Desperately Seeking Hope

This is not an easy post to write and I am sure equally difficult to read. Please realize it requires no comment, no reply...it is what it is...my reality.

On top of my own surgery, and subsequent infection, the day I got home from the hospital post surgery, they called from Toronto to tell me my mother was just diagnosed with Uterine Cancer. Naturally I joked that it was a good thing she wasn't planning to have any more children...but inside I couldn't help but feel that as QE II said this was most definitely the Pelc Family " Annus Horribilus"!

A bad joke, that wasn't the least bit funny.

Throughout it all I was distanced, remote, I could easily see myself housebound. The slippery slope between healthy mental state and depression, neurosis, anxiety, was a fine line that I was crossing, as if on a tightrope perilously crossing a huge abyss.

Through it all I couldn't put my finger on the true source of my depression, yes a lot of shit has been coming my way, but that wasn't it....

I was finally able to verbalize the feeling about 3 weeks ago...I had lost my connection with hope. Throughout the last 6.5 years I have always managed to be hopeful...but it was gone. In fact those who have known me my whole life, would probably agree that my hope and determination are pretty much traits that defined me. The empty void was replaced by a profound ache, so profound that I wondered if I could go on living like this. Something so vital to my existence, to my personality, to who I am was gone.

Thankfully I am lucky enough to be in therapy, and through our conversations the options became clear...either I had to make peace with the New Sam...or I had to fight to rebuild my hope. I knew that the first option was not truly an option, I couldn't make this ache, this void a part of my life..this was not living. So that left us with Option 2...rebuilding hope, trying to find a way out of the darkness. Lana (my therapist) used the image of stringing pearls...telling me to string 1 image at a time...to find the patience to fill the necklace pearl by pearl, focussing on the pearls on the strand and not on the empty space still waiting to be filled.

I decided to use her image to make a real bracelet of beads that I found that represent Strength and Energy. Each night I sit here at home adding a bead for each hopeful image or thought I've had during the day. Let me tell you it ain't easy. Some days I struggle to find 1 image or affirmation that I have had to leave me hopeful. Some days I can add a bead or 2, smiling at the thoughts that bring me here, evidence of hope.

So where am I you wonder...about 1/2 way there, much further than I imagined 3 weeks ago, but still working my way towards the end. Today I reached the middle and I am finally able to share this post. What put me over the middle...a crabapple tree we have in the front yard.

For four years it has never produced the vibrant red fruit for which we bought it....and this year with all the sorrow and uncertainty...this tree on which we had given up hope is full of little red apples that shortly will be a vibrant red and a sign of life.

I'm sorry apple tree for every doubting you, for giving up on you, now I'm working my way to finding the same forgiveness for myself...

I am Pro Choice and also Pro Life ! There I have said it. Oh, don't worry not in the way you think. I may be a walking contradiction on many levels but no, this is no contradiction.

I realized this week that you need to choose to live. Not just breathe air, but really, really live.

After another minor bump in the road, I ended up back in the hospital for yet another sojourn.

As I sat in emergency for 7 hours before being seen, and then another 5 hours until they proceeded with treatment, I couldn't help feel an immense longing for the time being wasted.

I know we all use the expression " A waste of time" but truthfully is there anything in the world that should make us angrier...anything or anybody wasting our precious time.

Ultimately I realized that Time is finite...yet so easily wasted...so easily taken for granted.

How much time have we wasted, being bored, being angry...being, but not enjoying.

As I ended up on 9 Surgical ( yet again) I commented to the staff how sad it was that some patients, in the room next to me, were still in the hospital. After all I had already been home for 6 weeks.

" How long has she been here I asked?" Quietly the orderly help up 2 fingers. " Wow I said 2 months?"...." No" she said "2 years". TWO YEARS !!!!

I think my gulp was audible all the way to Toronto.

I actually became anxious. It wasn't the 2 years of hospitalization, it was the immense waste of precious time.

Recently someone very close to me was also diagnosed with cancer, yes when it rains it pours. Never a chipper person at the best of times, she has fallen into a depression and refuses to seek help. She hasn't come to the realization yet that you need to Choose Life...Choose to Live.

So really we should all be Pro Choice and Pro Life.

