The Party Girl's Guide to Cancer

I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.  Like any day it's going to get back and I'm going to have movie cancer.  I certainly haven't lost any weight.  I'm finished with the Taxol which was supposed to be the BAD chemo.  I got a break and now I go to a month of radiation, plus Herceptin IV chemo every three weeks.  Radiation is its own process as well.  It's not what I thought it was, as I was envisioning a mammogram but with more power, that it was uncomfortable and painful.  You hear horror stories, people being burned badly and it affecting other areas.  A friend relayed an experience of a relative and rang the alarm bells since that person had permanent internal organ damage.  Walking down the hallway of the hospital hallway, I saw the iconic "fallout shelter" sign from my post-Cold-War youth.  It looks pretty cool.  I feel like I'm on the Star Trek Holodeck.I see a cover of a magazine in the waiting room, and the woman looks...

Road Trip I started my month-long break from chemo with a bang.  I have to continue with Herceptin every three weeks for another nine months, which will make a total of one year of treatment.  I also have a month's worth of radiation to look forward to.  I have a house in Florida that I have visited ONCE since we got it.  Once since last December.  So we are driving down, so we can have a car down there  instead of renting, and bring some stuff down.  It's not the time to UHaul it, so stuffing the sedan with clothes and basic needs will do the trick.  I need to work on my Florida Wardrobe, so I see some Lilly Pulitzer in my future.  I've already purchased a dress with tropical flowers on it.   The other John Oliver We have stops along the way to visit friends to cut down on expenses.  First stop Delaware with Bigtwin, an artist I met at my first advertising job at Mezzina/Brown working on Joe Camel (Yeah, I know.  I probab...

Summer's here and the time is right for dancing in the streets.  I finished 12 weeks of Taxol, and I get a full month off from treatment.  This really is like being on parole. I do have to go back to Herceptin IV every three weeks for a YEAR.  Just when I thought I could start over and start a new life in Florida, I started a new life alright.  I had to put my life on pause to save my life.  Now my treatment is on pause!  What next?  I've been so good!  16 weeks without booze.  What kind of life is that?  At least in the joint you can make hooch out of hairspray and shoe polish.   Good news is I don't have to do that - I just have to run for it.  Literally.  There's a Cider Run in an apple orchard.  It starts downhill which I can handle.  Then you run up a hill - no problem.  THEN the apples are growing on a hill and you have to run up and down the rows of apple trees.  Why am I doing this?...

Cancer christmas yielded many things I didn't know I needed until I needed them.  Joey Kotfica worked with us at Coney Island High doing all the things I was too old, stupid or busy to do, like updating our website with the latest gigs and doing all the tech stuff.  She now lives in SF with her husband.  She mails me a care package with hand sanitizer (understand that), a knit cap (as mentioned in my last blog), hand lotion (can always use that), hundred of those granny peppermints (nice to have), a dozen pocket packs of Kleenex (this one I'm scratching my head over) and nail polish, because chemo BOREDOM!  At my first chemo they gave me a backpack, a blanket, and a "box of hope" made by volunteers.  I packed up all my little goodies and my laptop in every session.  I have not used everything, but I've got it if I need it.   I'm ready for anything.  I ran/walked a 5K 10 weeks into a twelve-week cycle of Taxol....