Hello, Dear Ones!

If you know me, you probably know of my intense and all-consuming love for the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer (a love which will persist even though its creator has recently been outed as a Grade A jerk). In Season 5 of Buffy, the seemingly indomitable goddess Glory, the first Big Bad who has ever given Buffy any real problems, makes the mistake of crossing Buffy’s best friend Willow. When Willow, a witch with burgeoning powers, seeks vengeance, she doesn’t succeed…entirely. But as Buffy fights Glory after her encounter with Willow, she finds Glory a little easier to stave off than usual. Glory says, “That little witch really slowed. me. down,” as she throws a sofa (or something) at Buffy with a little less oomph than usual. For the audience, it’s a delicious little hint at how powerful Willow is to become.

I say that all as a rambling way to explain my absence on this blog for the past six months! Chemo and radiation really slowed. me. down. There were days when moving from the bed to the couch felt like an accomplishment. Even weeks after chemo was done, a slow walk around the block was the closest thing to exercise that I could manage.

But I finally feel like myself again—mostly! I’m running, lifting weights, and am pretty much as back to normal as I can expect to be in the time of Covid. Of course, my body is (and may always be) a little different after chemo. For example, I now have dry eye disease (a common development after chemotherapy), and the stye that’s currently in my left eye is no freaking fun. But it beats being sick and tired.

I started my hormone treatment, a daily pill, in January. I’ll be taking that for the next five years, and having a shot every 3 months that will hopefully help preserve my fertility until I’m finished. So far, no bad side effects from the pill!

I’m also relieved to share that I had a good follow-up appointment with my surgeon last week. He said everything looks good. From here, I’m going to continue to see him every six months. I’m also going to have imaging done twice a year, starting this June. They will alternate between 3D mammograms and MRIs. I will probably not be writing on here again, unless I get abnormal imaging at one of those appointments—which I thankfully have no reason to expect.

I have a lifetime ahead of the doctors watching me closely, but I think I’m done with the most intense part of my cancer journey! (That felt so good to write).

Thank you to all of you who have reached out and shown your support, with cards, care packages, hand-knit hats, a paper chain to count down my radiation treatments, flowers and presents, dinners, kind words on social media, and virtual visits on MarcoPolo and the phone! Cancer has sucked in a lot of ways, but I never once felt isolated—an amazing thing in the midst of quarantine! You were there for me in spirit.

A few people managed to be there for me in body too, at crucial parts of the journey— including my parents, my sister Shayna, Dan’s sister Jenna, our friends Stephanie and Bekah, and our friends in San Diego. Our quarantine pod, Zach and Allison, brought us dinner the night of my diagnosis, toasted with me for the first glass of wine I was allowed to have after chemo, and celebrated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s with us on a very weird year.

 I have to give a very special thank-you to Dan’s amazing parents, Mary Anne and Byron. When the pandemic became so intense during the summer that we felt it would be reckless for our East Coast people to fly to us, Mary Anne and Byron made the several-day road trip from Texas, across the Arizona desert to be with us and help us out--twice! They cooked and cleaned, and Byron helped me plant a lemon tree that’s still kicking, and an ill-fated balcony garden (those herbs weren’t fighters like me).

It seems that at this point, I should say something profound about what I’ve learned from this whole process. And I have learned some things, like how focusing on your breath and turning full attention to what you’re feeling, is, ironically, the best way to manage pain, whether it’s physical or emotional.  Like how, in Dan, I have the best, strongest, most loving, most supportive husband in the world. And like how, though I’m deeply fortunate, our health care system in America is deeply broken. Ask me about all that some time.

But at the moment, I feel more like looking forward. After he won the election, President Biden made a speech in which he referenced the verses from the Bible that tell us there is a season for everything.

“Now,” he said, “is the time to heal.” Though he was speaking to our country’s spiritual wounds, I felt at the time that his words were appropriate on a literal level too, for the virus-ridden world and for my own personal journey.

So when 2021 rolled around, instead of choosing a New Year’s resolution for the year, I chose a single word: Health.

And I’m so glad now to say that I feel healthy and I feel very hopeful. Spring is coming. My parents have their vaccines, and I’m eligible to get mine this month. That same chapter in Ecclesiastes says there is “a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing.” This whole last year has been a time to refrain from embracing.

The future is still uncertain, but I think there is reason to be excited about what the summer holds for all of us. Hopefully a lot of embracing.

Big Love to All of You!

--Caroline