if you are diagnosed with cancer at the height of your career?  When women still have to work twice as hard to even approach equal pay with men, adding a cancer diagnosis significantly impacts your ability to make a living.  And with health insurance tied to your job, that further complicates things.  Sure, there’s FMLA that is supposed to protect your job, but that’s only if you work for a big company. And COBRA extends your coverage if you can manage paying 103% of the full cost, on top of your co-pay and the 20% the insurance doesn’t cover. These rules are there to protect employees, but it doesn’t always work. There are ways around them, and corporations can afford lawyers, employees can’t.

Then there is the whole issue of saving for retirement. We had to empty out our retirement accounts at 40 years old to get through my year of cancer. That means we’re starting over from scratch, zero retirement saved up at this moment.  We’ve already accepted the fact that retirement is just not going to be an option, we’ll just work till we fall over.

Now, imagine the single mom trying to balance a career, raising her children, and cancer in light of all that.

It’s not the same

And it helps to be able to discuss these issues with others who have gone through it as well.

Then there is the sex issue. I’m not so naive as to assume that elderly women don’t have sex.  Considering that I hope to live long enough to be an elderly woman, I’d like to believe there is plenty of good sex involved. I’d also like to think that in my 80s my husband and I will be celebrating our 50th wedding anniversary.  I could be way off here, but I imagine that the impact of a mastectomy on a 50 year old marriage might be a little different than for a woman who just got married, or is planning a wedding, or still looking for the love of her life. I understand that is a huge assumption on my part, but I think it’s one worth considering.

Now let’s talk about fertility.  I don’t know how 80 year old women feel about their fertility, or lack thereof, but 20- or 30-somethings with a rapidly-ticking biological clock tend to think about it quite a bit. To have it suddenly and abruptly threatened or destroyed adds another layer of stress to the young woman facing a breast cancer diagnosis. Once you’ve survived cancer, your dreams have to be rewritten.  Adoption? Sure, for those who are willing to adopt out to a cancer survivor. But don’t forget that cancer has already depleted finances, so the exorbitant fees charged for adoption are even more difficult to overcome. Surrogacy? Also an option, provided you are financially able to preserve the eggs before treatment and pay for the fertility services and the surrogate after treatment.

Most women diagnosed with cancer at an older age have adult children.  That is a completely different situation from a woman who is diagnosed with breast cancer while she is still breast feeding her baby, or worse, while she is still pregnant. Imagine having to decide whether to proceed with chemo during pregnancy, or postpone it until the baby is born.

My breast cancer negatively impacted my daughter’s health. We had to emergency wean her for the mastectomy, and she lost two pounds; that’s a huge loss for an infant. It was several months before she was really thriving again. After the mastectomy, I couldn’t pick her up either, compounding my feelings of guilt while my baby was failing to thrive. What got me through this difficult time with my sanity intact? Being able to connect with other young women who had been through what I was going through. Being able to see that it is possible to raise bright and vibrant children while going through this dark experience made all the difference for me.

A room full of elderly women with breast cancer would never have been able to help me get through this in the way that the young survivors did.

It’s Not the Same.

And I’ll bet an 80 year old woman would not be very comfortable sitting in our support group either.  She might have trouble finding someone with whom she could relate as well.  The Young Survival Coalition doesn’t focus on age out of disrespect for elderly women, in fact reaching old age is one of our goals. We focus on age because young women are an underserved demographic of breast cancer survivors, and this is a way to get them some sorely needed support.

You can learn more about my cancer story here:

my cancer story | Judy Schwartz Haley

 

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