My New Year starts NOW

It is time to celebrate!! My blood tests show no more cancer! Gone. :-)

I even now have the required final stage of treatment under my belt: two additional chemo treatments after reaching "normal". Nine cancer treatments in ten weeks and I am done! Now starts recovery, building back my strength and stamina and pace of normal life. Now starts my "awesome-2018".

My 2nd-to-last visit for chemo, and right after finding out that I was in the "normal" range. Such a relief!

I'll have a little over 6 months of monitoring before we are really sure it is gone. But in most cases, the treatment that I have received does the trick. And in the mean time I can have my life back. We can all get back to normal.

Now I get to figure out how I want to celebrate. A party? Hike in the mountains? A party on a hike in the mountains? Vacations and fresh air and copious alcohol sound pretty awesome, but it also sounds really exhausting. I kinda just want to take a nap. I'll work on my recovery for a bit and then figure out how to celebrate.

I don't belong here

If you were to ask me, I would say that I am a really healthy person. I don't see myself as someone who has had health problems pop up for the past 8 years. I imagine myself to be strong and healthy and mostly invincible (though not so much with my joints anymore - I'm not completely disconnected from the reality of aging). I totally expect to live into my 90s with good health and mind. In daydreams, I imagine myself as someone who would survive a collapse in society. If our population were to be wiped out by disease or war, I would be resourceful enough to survive.

But in reality, I would probably not last more than a year if we became Yemen or Syria or the world in Station Eleven (assuming I made it past all of the non-controllable events). In reality, I am the person who develops the weird condition during pregnancy that none of the books talk about, and difficulties during labor that no Lamaze class prepares you for. I am the person who develops hypothyroidism, though no one in my family suffers from it, possibly as an auto-immune disease or possibly as a rarer version (after 7 years with the disease we are still unsure). I am the person who, evidently, gets cancer at 40 as a result of a failed pregnancy. Never knew that could happen. But it happened to me.

But I take good care of myself, and I feel like I am all the way here, not fading away. I eat really well: lots of whole foods, fresh vegetables of every color, whole grains and seeds, red meat only rarely. I drink water. I have eliminated artificial sweeteners and most processed foods. I am mindful of what chemicals I expose myself to (cleaners, bug sprays, lotions, etc). We take our shoes off at the front door. I exercise and meditate and live life with the glass half-full. I have plans in life, things to do, people to love.

So now the voice in my head says that this is all so very unfair. It isn't supposed to happen like this. Not to me. I feel like a strong, normal person who should be able to have as many children as we want without getting cancer from trying. I don't want to be having chemo and the weeks of blah that follow. I don't want my body to feel like this. I want to get back to normal, even if it is just to paint and exercise and cook dinners and sometimes clean my house. I want to be able to make plans for the day, the week, the season without the caveat that I may instead need to take a nap, locked away in my prison of poor health, all the while silently yelling that this is all wrong, that really I am a healthy person, I don't belong here!

A little help from my friends

Our amazing neighbor has been bringing dinner to us on my days of chemo injections. What is extra super awesome is that she cooks really well (nutritious and delicious!), and she brought extra meals to help us through the week and for the freezer. She could not have given a better gift.

Also helpful have been the playdates and friends knocking on the door that get Calvin out of the house and moving around. I don't have much energy to participate in games or come up with projects, so inevitably Calvin settles down to a book or video game or restless boredom. Getting him out to play makes us all feel better.

Calvin has also been extra sweet with the kisses and hugs and "giving" me extra attention, which really is a need for attention from me, haha. But I am happy to have cuddle time. And I enjoy helping to get him to bed as it mostly just involves reading our own books side-by-side in his bed for a while before tucking him in and turning off the lights. And then bedtime for me too.

Mom hopped on a plane the day after we told them my diagnosis to help me with the first week of appointments, testing, waiting and worrying. Friends and family have, and will continue to, come in and out of town over the course of this disease, helping us with childcare, dishes, meals, doctors appointments, etc. And through it all, Bryan has been there - taking days off work, going to appointments with me, helping pick up the slack when I don't have the energy to do it, taking over my responsibilities to let me sleep in and nap and go to bed early. He is there to hold me when I'm sad and when I am cold and when I'm just plain blah.

Finally, our cats have some magical 6th sense that detects when I'm full of poison and needing extra love. Maybe they can smell it, or maybe I glow, haha. Perigee (the gray cat in the pictures below) follows me everwhere and cuddles up extra close at every opportunity.

Perigee curled up on top of me, as close to my face as possible, when I laid down for a nap on the couch on the first day after my first chemo treatment. So sweet, but a little hard to breathe.

I now exist in pajamas and cat fur.

Feeling better at the end of the first week, but still needing lots of kitty cuddles.

Ugh

The chemo poison/medicine is neon-yellow in the syringe. Getting my weekly dose is not so bad - only a shot, no worse that a giant vaccination. Other ways of fighting cancer with surgery and radiation and hours of chemo drips through an IV are so much worse - I know this and repeat it like a mantra. But the mental game I have to play to welcome what I half expect to glow in the dark into my body, to not cringe away with the poke of the needle, is harder. And the following days are harder still. Mostly I just feel overwhelming tiredness, sometimes mixed with nausea and headache and depression. And then it lightens and I have a few almost-normal days.

