Greed.....Not So Good?

Wow. I was surprised to read this. Michael Douglas has Stage IV throat cancer. But was so so pleasantly refreshed to read that:

a.) He openly admits his cancer was caused by drinking and smoking.
b.) He talks about how his chemo and radiation have knocked him on his a$$.

I also felt some camraderie for the poor guy in that he went undiagnosed at first. Sounds verrrry familiar to my story where I was first put on 3 different antibiotics, then told I had pneumonia, then told I had a benign tumor and then was finally diagnosed correctly with NHL.

Not to mention the fact that he had to tell his 2 small children about how sick he was. I pray every day that Lucas will never have a sick parent.

Sending the good vibes, thoughts and prayers westward to Hollywood.

Coming Around Full Circle

Last night I had my last appointment with the oncologist who treated my Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and got us through that hellish part of my past. Not because I'm done seeing doctors, but because Dr. B. is retiring from the practice. It was not easy to hold back tears. It felt something like a Lifetime movie - here I was, fulled cured with my new baby to show my oncologist as he's retiring. Cue the sappy music. But I really was sad at the prospect of not seeing him again. He was glad to see Lucas and I think he was glad that he was the one who got to tell me that recurrance of the kind of cancer I had is virtually none. It must have made for some closure for both of us. Mom and I gave him some cards and a little token of appreciation for all that he did for us. Below is what I wrote in his card.

Dear Dr. Berger,

How do I say thank you for a miracle? We came to you not knowing what was in store for us, fearing everything. After our first visit (and an impromptu bone marrow biopsy!) our fears were lessened and we had a clearer picture of the road to recovery. You told us what we were facing and how we would treat it. You always gave us all of our options and treated me as a whole person, not just the part of me that was sick.

And now I'm able not only to come to you healthy and still in remissino, but share my son with you - a child I was unsure I was even going to be able to have. So I say thank you. Thank you for my health, for treating me, for giving me all the hope in the world. I wish you nothing but happiness (and a little relaxation!) in your retirement, but will miss you and miss seeing you very much.

All our best,

Tiffany, Tom and Lucas

December 27 - A Day That Will Live in Infamy

How could I have just drifted past this day without noticing? I didn't realize the importance of it until I was driving to Freeport to give a lesson. (I had also forgotten how much thinking I get done while driving more than 5 minutes.)

Three years ago on above date, I had my last chemo treatment. Meaning, 12/27/04 was the "official" start of my remission. Meaning, if Dr. B. still holds to what he said at the beginning of all this, I'm "officially" cured of my Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

It's so weird to even let myself think like this. When I first entered remission I agonized about how I was going to make it 3 years to be considered cured. How could I get through 36 months of thinking about not having to go through all that again? Every day it would creep up in my mind.

But then I started busying myself with shows, lessons, work. And that helped a lot. And then, with this new little guy taking up my time, I really forgot about how close I was. And December 27th just slipped by without me even noticing.

So here I am. Cured. Hopefully for good.

Lost in the Music

I had completely forgotten what yesterday was. Utterly and completely. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Should I be cognisant of the fact that 3 years ago yesterday I was diagnosed with cancer and started a long climb uphill to being healthy again? Or should I just let it fade into the past, as far as it'll go?

I was checking my email before dashing out to the Sunday matinee just in case there were any last minute directives from the music director. But there was an email from my dad. It was a journal entry had made 2 Februarys ago about a nice dinner we had shared and how it gave us some normalcy from the then hard routine of radiation treatments (I had driven 50 miles from work to radiation and then another 30 or so home - 5 days a week for 3 1/2 weeks). And under that was a new entry about how far everything has come and how I have this new miraculous event going on and where we all were 3 years ago. And WHAM! It was like a wet towel hit me in the face. How could I have forgotten? I mean, fall always reminds me of that hellacious time, where we didn't know what was going on with me, what was wrong, what would fix it. And I just lost it. Cried and cried and cried. Luckily, it's a long-ish, quiet drive to the theatre because I cried the whole way there. It was as if something had been bottled up for a long time and had to be let out.

By the time I got to the theatre, I was a little more composed. Crying had stopped and I was ready to just go it and play. I decided to just throw myself into the score in front of me and get lost in it. And it worked. I played really well (or so I thought!), and enjoyed the music. It's really a good score and we're at the point where we know our parts and are really just cooking together. The tempos are familiar and we just click along with it. I'm not even feeling pukey when those 2 honkin' cello solos come up now, I'm more comfortable with those.

So even though I was dragging my feet to get up and ready yesterday, it was the best thing in the world for me to have played. Cleared my head, got me going and made me feel good. While I was playing I kept saying to myself, "F&ck you cancer, you haven't taken ANYTHING away from me." A little cliched, yes, but true.