My Lucky Fishin' Cap

When a person goes fishing, a necessity, only 3rd behind sunglasses and sunscreen is a fishin' hat. It is always good to keep the glare from the water off your eyes and to protect your scalp. Several years ago Mark and I decided to do fishing trips for our family vacations instead of the cross country trips. Of course with fishing trips there is more packing and planning to do than with the cross country trip. Especially with 4 kids it is quite a challenge. The end result however is a more relaxing trip. I don't have to tell anyone with kids how stressful a one way two day car trip can be!!!! I got off the beaten path a bit. (We are in the process of planning our summer vacation so I am getting a bit excited!) As I said, it is important to always have a good fishin' hat. So, before that fishing trip several years ago, I found my lucky fishin' cap at Gander Mountain. (on clearance no less) It is nothing special really. It is a "life is good" cap with a simple looking fish on the front and "life is good" embroidered on the back. It is a country blue color. (I'm thinking it was on clearance because it is a man's cap and I'm thinking most men wouldn't wear that color.) I love my lucky fishin' cap. I have caught many nice size northern wearing that cap and also had a lot of fun on the lake in it.

A few weeks ago Mark and the boys went to the annual Ducks Unlimited banquet. Incidentally, Kyle won a rifle in the Greenwing drawing. Whereas Kyle was lucky winning that, Jeffrey seemed to be the cap king. He won something like 5 caps. So having won 4 already he picked out a pink Ducks Unlimited cap for me. It was quite sweet of him. I went to put my new cap away with my others. Panic hit me at first because my lucky fishin cap wasn't there!

This hat has come to mean a lot to me over the past 8 months. When my hair fell out in September I had many different outfits for my head. I had a wig, many scarves and other more stylish hats, mainly for work and church. However, most of the time I wore my lucky fishin' cap. I always had my cap handy at home in case the doorbell rang or if someone other than a few of Kathryn and Jim's friends were over. I wore it on Halloween to answer the door. At 9:00 I thought there would be no more children so I took off my cap. I thought wrong! Forgetting that I had removed my cap I answered the door. Who wouldn't expect to see an uncle Fester look alike answering the door on Halloween??!! I think I scared that little girl!!

My cap came with me to every doctor appointment, chemo treatment and that fateful January 13th day when I said goodbye to the girls. I wore my lucky fishin' cap on the long walk to the preop room. I wore my cap the whole time I was waiting to go in for surgery and I wore it into the operating room. I was actually quite nervous about losing my cap so they tied a tag with my name on it to the back. When I finally had to take it off and put on the surgery cap, I remember watching the nurse put it in a plastic bag feeling quite protective. After I woke up, they handed me my cap out of the plastic bag and I put it on. This cap is almost like a friend to me.

On Tuesday, March 16th I had had just about enough. I had spent the weekend before at the Minnesota state high school hockey tournaments having not worn anything on my head for most of the tournament. My hair had grown enough that people thought I just had a short haircut. So, I retired my wig, my scarves and most of my hats. I hung up a few of my caps on the hook in my closet in preparation for summer. The rest have been placed deep into the back of my closet, hopefully for good. It felt so good! On Sunday March 21st I used shampoo for the first time since September 14th! Of course I don't have to blow dry or anthing. While my hair is wet I simply comb it down. My hair now is about a 1/2 inch long. It is baby soft and the same color. I don't know if it will be curly yet. Frankly, if one more person tells me that it will grow back curly I may just explode. (consider yourself warned!) A part of me wants curly hair but a part of me doesn't. The part of me that doesn't want it doesn't want it because it represents the difficulty of what I have been through. It is a reminder of having cancer. Frankly I want to feel like myself again. The part of me that wants it wants it because I think it would be fun. There are many things I could do with it.

My lucky fishin cap has been with me for so many things and maybe has brought me a little luck even off the water. I know that the power of prayer, good medical care and positive thinking have helped me beat LB. I have been on more prayer chains than I can begin to remember. For this I am grateful. Maybe my lucky fishin' cap has given all of these weapons a little boost. In addition to helping me catch the elusive northern, maybe it has helped me beat LB.

So, in my panic I kept searching and found my cap hiding underneath my bathrobe!! Now my lucky fishin' cap can get back to what it knows best, helping me catch the big northern!!

