Whirlwind Wedding

On Monday, my boyfriend fiance sent me an email about a concert in Vegas on Friday. We don’t do Vegas, so I was immediately suspicious, and I was correct.

We had planned to go downtown in our home town, sometime soon in the break between chemo and surgery, and just have a civil service, with a “real wedding” and/or a party or two, later. This was way more fun.

My boyfriend fiance has been seeing this band for 18 years, and emailing the lead guitar player for most of those years.

The next thing I knew, he’d arranged for a preacher to meet us at the concert. Just before midnight, the band took a break, then played one song to trick everyone into coming back in. The lead guitar player said “some old friends emailed us and asked if they could get married at our show” and then, we did.

There was at least one drum roll in our wedding.

We got married in front of two old friends, who met us in Vegas, and a hundred new ones. I had met this band before, at a camping show, but I think we all know each other a lot better now.

We came off the stage and everyone wanted to hug us! It was fantastic. It could not have been better. This is the wedding I always dreamed of and it just came together. Actually my boyfriend husband worked quite hard to pull it together!

There was a moment of panic when we realized that we were supposed to have brought the license. Luckily, as the preacher’s wife said, Nevada is in this to make money, and that office is open on Saturday. We were married after midnight as planned, got the license the next day, and met the preacher and his wife again for final signings. We met at the Belagio, with a good view of the fountain that plays in time with Sinatra or Elton John. We also cruised by the Chihuilys and the botanical display in the lobby.

Then we had great sushi with one of our two crazy friends. (We dropped the other at the airport in between the license office, and the Belagio.) We managed to piss off the waiter by not falling for any of his “upsells” but we had a good time. The boys eat 1.5 times as much sushi as I do, so I went outside to the casino and lost two dollars in nickels without a single win. That was the extent of gambling among all of us.

Well, aside from getting married!
But seriously, I have never been so sure and happy about anything in my life.

More good news

Just like the breast MRI, the PET scan showed no signs of cancer. So either I have Stage 4 cancer and it’s in remission from the chemo, or that liver stuff was never cancer. Either way I’m glad it’s not showing up. The lymph nodes are clear and I get to keep them. I will have radiation on them.

I’m going to have a mastectomy on the right side only, probably either Dec 16 or Dec 19. My surgeon is sweet and comforting. She says it won’t hurt very much, I’ll just be sore.

The surgeon used the word “inflammatory” repeatedly. The oncologist was cagey about that word, possibly so I would not panic. I had some skin effects when we started.

I’ve had a few moments of backlash reaction about the stage 4 possibility. But I already knew about it really, and I’m mostly feeling positive.

Doctor Delay; Good News Anyway

Well there was a glitch in today’s doctor appointment. It was made with the wrong person in spite of my best efforts… I was assured it was okay right up until that person said “so why are you here today?”

So… more results Wednesday. She did tell us the MRI showed everything had “resolved” which means it does not show up on the breast MRI anymore.

I’m feeling good, had an awesome weekend, and got married in Vegas. MORE LATER

TGIF

Catching a plane soon to go on a quick trip. I’ll post Monday after I get my test results and talk to the surgeon’s assistant.

4th and 4th Meme

Everybody’s doing it…
The rules, they are as follows:

1. Go to your pictures file.
2. Go to the 4th file.
3. Go to the 4th picture.
4. Post it and tell the story.
5. Tag 4 more people. (I’m skipping this part, so there

The story: on our annual pilgrimage for bluegrass music, hippies and camping, one year we stopped in Gilroy (home of the Garlic Festival) and visited Gilroy Gardens. It’s a combination of garden and kid’s theme park. We didn’t bring any kids but we went on some of the rides anyway. I think this picture is from this area:
Rainbow Garden

It was fun. It was a bit pricey and we might not go back, but if a person lived in the area and had kids it might be worth a membership.

Chemo is OVER

I was just trying to figure out why I didn’t blog about my last chemo. It was Election Day. I was distracted.

It has been about nine days, and I’m starting to feel much better. I’m still a bit tired, but after 6 months of chemo, it might take a couple of weeks to bounce back.

My body does not ache, my balance is returning, I haven’t hurled anything at the ground accidentally for days, my hands and feet are a little less numb, and my vision doesn’t swim.

I had my first every-three-week herceptin on Wednesday. That was no problem except for the time it takes. I had an hour between the doc and the chemo room appointment. I bought a piece of lemon cake and some juice and read Yet Another Terry Pratchett novel.

I’ve been getting herceptin for 12 weeks with no problem. It’s not “chemo” — it doesn’t make me sick and my hair will stop falling out. (I just finished the Taxol part, which is “chemo”.)

Next week I have a PET scan, an Echocardiogram, and an MRI, on Monday Tuesday and Wednesday. Then I just get to go to work for Thursday and Friday.

Then on Monday 11/24, I meet with the surgeon’s assistant. Due to everyone being spastic, from me to my boyfriend to the schedulers, the surgeon was booked. Everyone assures me this is exactly the same. For some reason I have two appointments back to back so I guess this will be involved. Then the next day I meet with the oncologist again, presumably to finalize my plan.

