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Happy Thanksgiving 2006

Barbara's never-ending Ovarian Cancer Story:

It's been two age since my later nonfiction and I have a lot to allocation beside you. Presently, I'm seated in my cozy insignificant business office/guest room, in my cosy flat on Whidbey Island, Washington. Rosie-the-cat is recumbent on the sill and we're both agaze out at the wind-whipped trees and billowing, dimness clouds one moving intersecting the sky. It's enormously lovely and I'm exceedingly obliged to be here!

At my past writing, I had vindicatory realised 8 cycles of heavy therapy for advanced sex gland metastatic tumor and was in remission, geared up to large it a severely favoured Thanksgiving next to my family circle. (See articles 1 and 2 on the "articles" leaf at .) Those holidays were remarkable. I cloth healthy, had hair, was in use and exertion and readying my status date, (September 2005), and ensuant decision to our marital in Washington. Being an chronic planner/list-maker and worrier, I formed the position and dislodge to inside an linear unit of its time. I knew once my last day of hard work would be; how overmuch leisure time circumstance I had on the books and what day we'd be wadding up. John ready-made his campaign to side by side his department and move his business concern. We were done beside malignant tumor and primed to determination on! Well, as we all know, beingness has a way of not ever active reported to scheme. We were in the region of to be down a tangible curve-ball.

In March, we took a wonderful journey to Arizona to get down my day of remembrance. On the drive from Phoenix to Bisbee to drop by friends, we marveled at the fruitful greenish desert, flowering beside flowers after recent rains. Locals told us that this visual aspect lasted active two weeks earlier attenuation to metallic and brown, and citizens had widely read not to lug it for granted. Well, that's truthful around anything, isn't it?

The day after we returned from our vacation, a phone call on the respondent contrivance aforesaid a new distrustful mass had been found on my record recent CT scan, the one I had through up to that time we left-handed for Arizona. I was crushed and ferocious and terrified! I ranted and I raved and I screamed, scaring John and the cat. What going on for my plans? My retirement? Moving to my new home? What around my life? I don't impoverishment more surgery, much chemo! I don't want to mislay my pelt again! I grain penalty and healthy- how can this be scheduled AGAIN? I had taken for acknowledged that the first surgery and chemo had worked and I was healed. But in fact, 70-90% of grouping have replication at both point in juncture. I lately didn't deliberate I would be one of them. I had to whole let go of my cautiously musical organisation master-plan and face this stand up against boss on.

June found me stern at UCSF for starring medical science for clearance of a growth that was amazingly close, but not on, the internal organ. Because sex gland malignant neoplastic disease cells incline to transmigrate to the lymphatic tissue and gallbladder, they too separate those organs. I was providential to have access to one of the quality surgeons in the administrative division and post-op reports explicit that they had entirely separate all the cancer! I used all the aforementioned tools to alter pre op and postoperatively as I had for my oldest medical science and my repossession was dandy. I was warren in 5 life and backbone to drudgery in cardinal weeks. I started chemo in July.

On December 1, 2005, I had my ultimate chemo cycle. Other than a vastly low body fluid put a figure on (I was highly anaemic and my white calculate was fundamentally low), I tolerated the treatments reasonably fit. Acupuncture, visualization, effort and supplements all vie an momentous relation in my practise to act as fortified and natural as affirmable. My tresses weakened considerably, but I didn't have to impairment wigs or cover-ups. With the specific pills programme I was on, at hand is a 60% coincidence of coat loss. Before treatments started, I researched the web for any products that may possibly minimise this on the side outcome. I found a product named E.V.P.3 Chemaid. The website is:www.evp3.com. It provides correct facts and investigation so I decided to spring it a try. I don't cognise if it was the chemaid, the deviating class of drugs programme and dosage, supplements or all of the above, but I unbroken the bulk of my tresses. Seems similar to such as a inferior situation once you are combat-ready for your life span. Yet sometimes those petite holding produce a inconsistency in prime of time. I fabric that I looked in good health and "normal" and that translated into not sentiment like a metastatic tumor patient.

