A New Year...A New Purpose

Again, no installment for the Alphabetical Cancer Prevention blog this week. Life is still hair-straight- back with Mother Nature trying to disprove the Farmer's Almanac' s disheartening  prediction of a snowless, cold winter. It has been +2-4 and raining in town which turns to flurries on Hudson Bay Mountain. We haven't had a break from hard-core downhill skiing in 14 days. For the first time in my life, it's the joints beneath my knee caps that are singing. The constant pounding after the fresh tracks of powder have been chewed up and you are determined to keep the 20 to 30 year olds behind you instead of ahead poaching the little patches of left-over powder.  Slam, slam, slam across the quick forming moguls which jar your back and knees. My body has been taking quite a beating. But it feels good to be back doing what I do best! It's my new way of thinking...enjoy what you love while you can, if you can.

The snow is so deep in places that you must use your poles like rudders or balance beams, which at the end of the day becomes very sore on my surgery side. So I don't use my right pole when having to traverse. My left arm does all the work.

An update on the boob for all those seated at the edge of their chairs wondering what the NEXT outcome will be, is the MRI showed there was still fluid in the right breast. While in Terrace for my hysteroscope, I heard my BC surgeon DR. E was around so I asked the nurse to tell him that a younger woman wanted to flash her boobs for him. He came by, all smiles and squeezing my big toe like he does, and asked if he and a student could examine me. He was surprised to hear there was still fluid after a year and jiggled the breast with his ear bent over it to listen. He said it was probably good there was fluid, which would keep the breast inflated versus collapsed like my girlfriend's. She faces reconstruction.
After three weeks though, some shrinkage has occurred which I figure means the remaining fluid has hardened into scar tissue. It looks smaller than the left breast and doesn't fit my bra as well. I have quit wearing thin tight shirts, preferring thick ones that mask the deformity.
I still think its better than not having a breast at all, which is some women's choice. Not mine.

The anti-depressants work amazingly well...except for the side-effect of a low libido. The libido hasn't been back to normal since the surgeries,  over a year now. My side remains numb and uncomfortable. That can work against me, but, there are many days when the Old Deb returns and the saying "There's nothing like good food, fine wine and a bad girl"comes true for Barry.

I am sorry to say I have had three friends battle cancer over Christmas. One with a breast cancer recurrence who went through chemo and radiation, meaning the same bald Holiday for her that I went through in 2010. Another got to re-coop on the couch from a uterine-cancer forced hysterectomy and the third, the removal of two cancerous tumors and over 30 lymph nodes in her breast area.

And the beat goes on...

Meaning once the snowing slows down, I will be turning my attentions back to getting Running From The Cancer Cooties published and those Cancer Prevention blogs on track! Its my way of  helping the next woman in line.

Here's to a New Year and a new purpose in my life. I look at it as I had to go through breast cancer to discover how I could help the world be a better place. I'm sure I'm not the first person whose life has been changed for the better by surviving something so depletingly debilitating.

 But it's new for me and I welcome the chance to give back with open arms.
After skiing, of course!