On Wednesday, the oncologist and I agreed that we expect a mastectomy on the right side. I hope I can keep my lymph nodes. I don’t want reconstruction but I might go for a “double” to not be lopsided. I would not care but someone mentioned possible back problems.

At this point the doctor looked thoughtful, and said maybe I would be a candidate for a lumpectomy. I said “I’m not pushing for that. Back in the beginning you said we might shrink it completely and then take it all anyway, and that still seems like a good idea to me.” And she said “it still seems like a good idea to me too.”

It’s too easy to imagine stray cells left over from a tumor that big.

She said the other breast was not an issue for safety, compared to the possible issue of cancer having spread elsewhere.

I’m expecting the surgery to be in the middle of December.

Marriage, Government and Religion

This is where I wade in and piss EVERYbody off:

It seems to me as if this “marriage” thing is an illegal mix of government and religion already. If “Marriage” is a religious concept, perhaps it should stay there. The government can authorize “Civil Unions” or whatever they are called, between Party A and Party B. If you want to get married, find a church willing to marry you. But it should have no legal meaning or status or tax break or hospital access… etc. That should all be available to all equally under the “Civil Union”. And of course any church can decide who they are willing to have married by them or on their facilities.

What do you say? Would this “protect the sanctity of marriage”? (Or do people really want something for themselves that other people can’t have?)

Personally, I tried to talk my boyfriend into eloping downtown (I did that once already) but he wants to have a ceremony. No one is getting me in any church for it, though. I’d be happy with a “Civil Union,” unless we can get Wavy Gravy to marry us.

UPDATE: I may have been unclear. Here is my (first attempt at) clarification from the comments section. Please comment if I’m still not making sense.

I’m saying if certain straight couples don’t want “marriage” to be available from the government to gay couples, then maybe all couples, including straight ones, should be restricted to “civil unions” from the government. And all rights should be thus available equally.

In other words, just change the name of the legal concept of “marriage” to “civil unions”, and let the religions deal with the religious crap.

Time to Heal, or, FIX IT :)

We have hard times ahead as a country, but I think we have a lot of hope now. I’d like to thank my fellow Americans for coming out in large numbers and voting for humane, problem-solving behavior, without the intrusion of religion into politics.

I listened to Senator McCain’s concession speech, admittedly for the wrong reasons. I was very impressed. I’ve liked him at times. I think he’s got some big problems but obviously he’s a great man.

Here are some of my favorite parts of his speech.

“But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions of Americans who had once wrongly believed that they had little at stake or little influence in the election of an American president is something I deeply admire and commend him for achieving.”

“These are difficult times for our country. And I pledge to him tonight to do all in my power to help him lead us through the many challenges we face.

I urge all Americans who supported me to join me in not just congratulating him, but offering our next president our good will and earnest effort to find ways to come together to find the necessary compromises to bridge our differences and help restore our prosperity, defend our security in a dangerous world, and leave our children and grandchildren a stronger, better country than we inherited.”

“Tonight — tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Sen. Obama — whether they supported me or Sen. Obama.

I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my president. And I call on all Americans, as I have often in this campaign, to not despair of our present difficulties, but to believe, always, in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here.”

It is difficult

to cry tears of joy and amazement, eat ice cream, and wave your hands in the air, at the same time.

Utah is a Beautiful Place

The crazy part of me moving to Utah was not so much Utah. Well maybe a little. But most of the problem was that Stinky didn’t have any friends aside from one older, Catholic/Morman couple. This Catholic mother of a 16 year old girl, left the state and her family with no warning, before I did, and married her high school sweetheart. Other people I thought were his friends at first, on closer examination turned out to be people who were paid to speak to him: bookstore employees, coffeeshop employees, restaurant greeters. (He dated a restaurant greeter but she was not smart enough for him. Lucky for her.)

This was my first taste of Utah, when I visited Stinky for a three day weekend, after not seeing him for 15 years.

http://www.utah.com/moab/photogallery.htm

This is about 300 miles away (mostly south), from where Stinky lives with his mother. There was a light dusting of snow, not enough to bother my tropical climate shoes. It was absolutely gorgeous.

The tropical climate shoes go with my tropical climate upbringing. It was a lot colder in the part of Utah where I ended up. But I’m glad I got to experience living where there is snow. I could not get to my bank sometimes because the pass was closed. My first time driving in snow reminded me of jumping to light speed, in Star Wars. The road was invisible and Stinky was screaming in my ear the entire time.

We never shoveled the snow off the sidewalk. Stinky’s mom paid a 70 year old man 10 dollars an hour to do that at 6 am while we laid in bed listening.

I’m also glad I got to experience that leaf changing thing. I thought all y’all were faking those photos. Oh my goodness it’s beautiful.

Then spring came. All these bulbs came up with the same flowers at the same time in all the yards. I guess I had never seen bulbs before. I thought there was a sale at the garden store and everyone bought them. I figured it out when they came up in our yard!

The farm stand fruits and yard-grown corn were “to drive for.”

I also got to see naturally frozen tomato plants, and cats who survive in the snow and have babies in the garage and hide them for two weeks. Feral kittens are NASTY. Wear gloves.

That is all for this chemotherapy induced brain dump