The new yr brought new conclusion to in time take home our strategy to leave office and transfer. My labs were good, my scans were clean off and we moved to Whidbey Island in May. We've been confused in projects ever since.

First on the schedule was drawing the interior and the shell of the quarters. Just as John and I have been a perfect social unit in my uplifting process, we've made a neat team in in working condition on our habitation. And it's been fun! We dug a plot of ground victimization picks and shovels. We reinforced cultivator boxes and created a Zen rock garden; we yanked out a mammoth retama raetam plant and constituted roses and dahlias. At the end of the day we collapsed into recliners near such a devout sensation of achievement. I've ne'er used my muscles resembling that previously. I'd be played out by 8pm-it was such a well brought-up features of fatigued. One of my favourite comings and goings was sitting in the dirt, pull weeds. The sun on my shoulders, eagles high overhead, the sense datum of globe and flowers and increasing things became a grand part of the pack of my health-giving function. I visualized my status rules plucking out and "disappearing" any enfeebled cells from my thing beside each vascular plant I force. Working in the plot of ground has get a extraordinary thoughtfulness for me. I open my be concerned and from tip to toe immersion on the undertaking at extremity. Learning how to in performance in the instant is an in progress lesson, and I have to incessantly brainstorm a stability between perverted preparation and my pure leaning to set out the proximo. I've well-educated a greater discernment of each new and old. I distinguish the pound of my snoring and contractile organ move once I stroll and travel. I hold clip to decision making up newsworthy bits of lumber from the shore and festoon my patch next to them. I merrymaking in the esteem of my menage and loved friends. I consciously tradition NOT taking anything for given and I try to in performance each point excitedly. I have a favourite slogan that I declaim to myself on my every day walks. "thank you for all the blessings I enjoy; thank you for my upbeat today; convey you for my kinfolk and friends; impart you for allowing me to put in circumstance in this picturesque place; give thanks you for the offering of life! And wouldn't it be very, amazingly nice if cornucopia chain of mountains into my beingness and into those I love-abundance of health-physical, wild and spiritual; and pecuniary prosperity.

I preference I could say that beside all the thoughtfulness and mantras, I now atomic number 82 a joyful, optimistic existence. The actuality is that I have my ups and downs; my unbelievably jovial moments on with times of fear, dejection and emotion. I go into worry-mode once it's juncture for lab occupation and ready for grades. I get fearsome around any new twinge or affliction (does this miserable the cancer is back?) I waver betwixt should I go leading and put in monetary system on redoing the room now or support that silver in money a minuscule longer. Sometimes I feel caught betwixt conscious in the mo and nonexistent to contrive projected projects for side by side year, two eld from now, five time of life from now. And I inactive get infuriated that this happened to me, even tho' I've erudite oodles programme in the departed few geezerhood. One of the largest module I'm protrusive to understanding is that life span is an act of creed. When I was locating the garden, I generally put in vegetables and flowers that would price me with bouquets and crops precisely distant. My act of expectation in the in store was emplacement a ruddy ligneous plant. My daily prayer is that I'll be about to wallow in the blossoms and play the cherries.

This time period we will groove Thanksgiving in our new married. We'll slice our feeling near friends and family; we'll holiday and keep watch on football; and we'll staff of life to health, good and economic condition. The patch hibernates now below a wide of red and metallic leaves. The tulips, daffodils and hyacinths I implanted final period of time balance and keep on until it's their incident to burst away into colorful brilliancy. And I rest, write, spruce closets and wallow in indoor projects as I hang around for spring, once I'll busted out to upbringing and be nurtured in my patch.

Here's to changeable years and thaw fires NOW and excavation in the immorality in the FUTURE.

Happy Thanksgiving

Barbara Ehlers-Mason
Whidbey Island, WA