Sharing my journey to a slow, intentional life.

The Beginning….

June 11, 2024 — Update — nothing actually, waiting on the doctors at MSK in Basking Ridge, NJ to contact me for initial consult on the chemotherapy journey……pins and needles, to say the least. Will check back later.

June 12, 2024 – Update — spoke with the surgeon’s office yesterday and received an email indicating that they are working on the referral to the medical GI oncologist. If I don’t see anything on the portal today, I can reach back to their office. So, that was somewhat encouraging, I know that they are working on it and I’m sure my surgeon has to speak to whomever is going to be handling the chemo from here. Decided to get two books on Buddhism, not sure why but ordered them from Amazon. I was raised as a non-practicing Catholic. I feel like I do need something spiritual, at the very least, to help me through this journey. I believe far more in the universe as a whole, along with the stars and moon than I do some magical man in the sky. When people say that they pray to God, I wonder, which one? I have friends of all faiths, Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, etc. Which God do each of them pray to? I believe that the miracle of life and the universe is too incredible not to have some divine intervention, but the Catholic Church never inspired me. Ironic that I sent my children to Catholic school from Pre-K to 8th grade. I have to say that it did teach them manners and how to articulate themselves, but it was also negative in a lot of ways. People whom I believed were caring individuals turned out to be just the opposite. It left a horrible taste in my mouth and once they left, none of us ever looked back. My son married a Hindu and he has been very interested in the Hindu teachings. My daughter is definitely a non-practicing Catholic who married a hispanic (Puerto Rican and Ecuadorean) so it will be interesting to see what they decide in terms of their children and the practice of religion. I feel I definitely will need some spiritual guidance in this journey so I ordered two books on Buddhism through Amazon. (Thank god for Amazon, while we can all hate on Jeff Bezos, fact is Amazon is an amazing company!)…….oh and I ordered a Learn How to Crochet kit as well. I have a long chain of one stitch done….LOL….have no idea what I’m doing but I figure I have a minimum of 6 months of chemo to figure that one out. Will check back later!.

Update — June 19, 2024 — I met with my medical oncologist, Dr. Jessica Yang. She is young, I would say late 30’s, highly intelligent, not warm and fuzzy, but do you really need warm and fuzzy when you are dealing with cancer or do you want knowledgeable. I will take the latter. She has excellent credentials, John Hopkins; Columbia Medical School and now at MSK. Blood tests revealed that my CA-19 which is the cancer tumor marker was 51. Normal is 0-40, so not too bad! The plan is that I will be doing 12 rounds of chemo, twice per month for six months. It is a combination of drugs FU-5. Chemo basically goes like this: Monday you go in, they take bloodwork to take a look at your platelets, WBC and RBC, making sure you are healthy enough for the chemo. I will then meet with Dr. Yang and then go to the infusion room. Once in the room, they first run some anti nausea medication, then the first drug; (about an hour); second anti nausea medication, then the second drug (another hour). The fun part then begins, they will hook you up with a third medication that you get to bring home with you for the next 46 hours! Woo Hoo, ain’t that grand! Yeah, you are basically hooked up to a bag that is in an attractive fanny pack……so the rest of Monday; all day Tuesday into Wednesday until the bag is empty! At that point, you go back to the hospital for disconnection! It’s insane if you think about, basically 72 hours of running chemo through your body……Also, at this visit, we scheduled my first round of vaccines (hence, no spleen, need vaccines), a baseline CT scan for July 9 and the installation of a chest port for my chemo to go in on July 10. July 15, 2024 will be the first round of chemo. I have mapped out the rest of the year. Basically it is every other week (Monday) so July it will be twice July 15 and July 29; August x2; September x2, etc. through end of the year. I guess it is fitting I will ring the bell at the end of 2024. My goal is to get through this chemo and move on into 2025 a new person. I know that this journey will definitely change me, but I’m going with changing me for the better instead of the worse. This will undoubtedly be the hardest thing I’ve ever done but I will not allow this to kill me. We all die and I get that, but I’m not allowing cancer to kill me now, I have way too much to live for. My grown children having children; the fact that my husband and I are still together and now both retired. It’s not that I have huge plans like tracking through Europe, it’s the everyday things, walks in nature, taking a ride down the shore when it’s off season and just walking on the beach without loads of people…I want to be able to travel in the US, there are so many states I’ve never seen, these are the things I think about. I am reading several wonderful books, all have to do with healing yourself through nutrition; mindfulness and exercise. I totally believe in both Western medicine and Eastern medicine and the two should be complimentary to each other. I am going to document my entire journey here and when it is over, I certainly want to show it to my family and maybe even try and get it published. I want to be able to help anyone who is going through this and tell them the first thing you have to do is get your mind right. I will not die from this, not now, not before I meet my new grandchild in January, not before I get to spend more years with my husband doing life’s mundane things but also go see baseball games in other states, I want to visit all 50 states, maybe rent an RV, LOL……I did not work 47 years to retire and then die! Not yet, not today Cancer, not today!