thewriterUPstairs

  I write for the Cancer City Star.

                What?

  I looked at the words I’d just typed and laughed.

  I’ve passed through surgery, chemo, hair loss, radiation, weight gain, purple fingernails and more sleepless nights than the mother of a newborn. And now, apparently, I have chemo brain.

   But I’m a cancer survivor.

   The purple T-shirt given to me by Relay for Life says so in big white letters across the back: S U R V I V O R.

    Speaking of gifts. Please, no more items with pink breast cancer ribbons. How many does a girl need anyway? And frankly I don’t want to be reminded of the big C every time I open my closet. Would You? ( Attn Suzie:  I do love the blankie and still use it A LOT.)

     For the record, this is what cancer survivors want: chocolate, massages, new clothes, cool weather and vacations to Cape Cod. Oh, a best-selling book with my name on it would be grand.

   Back to Relay for Life. How to describe it? Really, good, people.

   I’ve been compiling community news for several years now and every year local Relay for Life groups have events and I think, nice: Not Interested.

   This year when the press release landed in my inbox I read it thoughtfully as I tried to run my fingers through the ½ inch hair on my head. It spoke to me.

   Then I spoke to Liberty’s Relay chairwoman, Julie Davidson, who told me that the Relay is about celebrating life. “When we do Relay for Life we want to enjoy life and take it to a different level than being sad,” she said.

   So my knight-on-the-white-steed and I attended Relay’s free survivor dinner and a few weeks later attended the actual Relay at South Valley Jr. High School. That was before the sun moved 10 degrees closer to the earth. The night was most pleasant. Colorful tents covered the grass, children ran, people smiled, purple balloons floated.

   I discovered that Relay isn’t about running or walking a track or fundraising, although thanks go to all who helped raise $57,000-plus for Relay for Life of Liberty.

   The Relay is about people.

   The youngest survivor was a child. He wore purple with the rest of us as we walked the first lap together amidst applause and cheers from our caregivers/support teams/friends/families.

   Two Liberty teachers in purple survivor shirts walked out of my children’s past and alongside me on the track. Veteran survivor Sharyl Booth looked on while Cindy Svehla and I compared our post-chemo ‘dos. Hers was dark/short/curly. Mine, white/short /straight.

   I got a free massage from Karen Carmack from Wellspring School of Allied Health and walked and talked a few laps with newish friend Jonna Wensel from the City of Liberty Team. She’s Liberty’s Community Development Manager and came like many others, to show support.

   Five hundred people attended the relay. Many of them were part of teams such as: Eradicators, Rockettes and Knight Striders which raise money year-round for cancer patients and research.

   My new favorite DJ, Shane McLintlock from Q104, made me celebrity for a minute and interviewed me from the grandstand. His father had cancer and McLintlock has performed at 133 Relay for Life events. Shane told me to let him know if he could do anything for me. I believe him.

   People ask me if I’m cured of cancer. I don’t think there’s an answer for that other than I don’t know. I juice carrots, take 30-minute walks in the bright sun to get my vitamin D, and still go in for my tri-weekly Herceptin infusions.

   Relay for Life gave me a good dose of celebrating-life medicine, the kind that comes from people who really care. Thanks everyone.

   Today I had a bad hair day. Do you know how wonderful it is to have a bad hair day after five-plus months of no-hair days? A bad hair day, even if the hair is only an inch long—straight or curly— is a wonderful thing.

(Printed in The Kansas City Star, Aug. 1, 2012)

 by Norma King

                This will be my last spring—to be bald, to be radiated, to be able to blame cancer and chemo for my bad memory, or for the abundance of Fatheads still driving on Missouri roads.

I count nine months—that’s long enough to produce a baby—since I started my cancer journey. I’ve chronicled some of my experiences and feelings in this place, boldly declaring I have breast cancer and  my lump was the size of a Skittle. (I used to say the size of an Advil—boor-ing.)

I watched as my hair fell out, complained about cardboard food, and endured sleeping on my back almost every night because I didn’t want to pop my port or invite lymphedema. My oncologist would say that I’m very imaginative. (What is a port? It’s a portacath implanted in the upper chest which connects directly into a vein which connects to the heart which allows the chemo drugs to be infused through the body quickly. And it’s about the size of a butterscotch candy gone sci-fi. )

So now it’s spring. What a great time to be released from the jowls of the monster cancer! And you know what’s weird? My Zodiac sign is Cancer. Nasty sense of humor, that Mr. Zodiac. It’s also known as the Crab. Why? Some say the Latin for crab is cancer; and others say that Greek Physician Galen thought some tumors looked like crabs. Whatever…I think the Zodiac for those of us born June 22-July 22 should be changed to something more positive—like Redbud or Cardinal or Chocolate.

Let’s talk about radiation.

Besides being a cancer-buster, so they tell me, radiation comes with tattoos.

I have five tattoos. Look at the period at the end of this sentence. That’s about the size of my tattoos. You’d figure as a reward for four months of chemo and seven weeks of radiation—not to mention my bald head—I could get a butterfly or smiley face.

But no, they just mark you with the dots, then when radiation time comes they line up the dots in the crosshairs of some green laser beams and zap you while you hold perfectly still and gaze at the Lucy and Snoopy Band-Aid above you on the linear accelerator machine.

 I needed 35 radiation treatments. The first five weeks were spent having invisible, buzzing photons shower down on me from above. Then I had a week of electrons zapping just my scar on the left breast. The final week was a reunion with photons. Here’s a description of the process which I sent my sister-in-law, Debbie:

Radiation is weird. I have to lay on this hard table, naked from the waist up (don’t like) and this gigantor machine moves around me—it’s not claustrophobic—and beams radiation into my left breast. There are usually 3-4 radiation therapists—all women—who assist, but of course, they all run out when it’s time to radiate me—and they leave me there. What does that tell you about the safety of radiation? The actual radiating is done from two different ‘fields’: 38 seconds on one, 40 seconds on the other. I’m in and out in 15 minutes. But I’m not liking all this killing-my-cells business.

I figured out later, that not only do the radiation therapists run out, they close an 18” thick steel  door behind them.

Although radiation is a solo event, the waiting area was not. The waiting area was actually the best part. I got to know other cancer patients and we bonded in our matching blue hospital gowns as we waited for our “turn” behind the steel door.

Cancer is a bad Zodiac handle, but it’s an equalizer among the special people who agree to suit up (or down, as the case may be) and fight. And I have no complaints about the radiation therapists, the radiologist or anyone else in the office. They were great.

Fortunately, I didn’t experience the bad ‘burn’ some radiation patients endure. And I’ve heard some good/bad true stories. My main side effects with radiation were fatigue and continued tingling in my fingers and toes. I count my blessings.

Ahead of me are another six months of Herceptin, an infusion for those of us who are HER2 positive. But that’s another story. Fortunately, Herceptin does not make me sick, nor make food taste like old baseball gloves.

It’s spring, I’ve got new friends, wonderful support from husband and others and I get to keep my tattoos!