My Own Celebration

Yesterday, while working very hard to avoid working very hard, I stumbled over a new (to me) blog – Scientiae.  Dedicated to blog posts by women in STEM fields, monthly postings address subjects relevant to women in these areas (gender roles, hurdles, and some good stuff too).  This month’s carnival was titled “Celebrations” and I missed it, having just discovered this whole thing.  But, as I was reading the carnival today on Rocket Scientista, I thought about some of my own things I have to celebrate and, well, I’m always up for some good time-wasting.  So.

Big, and small, celebrations for me:

First, the big one.  I’ve posted about it before, but I’m (now more than) one year out from surgery, officially marking one cancer-free year.  It’s been quite the roller coaster and I’m definitely still adjusting to this “new normal,” as so many survivors refer to life after cancer.  Yesterday was a tough day for me and I really can’t tell you why, except that I have these days now and then.  But then today, I nearly forgot to go to a routine follow-up appointment with my surgeon.  That has to be a good sign, right?  Maybe I am finally starting to move past all this.

Second, a successful conference.  Actually, I have mixed feelings over the conference I attended last week.  On the whole I don’t think I got as much out of it as I have from previous conferences.  Many of the talks I wanted to go to overlapped and while some of them were totally unrelated and a little overlap is to be expected, many were very similar and I doubt I’m the only one who had to chose between talks relevant to his/her research.  (Yeah, that’s right, I’m not going to use “hir” or any other annoying non-word.  I hate those.)  On the other hand, a number of people did actually visit my Saturday-morning poster.  Many gave good feedback on the study I presented and served as a good sounding board for changes I’d like to implement in my dissertation.  So that, ladies and gentlemen, is a good thing.  I also think I made a pretty good impression on a few important people – also a good thing.

Third, a publication!  It was a long-time coming, but my first PhDville paper was accepted a couple weeks ago and will hopefully hit the presses soon.  That’s pub #3 for me, but the first directly related to my current line of research.

Fourth and fifth, some really horrible eating the past 10 days has not turned into weight gain and my hair is noticeably longer.  Hurray for small victories!

That Will NEVER Happen to Me

Somehow, this evening, I got to thinking about things I always thought would never happen to me.  Why I thought I was immune to these things I’ll never know.  Maybe it’s just the teenage or 20-something way.

First there’s the obvious one: breast cancer at 28.  Breast cancer at all, really.  Or even cancer at all.  But it happened, and it happened at 28.  No need to rehash that again, I just did it yesterday.

Other things:

The freshman 15

Ok, so it wasn’t 15 and it wasn’t (all) freshman.  You see, freshman year I was an athlete.  I put on some weight, couldn’t tell you how much.  But some of it was muscle – never lifted so much in my life – and some of it was fat.  You’re telling me 2 egg salad sandwiches for lunch on a daily basis isn’t healthy?  Who knew?  Even so, over the course of College: The Bachelor(of science) Years got me a good 30 lb weight gain.

So I guess then that’s true.  I didn’t get the freshman 15.  I got the college 30.  W00t!

Thankfully I also managed to lose it…but not til 2007, 4 years after graduating from college.

The chemotherapy 10 (+)

Sticking with the weight gain theme.  Before I started chemotherapy I read so many places that women tend to gain weight during chemotherapy for breast cancer.  Not just gain weight, but gain fat and lose muscle mass.  Not good!  But not me, right?  I’m an athlete.  I mean forget that getting cancer at all spun that theory right upside down, whatever.  I’m an athlete, I exercise, I’ll maintain my weight and my muscle mass just fine, thank you.

Yeah.  Ok.  Want to know what my upper arms look like right now?

Bingo wings!

Ok, so it isn’t that bad, but they’re flabby!  Flabby, I tell you.  Not like they were post-college-30 (thankfully I did lose that) but flabby all the same.

After my first adriamycin/cytoxan infusion I lost 4 pounds.  Down to 131 lbs (at 5’10″) I told myself that I’d be happy to stay between 130 and 140.  Well I did it – barely.

Grey hair

Yep, got that.  My mom started going grey in her late 20′s.  That will never happen to me! I thought.  Once again, wrong.  I swear to you, my post-chemo salt and pepper hair is much saltier than my pre-chemo hair.  And that leads me to the other thing…

Coloring my hair!

Yes, ladies and gents.  I always said that when my hair did go grey I would gracefully accept it and never try to hide it, never try to be anyone but myself.  Well you know what I decided?  I can be myself with red hair just as well as I can with salt and pepper hair.  So…as soon as I have enough to make it worth the $10…

Wow.  You know what’s really sad? I just went to the Loreal website to find a picture of the hair color I’ve used in the past and found out they’re discontinuing it!  Noooo!  Now I’ll have to find a new one…sigh…

Anyway, do you know what I’ve found through all of these things that would never happen to me?  I’m still me.  And these things are all manageable, though some more easily than others (hello box of hair color!).

Today I went to a new (to me) exercise class.  The social worker at my cancer center told me about it back in June or July, when I was recovering from surgery and hadn’t yet started chemo.  At the time I decided not to go.  The athlete in me was “better” than that class.  After all – the women were all likely to be (much) older than me, less fit than me, and in different places in life.  All of that is true.  Now, however, I’m ashamed to have ever let those thoughts tell me that it wasn’t the right class for me.  I attended a healthy lifestyles education session on Saturday morning, and the woman who leads this exercise program came and gave a short talk.  She was absolutely hilarious and made it sound like such a great time, so I decided I’d try it this week.  So worth it.  The ladies there were so welcoming to me, though I did have one awkward moment when one woman asked why I was there.  (Um…because I had cancer?)  Everyone laughed through the whole class and I was able to modify the exercises to make them a little bit more difficult.  I left the class feeling energized and in a great mood – perfect.

So in all of these things that would never happen to me…maybe there’s some good to be found.