My daughter Z. (who will be 9 in less than a week) just informed me that she was going outside and to hold all her calls.
I decided to start a blog. I'm not a writer by any means, but have been thinking about trying this for a long while now. Today, not sure why today, I decided to take the plunge. So here I am!
I'll use this first post as a mini-autobiography. I am 48 years old, married to a wonderful man named A. for 22+ years, and we have one child (Z.). A. & I spent about 2 1/2 years trying to conceive her, and after about a year or so of fertility treatments I became pg, had a miscarriage, and then got pg again with Z. When I was pg 22 weeks my cervix opened up and I went into premature labor. I was on completely hospital bedrest for almost 7 weeks when she was born 11 weeks premature almost 9 years ago. She was 2 lbs. 13 oz. and spent 8 weeks in the NICU but you'd never know it to look at her. I am a stay at home mom and actually I was not working outside the home for a few years before my daughter was born. I had been working an extremely low paying, pretty boring job as an assistant registrar in an art college when I developed a problem with panic disorder and agoraphobia. Over the years, particularly after my daughter was born and especially after my subsequent cancer diagnoses, I worked through my anxiety issues. The only one that remains is that I just can't seem to get myself to drive on superhighways. Probably not that irrational actually.
I grew up in the country but have lived in a large city off and on since leaving home for college. I have a BFA and MFA in Photography, although most of my photographic work these days tend toward snapshots and scrapbooks. I have been doing some work with watercolor crayons and collage lately. I occasionally write poetry. While I have shown my work off and on over the years I have not made a fine art career a goal in my life.
I am a two time cancer survivor, two unrelated gynecological cancers. The first when Z. was 1 years old and the 2nd when she was 7. Both were late stage cancers, the first being stage 4b vulvar cancer and the 2nd being stage 3c endometrial cancer. I had 6 rounds of chemotherapy for my first cancer and went into a miraculous remission (miraculous because my odds of survival were very low). For the 2nd cancer I had a hysterectomy/lymph node removal, 25 rounds of external pelvic radiation, 3 rounds of high dose brachytherapy (internal radiation), and 6 rounds of chemotherapy. I finished treatment about 14 months ago and am currently "dancing with NED" (no evidence of disease) from both cancers. Less than 2 years after my first cancer my sister L. was diagnosed with metastic breast cancer. She died less than a year before my 2nd cancer was diagnosed. Currently my father is in treatment for a recurrence of prostate cancer.
With my 2nd cancer I started going to the local Wellness Community (an amazing place for people with cancer and their support/caregivers). I have participated in various programs there, art, poetry, yoga, family days, etc. I'm generally there a couple afternoons a week at the least.
Okay, so that was not so mini, oh well!
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2 comments:
Wow, Michele, to see your story summarized like this gives me a new appreciation of all you've been through. Looking forward to hearing what you've learned from it all.
Hi Eileen! Yeah, it kind of looks like one thing after another when it's all written up like that. One thing that I found was that each thing prepared me for the next thing in a way. Like before my fertility treatments I was kind of phobic about drs., hospitals and medical stuff. Going through that (and my difficult pg and Zoe's subsequent hospital stay) helped me get used to it so that by the time I got to the cancer stuff I was at least not freaking out about having to be in the hospital. And my pg helped me get used to all the below the waist poking and prodding! I "assume the position" so quickly and easily now that one of my drs. even joked about it during an exam LOL!
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