I'm supposed to limit my intake of antioxidants as they counteract the chemo, which incidentally also causes cancer. This was trickier than I expected as I seem to have incorporated foods high in antioxidants into a lot of my diet. So last week I pittied myself and ate a bunch of sugar cookies and chocolate (thank you, Christmas). This week my plan this week is to flood my body with water and herbal tea.

Can we be done with 2017 already?

A New 'Do

Well, if I'm going to start chemo, I might as well have some fun with my hair. There is a possibility I won't lose my hair at all, other than some thinning, so I didn't go crazy or anything. But if I do, I might as well experiment before it goes.

My shadows this year

This year was not a highlight of happiness for me. It had too many hard, sad days - and it isn't over yet. But despite all I am about to type, I feel full of love and optimism for the future (though now that I'm reading this, I see that I clearly have some anger-issues to work though).

First, a little known fact is that Bryan and I had decided to try to have another baby. We love having Calvin in our lives and have enjoyed being parents so much! I felt like now I would be more comfortable, confident, and relaxed as the parent of a little one, and I longed to hold on to that part of my life - babies and toddlers and young children grow so fast, it is over before you know it. And we have so much love to give - we were ready (more than ready, in my case) to expand our family.

Three pregnancies and three miscarriages later, we are done trying. If you add up the weeks that I was pregnant in 2017 (which of course is kind of inaccurate as pregnancy is measured from the first day of the last menstrual cycle), I spent a total of six and a half months pregnant this year. Worse, two of these pregnancies required operations (D&C) to remove the baby as my body doesn't like to let go. I've gone through this before - a year and a half before Calvin was born I had a miscarriage and D&C at the end of my 1st trimester. So I know how this goes. I know to guard my feelings, to not get excited or start making plans. But how can you not, just a little, each time you go to the bathroom and the paper is clean, each sighting of fellow pregnant women on the street, each glass of wine that you refuse, protecting your little tadpole.

This whole summer I suffered the usual symptoms of pregnancy without "getting excited" about the coming baby. I reminded myself that it was good to feel nausea and exhaustion because these were normal symptoms of being pregnant and this way at least I knew it was still happening. Unfortunate timing with our move left me changing insurance and doctors and without a check-up until the 2nd trimester. Well, my body was more than happy to be pregnant and to remain so, even long after the fetus stopped developing and the heartbeat faded away. Little did I know as I happily started sharing the news with family and a few friends at what I believed to be the end of my first trimester that I carried a little 8-week fetus around, dead in my womb for a whole month.

You can imagine my sadness at the loss of the baby I was starting to imagine, the anger and disgust at my body for deceiving me, the overwhelming feeling that it is just not fair. But time heals, and love and support made me feel whole, and hope helped too. We decided to try again. Surely we had been through all the bad experiences we were going to have. We would just see what happens. If it worked, great. If it didn't, well at least we tried.

But it did happen again - we got pregnant and lost the baby-before-it-was-a-baby. This time, sitting in the hospital waiting for my 2nd D&C this year, I knew we were done trying. This chapter was closed. And there was a lonely sort of peace with that realization. We could plan ahead again, take trips and daydream about the future, knowing that it would be just the three of us. And that was okay. We are a good three.

Well, shit. 2017 wasn't done with me yet. That 3rd pregnancy brought with it a tumor that spread into my uterus, holding on with a cancerous grip. It was almost three weeks after my 40th birthday when I was given the c-word. Cancer.

So I say goodbye to 2017 with a kick out the door. I will have chemo and in 2018 I will kick the cancer and the anger and the sense of injustice out the door too. We can plan all we want, but life doesn't always follow the path we lay out for it. I like my path, even with all the shadows that I passed through this year, and so I march forward with a full heart and an appreciation for today.

Lt. Col. Hoke

Bryan promoted to Lt. Col. last November at the National Archives in Washington, DC. It was a great ceremony in an awesome location with family and a few friends (being a small room, we were limited in how many people could attend). Here are some amazing pictures our photographer, Emily Kalbaugh, took during and after the event.

Leigh Ann, a co-worker of Bryan's from the Pentagon, officiated the ceremony. Here she is standing in front of the original Declaration of Independence, Constitution of the United States, and Bill of Rights.

Col Kawasaki worked with Bryan during his deployment and performed the promotion. Here he is talking about Bryan's career in the Air Force. 

Proud parents, Mike and Janice Hoke

Mike and Janice pinned on Bryan's new rank on part of his uniform.

Calvin and I also got to help pin on his new rank.

 Bryan reaffirmed the oath of office (which is given to the constitution, not to any person or organization). Being in the National Archives during this part of the ceremony was really special as Bryan got to give his oath while standing in front of the actual constitution.

Bryan finished the ceremony by saying some really nice things about his parents, Calvin, myself, and friends/co-workers.

After the promotion ceremony, we moved outside onto the steps of the National Archives for some pictures and a chance to thank everyone for coming.

Bryan gave Calvin a gift after the ceremony. It is customary for the person being promoted to give gifts to family as a thank  you for their support. Calvin had recently watched another family friend be promoted and give gifts, so he was eagerly awaiting this part of the ceremony.

Super excited about his Ferrari Formula One lego set.

Family pictures in front of the doors of the National Archives - what a beautiful setting!