I look in the mirror and wonder who that person is- the scale and my tight clothes hint at the hectic schedule and lack of time to make wholesome food choices, my pale face contrasts with the dark goggle tans everyone else in the county is sporting. And where did those dark circles under my eyes come from? To be honest, I have felt on the verge of total panic a time or two. That feeling that if one more thing goes wrong, we'll...we'll..deal with it, because that's all we can do. It would take too much energy to do anything else, anything drastic.
I did take the time to go for a four mile bike ride last night, careening through slush, throwing my bike over my shoulder when the trail became unrideable, navigating narrow, snowy trails and ducking tree branches that in the summer, are high above my head. I got new bike shoes the other day, a pair I have been drooling over for months, tempted to go rip them out of the hands of every customer I see eyeing them. They have an extremely stiff carbon fiber sole, extremely lightweight. Since my other cleats are so worn down, I decided to buy new cleats as well, and then, after I had clocked out, stood for about 15 minutes in front of the display of pedals, since i have never been in love of my Shimano SPD's. They clog up with mud and snow too easily and make it impossible to click in. The regional manager, who happened to be in the store at the time, helped talk me into it, and I bought a pair of Crank Brothers Eggbeaters- a very lightweight pedal that looks a lot like an egg beater, very hard to pack full of gunk, with four entry points instead of two like the SPDs. Then I still had to loiter about a bit, trying to decide if I could afford such an upgrade. And in the meantime, even though I was clocked out, not wearing a nametag or uniform, several customers caught on that I worked there and began asking me ski related questions and I ended up spending an hour selling a customer a pair of skis, bindings, boots, poles, and a helmet. As soon as I escaped, I grabbed my credit card and paid for my own stuff before I got caught again.
So yesterday evening, I took my bike and my new padals out for a spin, and am absolutely puzzled about how to click into them. My whole weight on them is not enough to spread the spring inside them enough to open over my shiny new cleats. The only way I can get into them is to twist into them, not really handy of you need to be clicked in immediately to tackle a sudden hill. They will cost me races if I don't figure it out. I can't ride in the snow very well, because being clipped in is the key to riding in snow. Smooth transitions between downstroke and upstroke keeps the rear wheel from slipping. If you only downstroke without pulling the pedals across the bottom of the stroke, up, and across the top, then down in one smooth motion, the small jerk at the top and bottom of the pedal stroke is just enough to dig the wheel into the snow and spin you out. But I still came home rosy-cheeked and feeling like all was well with the world, in spite of being a little bit saddle sore.
When I got home, my friend Mel was already here, feeding her six month old son. She left him with me while she and her husband attended a benefit dinner in Copper Mountain, and I spent the evening elbows deep in bottles and pureed sweet potatoes and diapers, while Andy spent the evening with his head cocked to the side, leaning against my leg, begging for attention.
We have enjoyed having an unprecedented amount of company this year. We can count on both hands the number of nights since mid February we have had both of our spare bedrooms empty. Our guests have simply had to understand that we are busy and my house will not be clean, meals will not be home made, and they may have to pull their own sheets out of the dryer to make their beds before they sleep in them. And I hope they have been able to understand that we like them, we appreciate them coming to see us, because if they didn't, we would never get to see them, and to take our occasional stress-induced semi-hysteria with a grain of salt.
The biggest drain on all of us this spring break has had nothing to do with spring break, but with the fact that the most intensive, stressful stage of my mom's cancer journey has happened smack dab in the middle of it. Scans showed the tumor significantly shrunk. It was small enough that a lumpectomy seemec to be the way to go. The doctors recommended it, my mom was happy about it, we headed to Vail and waited while they wheeled her in, then back out, minus a bit of flesh and tissue on each breast. We celebrated. The cancer was officially gone, six weeks of daily radiation to mop up any potential lingering cells seemed a short time compared to the months we have been dealing with it. Five days later, pathology came back. Pathologist's microscopes had revealed rogue cancer cells right up to the edge of the removed lump. To re-excise a larger lump would take more tissue, enough tissue that there would not be much of the breast left to save.
After a long day at the cancer center, a few tears, and a bit of helpless anger that this thing kept finding ways to control the body it decided to invade, she decided to stay overnight and have one last consultation the next day, with a plastic surgeon, to hear about reconstruction options and complications should she decide to have a mastectomy. I took her to her appointment, and we learned far more than we ever thought we would need to about silicon and saline implants, tissue expanders, stretching muscles and reshaping tissue. In the end, through tears, she decided to tell them to take her left breast, and she decided that she did not want a reminder for herself and everyone who saw her, for the rest of her life, every time she looked down at her chest, of this dark time in her life. She did not want one side to be bony and flat while the other side was still there, telling everyone she met of her story, nor did she want to stick a prosthetic part in her bra every morning. So she asked them to put a tissue expander in place to begin stretching her chest muscles out so an implant could eventually go under it.
The next morning, her brothers Delton and Leroy showed up from Idaho and eastern Kansas, both having driven all day and night to get here, and they wheeled her into the OR again. Several hours later they let us know she had done fine through the surgery and was ready to see us.
She is doing alright, but is still in a lot of pain, both from the surgery itself and from the foreign object under her chest muscle, pushing it outward. I'm posting this picture because it is a candid one, and not sugar-coated. This is cancer. This is what it looks like to have your life rudely interrupted, and even if you have the hope that she does, that this is completely surviveable, it is still no cakewalk. I am so proud of her quiet strength and for doing what she needs to do resolutely and without a lot of self pity.
The only way I got everything done without creating a crisis was that Heather came out to help me inspect through March. My paycheck through March was rather dismal, because I worked so few hours. But I was still running everywhere I went, between two jobs and the doctor's visits and sneaking in a few ski runs between times. But every day I could not work, Heather covered for me, and every day that would have been absolutely out of control, we shared the work and it was doable. Heather was such a lifesaver this March.
It seems my sentiments about procreation expressed in my last post has reached Kansas ears and has caused a bit of redicule and judgement to be sent my way, since children are a blessing from God and we are not to stand in the way of Gods will and it takes a cold, heartless, shriveled soul to not want kids. It is my fault for thinking that if I just explain myself, no one will judge me. For thinking that thinking out loud won't get me into trouble. Oh, well. If I am happy, why let it bother me?
But still, I find myself fighting off a bit of gloom. That feeling of being misunderstood, and baring one's soul only to have it rediculed, and then looking out the window and knowing that any other time of the year, I would simply go for a bike ride and I would feel as though I am invincible and filled to the brim with sunshine and sage-scented air and nothing too bad to handle could ever happen to me, and in my world, I am the un-dethroneable queen. But this time of the year, snow obscures the peaks and an icy wind whips around the house and tiny, icy flakes fall at an angle. I should go out in it. I would feel better once I got out there, and I wouldn't regret it. But the though of finding all my warm clothes and braving the wind and snow just seems like too much work. So the question remains, what to do? The options are to roll the eyes and let it roll off, to roll over and play dead, or to ignore everything and let the good times roll.
