Some Girls Prefer Carnations: 30 years without bacon and all I got was cancer

Friday, October 22, 2010

30 years without bacon and all I got was cancer

I have inflammatory breast cancer. I have banned myself from googling it, so I don't know that much about it yet, but I'm sure that a year from now I will be an honorary expert. For now I will learn all of the necessary details from my oncologist (I have an oncologist?), and she won't know specific details about my situation until 3:30 on Tuesday. That's when she will collate all of the data that has been collected from my body since Tue. Oct. 19, assess the situation, and come up with a treatment plan. It sounds like at a minimum I will have chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation, in that order <gulp>.

I'm starting this blog to keep my loved ones abreast (he he he) of my health, because it is so hard for me to tell my stories over and over. I hope it works well for all of us.

5 comments:

Simply BikeOctober 23, 2010 at 6:19 PM
Thanks for the blog link and for keeping us all in the loop this way, I look forward to reading all your posts. Especially when you kick it off with possibly the best post title ever :)

S.
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SaraOctober 24, 2010 at 3:25 PM
Sara Makey Wollner here. Heather - Holly sent us your blog. So sorry to hear. But if you need anything - let me know! I am a good babysitter and a mediocre cook. :) I would be happy to help. Hang in there!
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UnknownOctober 24, 2010 at 6:45 PM
Hey Heather. I am glad that you are starting this blog to inform your friends and family on what is happening with you and your health. Please keep us posted. We are all thinking about you and waiting for your baconless body to kick breast cancer's a$$. Thinking of you-Stacy
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AnonymousOctober 25, 2010 at 2:51 PM
Hey Heather - we just sent two hogs in to be butchered. Sarah and I'd be happy to send you all the bacon you can dream of it would make you feel better!
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AlisonNovember 1, 2010 at 12:10 PM
Hi Heather- Petra shared your news with me. I am so sorry to hear that you have to deal with all this. Modern medicine to the rescue- please! I hope that you are seeing lots of pink these days. TONS of support is out there for you and to find a cure for breast cancer. I don't know if you are religious, but I am saying prayers for you in any case, it can't hurt! My mom is a survivor, Jeff and I were just in the Susan B. Kolmen Race for a Cure here in Milwaukee. Lucas's mom....
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Books I've read recently

TRUTH AND BEAUTY by Ann Patchett "'Grief isn't something to "be gotten through." It has no life of its own like that, it's just plain and simply there.'" and "History is strangely incomprehensible when you're standing in the middle of it."
THE PATRON SAINT OF LIARS by Ann Patchett "I wanted to be able to stop hoping that she would turn into something else."
MY OWN COUNTRY by Abraham Verghese "I remember the acts of human kindness that illumine our world."
IN THE COMPANY OF CHEERFUL LADIES: No. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY NOVEL #6 by Alexander McCall Smith
CEREMONY by Leslie Marmon Silko
THE ELEGANCE OF THE HEDGEHOG by Muriel Barbery "There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature..."
A WALK IN THE WOODS by Bill Bryson
THE LACUNA by Barbara Kingsolver "'Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.'"
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FACE by Lucy Grealy "Sooner or later we all have to learn the words with which to name our own private losses..." and "Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people..." and "Sometimes the briefest moments capture us, force us to take them in, and demand that we live the rest of our lives in reference to them."
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sarah Gruen "Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse."
THE HELP by Kathryn Stockett "'I have decided not to die.'" and "Oh, I just break down then. It's like two years a doing and trying and hoping all come out at once."
THE TENNIS PARTNER by Abraham Verghese "Would that I had the chance in my sons' lifetime and my own to one day explain to them all the forces that moved me."
THE BLUEST EYE by Toni Morrison "And then the tears rushed down his cheeks, to make a bouquet under his chin."
REMARKABLE CREATURES by Tracy Chevalier "My life led up to that moment, then led away again, like the tide making its highest mark on the beach and then retreating."
RAMONA QUIMBY, AGE 8 by Beverly Cleary "Mrs. Quimby smiled and said, 'I can tell you're beginning to get well when you act like a wounded tiger.'"
THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway "You see, Mr. Barnes, it is because I have lived so very much that now I can enjoy everything so well."
THE FORGOTTEN GARDEN by Kate Morton "The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe." And, speaking of hospitals: "An irony that a place relying so heavily on routine should operate so resolutely outside time's usual rhythms."
THE HUNGER GAMES by Suzanne Collins "Of course, the odds have not been very dependable of late."
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS by Rebecca Skloot "That cancer was a terrible thing."
THE THIEF OF ALWAYS by Clive Barker "Was there some way...to take back the stolen years, and live them here, with the people who loved him, and whom he loved dearly in return?"
CUTTING FOR STONE by Abraham Verghese "The world turns on our every action, and our every omission, whether we know it or not." Best book I've read in a year

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Friday, October 22, 2010

30 years without bacon and all I got was cancer

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