So this picture kind of sucks, but if you look closely, you'll notice that I'm wearing a barrette.  Do you know how long it's been since I could wear a barrette.  Also my office is cleaner  And I have a new watch band.

This is really cool

A friend of mine sent me this link: http://www.thescarproject.org/

It's really nice to see someone celebrating the beauty of mastectomy scars.  I want to be a model! (work, work, fashion, baby)

In other news, I successfully inhibited the urge to say, "You know, when I was on chemo, I shit blood," to a professor who I caught smoking today.

A post regretting wasted opportunities

All last October, I fantasized about witty retorts I could give when someone asked me to donate to Breast Cancer Awareness.  Things like, "Trust me, I'm perfectly aware of breast cancer."  Or, "Why, yes!  I am accepting donations!"  Of course, last October I was bald, and I have a feeling my intimate relationship with cancer was obvious.

Now, with my luscious head of practical lesbian hair, I walk around incognito, and an unsuspecting clerk at my local Staples asked if I would like to buy a pink breast cancer pen.  And, I, in my typical D.C. resident way, was so annoyed that she was trying to up-sell me that I reflexively said, "No," before I'd even processed the question, and I watched this golden opportunity for snark dissipate in the wind, gone forever, like my nipples.

And the worst part, the up-selling worked because now I'm going to go back to Staples just in case they give me another chance to be snarky!

Yesterday, I sent gift baskets to my oncologists to let them know how much I appreciated them.  Because, you know, nothing says, "Thanks for saving my life!" like a gift basket.  I got the ones with sausage and everything, so they'd know I really meant it.

My hair is long enough to have a part now!  Check it out! (Also, check out my awesome new military watch.  That calculator watch is old news.)

ComicCon

Last summer, I wanted to go to ComicCon but couldn't because of my chemo schedule. So my friend Brendan promised to take me this summer. Unfortunately, Brendan was a complete style biter and thought it would just be awesome if he had cancer, too. So we couldn't go this year because of his chemo schedule.

You know what that means for next year, right?
DOUBLE CANCER CARD IN EFFECT!

We will be unstoppable. Let's see Robert Pattinson refuse to make out with Tom Sturridge when faced with that! It cannot be done!

(Seriously, though, Brendan, stop copying me. It's embarrassing.)

Avastin, maties!

I got my second-to-last Avastin infusion yesterday. Yes, I decided to continue to get the drug even though the FDA advisory committee voted to rescind its approval for treating breast cancer. I figured that I'd rather regret getting treatment than not getting treatment. I also figured that if I'm going to start regret taking drugs, the Avastin isn't going to be where I start. College years, I'm looking in your direction.

A quote I found quite apt

I’ll always be beautiful. Look at me. I have one hundred and sixty two bug bites, and has it made me any less beautiful? No! It just makes me more interesting! I’ll always be like this, stuck in this beautiful form, and you’ll have to deal with it.
Fire, Kristin Cashore

BTW, emo posts like the last few are why I haven't been posting that often. As I make the transition from patient to survivor, I'm doing a lot of emotional work. I feel like a cow, barfing up little bits of the experience to chew on them for a while and sort them all out. As my tongue pokes and prods at the nuances of the experiences, I'm reluctant to write about them. My feelings on most of these issues are transitive and constantly evolving. The commitment of freezing them on the internet is a leap I'm not ready to make (consider that your metaphor smoothie for the day).

Plus, who wants to read emo crap like that? If you guys wanted to feel emo, you'd rent Heathers and listen to Bright Eyes and make an artistic tumblr, right?

Sometimes, I kind of miss being bald. It made playing the cancer card a lot easier.

In other news, there have been a couple of instances recently when I have told people that I had/have cancer, and they ask if I'm in "remission." I have no idea how to respond to this. First off, because I had operable breast cancer, I don't think I'm a candidate for remission. I'm either cured, or not cured. On the one hand, my tumor has been removed and there has been no evidence of metastases. So, I think that means I'm cured. On the other hand, I still get an infusion every three weeks, so I'm still in treatment. And on the other other hand (just pretend you're that soccer octopus for a second here), I doubt any doctor would say I'm cured. There is always a chance for relapse, and I'm not really trying to tempt fate here. (If you think that's superstitious, you should see me analyzing my data and praying for significant results.)

Since I'll be taking pills as part of my hormonal therapy for the next 5ish years, at some point I will need to make a verbal transition from cancer patient to cancer survivor. Making the verbal transition means making the mental transition as well. That's something I'm not really ready to do yet. I'm still dealing with the effects of the Avastin and a lot of post-chemo fatigue. My body is still kind of wandering around in a daze thinking "WTF just happened to me? Where am I?" It's not ready to jump back into the game. I think that saying I'm a cancer "survivor" indicates that I'm back to normal, and I'm so clearly not. I'm in a period of transition, where I'm beating a new path between pre-cancer normal and post-chemo, post-surgery normal.

The weird thing is that my hair is very much tied up in this period of transition, way more so than my breasts. Part of that is because hair can be tied up and breasts cannot. Another part of it is that, unlike my mastectomies, which I see as battle wounds, scars that will always be there, my hair growing. It's slowly but surely making its way back to its previous state.

But, it's not there yet. So, every day, when I look in the mirror, I don't see the longer hair of pre-cancer me or the baldness of chemo-me. Instead I see this short haircut that, although I rock it like whoa, I never wanted. I see all of the time it's going to take to grow out.

For me, that regrowth time kind of symbolizes all of the work, physical and emotional, that needs to be done before post-cancer me begins to feel like normal-me. It's a manifestation of the road back to myself, and how, even though, the cancer has been removed from my body, it will be a long time before becomes just another thread in the cloth of my life.