Pro Choosing to Live life every moment we can.

I don't want to die yet, don't get me wrong it's not the dying, it's the idea of NOT living that scares the hell out of me. Not laughing, Not smiling, Not Hugging someone you love, Not waking up each morning and doing something you love. Not, not wasting time!

Will there be sad times, yes, but even then we live by leaning on those we love, holding someone tight and crying on a shoulder of a friend.

Think of all the moments of your life that have been wasted and join me in choosing to live....

This morning I'm making Challah French Toast..ahhhhhh...let the living begin!!!!!!

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
Carl Sandburg

Self Esteem

It's remarkable how much of our self esteem is tied into body image. Duh, you say. Well today's views of body image weren't really a part of our growing up. When we were in high school, way back then, I don't think any of the girls ( I am sure I will be corrected) aimed to be a size ZERO and none of the guys worried about a Six Pack. Hell the only six pack we knew was the way soft drinks came ( no self respecting Canadian ever bought a six pack of beer, even if you were Jewish you knew to order a 2-4).

We were able to buy our self esteem, it required having the coolest, latest fad items.

Please let me take you down memory lane.. The Right Clogs, Sport Root, Painter Pants, Pukka Shells, Kodiaks, Denim Overalls, Camaros...I must have forgotten a few...feel free to add on...oh yeah my all time nemesis...Frye Boots.

I laugh because I was far from athletic. In fact I got caught doubling back with Hartzman smoking on a 12 minute run, but somehow I had these huge calves. These same calves which today are my pride and joy were so big even then that I couldn't wear Frye Boots...they would bunch around my ankles. You see, now I get stopped in the street about my calves.

In my lowest point wandering aimlessly down the corridor of the Royal Vic last month, hooked into I have no idea how many life sustaining apparatus, an orderly came over to comment " Hey man, nice calves, do you do a special exercise for them?" Someone even thought I had implants.

Hmmm...that's it my calves are the saving grace of my physical self esteem. You see I need to hold on to or find something to be self redeeming.

Over the last 6 years, although I have joked about it, the scars that crisscross my body have come with a heavy emotional price. I have tried to view each with pride as a memory of a noble fight, fought and won, but the truth is that it is not that simple. The doctors call them Red and Angry...how prophetic....if they only knew.

I remember conversations with Carmen and issues with Mastectomy and body image...back then I didn't get it. I didn't get the heavy emotional cost of having no choice but to agree to surgical mutilation ( sorry for the word...but ultimately it is what we agree to), but I do now.

5 surgeries later my body is not a canvas I recognize. So I struggle with body image issues. I wonder if I will ever take my shirt off in public again....will I scare small children on the beach?

Oh how I wish it was 1975 all over again...I would just buy those clogs, painter pants and even the pukka shells if it would make it all okay. If I could only buy back my self esteem...oh wait I almost forgot...I still have my calves...maybe things will workout after all.

A Fine Line

3 weeks and 1 day post surgery. My energy level is nowhere close to what it has been after the past surgeries. Thank you to all who so kindly have reminded me that now that I'm over 50 I can't expect to bounce back the same way...( Hallmark called they won't be needing your services).

Originally I had hoped to be back to work this week, at least part time, but that was clearly not going to happen. So next week it is ....or so I hope.

I also realized that apart from the physical healing, I had pretty much fallen in to a depression over the last few months. I don't mean profound sadness, cheesecake or hot bagels can pretty much cure that, I mean the kind of funk that baked goods won't cure.

I know you're thinking " Well after what you've been through, of course you're depressed", but somehow knowing your entitled to it, doesn't make it any better. Trying to plough your way through this fog is about as exhausting as trying to keep up with Lance Armstrong, okay not even close.... Lance was more exhausting.

That's it...this morning I smiled...Lance was more exhausting and I lived through that...I can live through this. So I made a plan to try to join the living, and this time it doesn't involve lycra.

I took a shower...and cut my toenails. Big deal you say.... Happy Feet...Happy Soul.

I wanted to rejoice in the mundane and so cart in hand I went to Loblaws and even did my own checkout....alone.

Lastly I needed to rejuvenate in the splendour of spring so I decided to make an outing to Jasmin, the best garden centre in all of Montreal. There is something very therapeutic in wandering down those aisles encircled by the beauty of nature in it's thousand hues of green.

