Thankfulness...

I just finished a turkey and cranberry sandwich and to say that I'm feeling good would be an understatement. I love the food of Thanksgiving. I love the fall and fall colors. I love the time spent with family. I love it all.

This year is much different than last. I went in for my biopsy on my breast the day before Thanksgiving last year. We were suppose to hear back from the doctor possibly the Friday after Thanksgiving or that Monday after the long weekend, at the latest.

We spent Thanksgiving with family at our house but I remember being pensive and troubled. I remember wrestling with the whole idea of cancer. I remember wondering if I was going to die. My thoughts bobbed around like a tiny boat on the waves of a ferocious sea. I know that I made a decision back then that I was going to either trust God completely or I would fall into the abyss of anger and blame. My post from a year ago reflects this struggle.

This Friday, I take my last round of Herceptin. It will mark a full year of treatment. What a path I have walked. I never, ever once thought that I would utter the word cancer and have it pertain to me.

 I cannot say the road was easy or fun. I am thinking about a line in a movie that says that life is made up of meetings and partings. Life is also made up of blessings and sorrows co mingled. We will always have both as long as our feet are here on Earth.

I choose to celebrate the blessings. God has blessed me in immeasurable ways and my heart overflows with love and thanksgiving.


Colossians 3:15
Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful.


Psalm 95:2
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.


Colossians 4:2
Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful.


Hebrews 12:28
Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our "God is a consuming fire".


Psalm 69:30
I will praise God’s name in song and glorify him with thanksgiving.

Deer Camp

A few clues to tell you that it's deer hunting season around these parts:

• Blaze orange everywhere
• Da Yoopers are singing Second Week of Deer Camp on the radio
• Hunting widow sales at local stores
• You drive by the local restaurant and Bambi is dead on the roof of someone's Suburban

• Waking up to the sound of gunshots
• Trucks outnumber cars 2-1 
• The bar parking lots are full each evening
• Trucks and cars parked in the roadway ditches close to their hunting grounds
• More men in town than usual and all of them are wearing the above mentioned blaze orange
• Lots of hunting widows in church on Sunday

Dan shot a doe last Saturday. He's not used to the way hunting is done around here. In Colorado he elk hunted with his brothers-in-law every year and there wasn't much sitting around except in the evenings while eating supper. They would walk and walk in the mountains looking for the elk herds.

Here hunting for white tail deer is done in a deer stand. Lots of sitting and waiting and getting cold because of the sitting and waiting. Dan sat in a chair 15 -20 ft off the ground up a tree. He said sitting up there swaying in the breeze is a bit strange. I read in the paper the other day that a man died because he fell out of his stand and his gun accidentally discharged. I guess there is a safety strap that goes around you while your up the tree and he must have forgotten to use his. 

Some of the deer stands are plush. Heated and more. I remember a friend telling me that her husband's deer stand was behind their house and she could see him out there when he was hunting. She said that sometimes he was upright and other times he was not visible because he was napping. Apparently, he had a couch in his. It was his man cave on stilts. :)

Shelby and I may give it a try next season. Maybe we can find one of those heated deer stands to hunt out of. We could bring our scrap booking and card making stuff, and our iPods so we could listen to music. We could bond over hot cocoa and talk about all kinds of things. Scratch that, we will leave the hunting to the boys and just go on a girls weekend sometime!

The Blue Towels and My Power Port

When I go to get chemo, or to give blood, or anytime they access my port, the nurses come to my chair with all their tools - needles, a can of skin numbing spray, saline, and anything they might need while poking a hole in me. One of the items they bring is two, blue towels wrapped together in plastic wrap. They unwrap the two, blue towels and lay one across my shoulder before they insert the needle into my port. When they are done accessing my port, they give me the two, blue towels to take home.

Pretty much everything they use these days is disposable because the cost and risk of sterilizing tools is prohibitive. I'm guessing they can't use one towel on me and another on a different person because of sterilization rules and the risk of passing on some icky flesh eating virus or some such nastiness that lurks in the hospitals these days.

I take the blue towels home because I think it would be wasteful for them to be thrown away. Also, they make awesome dusting rags and garage towels. I have about 800 of them now. I may be giving them out as Christmas presents this year.

I was just thinking that some of you might not know what a port is. I did blog about it awhile ago. The picture below shows what my port looks like. The center circle is what the nurses stick the needle into. This dude was surgically implanted under my skin on my left upper torso just below my collar bone and sutured to a vein. The port makes getting intravenous medicine a snap. Veins accessed by an iv eventually give out after so much use. The port is much safer with the chemo drugs that were given to me, some of which can eat away skin and muscle if a vein happens to collapse.

I just found out that my port will stay in another year. The year following cancer treatment has the highest chance of recurrences so leaving it in makes sense. I will go in once a month to have it flushed with saline so that it won't get a blockage in it. Then, after a year, I will have it surgically removed.