Ringin' The Bell

Well, today was the day. After 6 weeks, 30 treatments and lost skin, I have finished. There is a bell in the radiation treatment waiting room that reads:
"Ring out, ring this bell three times well, the toll to clearly say:
My treatments are done, it's course has run and I am on my way."

The tradition is that after your last treatment, you get to ring the bell three times. Today I rang the bell. Quite loudly actually. My kids and my husband were there to watch me as I rang the bell as loud as I could. (The technicians in the back told me to ring it loud enough for them to hear.) I rang it loud not just for them but for myself. After I rang the bell, there were hugs and kisses from my family. My outspoken Kyle was of the opinion that it was too loud. He dramatically covered his hears in surprise. In addition to my family cheering me, so was everyone in the lobby.

Although I didn't cry today, I have tears right now as this is all hitting me and crashing in on me. I have tears of relief. It has been 7 months of thinking about cancer nearly everyday and worrying about the next group of tasks, treatment, doctor visits, and surgery. I stressed about trying to stay focused at work and am tired of constantly trying to be positive. It was important for me to try to stay positive even when I didn't want to. It was an effort though. I see radiation oncology in June, I see Dee in August, (and every 3-4 months for the next 10 years.) That is it! Just tamoxifen everyday for the next 5 years.

Of course I would be a little more ecstatic if it weren't for burns that run from around my armpit down to approximately where my bra used to be and over to the middle of my scar. I am told that my skin will begin healiing over the next week or so and I should start feeling "normal" (whatever that is I can't remember) in about 2-3 weeks. I am alternating between silvadene cream and xeroform on the skin. It is actually worse than a bad sunburn. My skin is a fuscia color in most spots. It is warm to the touch. Luckily I don't have complete feeling back yet from surgery. I am just uncomfortable. Every once in awhile I get a shot of pain. It doesn't last long but enough to make me flinch. But, I am done and I can deal with a few more weeks of discomfort. The last 5 treatments were a boost to the high risk spots so the burn around my neck is starting to heal. The last 5 treatments took less than 5 minutes compared to the 20-30 mintures for the previous 25.

Something occurred to me the other day that I hadn't thought of before. This isn't necessarily the spot to put it but it is on my mind. My first visit to the breast clinic, as I waited to see Dr. Ghosh for the first time, I saw a poster on the wall. It had samples of different sizes of tumors, comparing them to the size of a pea and of a button etc. It was showing the importance of early detection. The survival rate for a tumor the size of a button (this was the approximate size of mine) was 25%. If you look at the glass half empty that is 75% chance of death. The poster talked about learning your breasts and doing self exams regularly. I was beating myself up over this. I couldn't remember if I had missed a month, had I felt something sooner but ignored it? Dr. Ghosh was so wonderful at that time and told me that we can not go back but can only go forward. I was dealing with it now and our goal was survival. I was in the mind set that bilateral mastectomy was going to be the best option for survivial. If I had found it earlier I probably would have planned a lumpectomy followed with chemo and then radiation. My plan would have been different and the surgeon would have never found the atypical fibrotic hyperplasia in my healthy breast. The hyperplasia would have most certainly led to breast cancer on the other side. I am certainly not advocating being non-chalant about self-exams. I am just saying that I got lucky. I am thankful for being a little absent-minded.

I'm not sure what I will do with my freedom. As I said when I finished chemo it is a strange feeling. Of course I'm glad but the people I saw everyday, I won't see anymore. As I was leaving dressing room 5 (we are creatures of habit aren't we?) to go for my last treatment, one of the technicians who I had seen everyday for 6 weeks came to see me. She wasn't on machine B today but wanted to wish me luck. She gave me a big hug. Like I said, such a strange feeling.

There is so much that has brought me to this place today. Surely a day of celebration. 7 months ago, I was so scared of all that was to come. All of the unknowns were looming out there. The fear was almost unbearable sometimes. I wasn't just scared for myself but I was scared for my family. As a mother, one doubts oneself all of the time. However, as much as I may make mistakes with my kids, at least I am there, they know I love them and will always try to do what's best for them. (they don't always agree with the what's best for them do they?)

So today I walked the long hallway past the canvases of names of survivors for the 30th time. I walked into the lobby to my waiting family and I rang the bell.