Embraced by the welcome scent of lilac and roses, the watercolours of Hydrangea and the gurgling fountains, encouraging me to sit down, relax and refocus on the rebirth associated with the season. It certainly helped that my breakthrough omen Tracy was the first person I saw when we arrived at Jasmin ( to understand more you need to read the old posts about the ride).

I don't want to trivialize the despair associated with depression. I wish it was as easy as picking yourself up and brushing yourself off, it's not. I know I need help and have reached out to find the help I need. I know it's not over, but I also know that I will get through this.

Some of us are good at being chameleon's in the face of adversity, showing a brave outer face as we crumble inside.....some can't find the light... and some are overwhelmed by the despair.

Baby steps...Baby steps....walk before you run.....and then dance, and dance and dance!!!

Happy Feet....Happy Soul.

The Ride's Not Over

I have made the decision to keep this blog up and writing...because the truth is for me the Yellow Jersey is a metaphor of crossing the finish line. Not sure if it mean the finish line of life or any project we have, but truly it is about giving your all in the meantime. The last year has been another rollercoaster.

Somewhere along the way I made a decision to try to figure out how to live with cancer, as opposed to living my life waiting to die from cancer. The distinction is huge and really it was about trying to find a way to have cancer come 2nd.

That included a decision to monitor a 1.8 cm growth and continue with my plan to celebrate my 50th in Antarctica. Doctors reassured me that I was not putting my life in jeopardy and for once, I could live and have the cancer wait. Huge relief...I was getting the upper hand for a change....or so I thought.

My return in February showed that the tumour was now 2.4 cms through MRI and so the process began to figure out what it was and proceed with the necessary arrangements for removal. The tumour this time was firmly planted on my pancreas....but it was not pancreatic cancer. The doctor was quick to make the distinction as it seems that the pancreatic cancer diagnosis sends a chill up everyone's back and leads to deafening silence.

I was truly up for the challenge until out of the blue the new surgeon recommended a brain scan to make sure that the cancer had not spread any further.

Although I was ready for the battle at hand I had in no way anticipated that the rules would somehow change without prior notice. I know it sounds crazy, as if cancer plays by some standardized rules, but where the hell did the brain come from? How did it become an issue all of a sudden?

I couldn't take any more surprises so I requested a full body scan to make sure that another tumour wasn't lurking somewhere only to be detected in 3 months.

The ULTIMATE good news bad news scenario. The CT Scan found nothing else except the existing tumour we were working on...YAY....BUT somehow in this imaging it wasn't 2.4 cms anymore it was 4.6 and growing rapidly....WTF.

My head was spinning, yet again it was if cancer was laughing in my face. Just when I thought I had found a way to live with it, reality came home. In the interim we lost Bev to lung cancer.

Bev Levitt was a ray of sunshine. She was diagnosed with lung cancer precisely at the same time as my last kidney surgery which was November 2008. I completely didn't see her death coming. I wanted her to survive so badly....no lets be honest...I needed her to survive. I wanted the pact we made with Terry last July, to outlive the cancer , to be unbreakable.

Even then we knew it was back but Bev looked strong and with Mark at her side we all seemed invincible (cancer laughs again).

Bev's unveiling was on May 9th, Mother's Day, and 2 days later they wheeled me in for my surgery. My emotions were raw...the 5th surgery in 6 years. You know you are in the hospital too often when you end up with the same nurse from 1.5 years ago and they remember you , and it only makes it worse that I was in a completely different hospital. Will this be my road to infamy? Jim not only remembered me but the details of my previous surgery....Oy Vey....We have to find a different way to meet.

The rest is mechanics and I am home recovering very nicely....never as quickly as we would like but surrounded with love and good friends.

This latest round brings me back to the fight for a proper Psycho Social Oncology program at the MUHC. I realize that this battle needs to be waged and I am not prepared to give up. To those who are ready to join me in this battle your help and support are more than welcome. Knitting needles in hand I start to create the safety net to which I believe every cancer patient and their family is entitled. So bring your needles and join me....my next posting will be about the vision for the future. Like I said for me the Ride's not Over.