I am so thankful for my port.

My port is higher and on the left.

My Dream

I can feel a tugging at my breast and my baby is there, nestled in the crook of my arm, suckling the nourishing milk that my body has made. It is night time and the babe is warm and sleepy in my arms. I am sitting in my favorite rocking chair. I see her head of thick, brown hair move a bit as she greedily drinks. Her chubby, little hand rests on my bosom. Nursing brings a sense of well being that calms my whole body. I'm amazed at this beautiful child in my arms. I feel so blessed to be able to sustain my little one in this way.

After she has had her fill, she slumbers. I feel myself begin to drift off to sleep.

I awake. I am sitting upright in my bed. I hear my husband's gentle breathing beside me. My hands fly to my chest. They are gone. It was just a dream. My breasts are gone.

Let It Snow, Please

It snowed last night for the first time this fall. If you are one of those strange people that despise winter and snow then you might want to stop reading here. Our family loves ALL the seasons and we adore winter.

 I guess I should clarify and say that we adore winter where it snows all winter long and the snow stays on the ground. I'm not sure why people prefer brown winters to white winters but there are a few of you out there. You know who you are, Grandpa Brown.

 Then, there are those who wish they could live somewhere tropical all year long. God bless you all. There seems to be a bunch of you. Everywhere we go, we run into weather whiners and complainers. My goodness, life is too short to live somewhere where you hate the weather. Can I suggest a move for you might be in order? Ha ha.

We were at the grocery store the other day and ran into two people who were just like us. It's rather rare so we had a snow dance right in the middle of the store. We were all anxiously awaiting the first snow.

I am waiting for a good, old fashioned, Minnesota winter. One with LOTS of snow. I pray every year. I know He hears me and one of these winters we will get pounded.

Don't get me wrong, we get snow and, usually, a foot or so stays on the ground most of the winter. I just want some of those huge storms that dump more than a foot at a time. And a lot of them in one season.

My dad says that one day I will outgrow this and I will not like winter anymore. I'm 42 and it hasn't happened yet. One of my aunts loved winter until she departed this earth. I want to be like one of the older ladies in our church that still cross country skied into her early eighties. Guess, I should learn how to cross-country ski now, huh. She also taught me how to make gorgeous ice candles. I had never heard of them before.

Ice candles on my porch last year.









Where I lived and grew up in Colorado we got our share of snow. We also got the big snow storms. But the snow would melt off and it could be 60 the next day. You never know how to dress. And when the white snow melts, there is brown everywhere.

When it started snowing last night, the kids went out into the driveway and danced around trying to catch snowflakes on their tongues. Snowflakes are rather elusive. :) Dan and I stood there and watched them.

This morning, I fixed a big breakfast of sausage, homemade biscuits, and eggs. We turned on the fireplace and cranked up the Christmas music. The kids got out all the Christmas catalogs that we've been getting in the mail. I remember pouring over the Sears Toy Catalog as a child. Making my Christmas list and checking it twice.

The cold and snow (it's stopped now and no accumulation - darn it!) makes it feel so cozy inside. Hoping you are cozy and blessed today. Unless you are in Florida or somewhere warm and then I'm hoping your feeling cool and blessed. :)

Where Oh, Where is my Hairbrush...

If you have ever watched a Veggie Tale, you will probably know the song I've referenced in my title. Larry, the cucumber, has lost his hairbrush and he's looking for it. The only problem is that he doesn't have any hair.

I haven't needed my hairbrush in a long time. Our shampoo bottle has lasted forever. But... I HAVE SOME HAIR NOW. It is growing quite well. I now have bed head in the morning and if I don't wet my hair down and style it with some sort of product, it looks terrible. I'm grateful for the head covering as winter is quickly approaching. Although, getting up and going without having to worry about my hair has been pretty nice.

I have to say that not having hair screws with your "womanly" identity. I've grown used to it but it was difficult in the beginning. It might not have been so hard if it had just been the hair but coupled with the loss of my breasts, it was a huge, double whammy. It was not just a loss of hair from head but from my whole body. If you are wondering if your hair "down there" goes too, why yes it does. A face is pretty non-descript without eyebrows and eyelashes.

I have had my share of looks from strangers. It bothers me about a nano second. I know one female cancer patient who actually had someone say to her, "WHY on earth would you choose to have your hair cut that short?". The ignorance of some people really floors me.

I thought I would put some pictures together from the beginning of this whole ordeal showing how my hair has changed. Why, it's been on a journey all it's own!

right after cancer diagnosis

shaving my head to get rid of itchy stubble

sleeping with a hat to stay warm

bandanas - I love em!

I wore lots of knitted hats also

my one and only wig that I liked

hair growing back and looking rather gray

my hair now - coming in thick again