LIVING ironically ~ post cancer and during COVID-19 ~ Welcome to the world, baby girl?????

Isn't it ironic???!!  Having been in personal isolation for the past year and a half due to my surgeries in 2018 for adenocarcinoma ex-goblet cell of the appendix and subsequent chemotherapy - I was very much looking forward to rejoining the world this spring!!!  I had fun working on Roo's spring wardrobe.  I cleaned ALL my closets and cupboards.  Scrubbed the baseboards, refrigerator, every tray and drawer in the kitchen.  Oiled and cleaned under, beside and behind the furniture.   Spring cleaning done early!!!  I was ret tah go!  Enter COVID-19 necessitated social isolation!!!

To explain ~ My second episode of malignant cancer and its treatment proved incredibly difficult to rebound from - physically and mentally.  Not news to any cancer patient, but old school chemotherapy is a bitch!  I continue to live with significant neuropathies especially to hands and feet (a burning pain mixed with strange numbness and weird jingy jangy sensations) along with a variety of skin afflictions and joint pain that are improving.  Sadly, these side effects are incredibly common with chemo.  Every patient forum for cancer treated in this manner, has a zillion posts from folks dealing with similar side effects, all searching for help and answers.  Too often, oncologists provide no particularly valuable warnings of what is coming nor advice on how to deal with these issues once present.  Even worse, there is often an undertone of, "You had cancer.  You're still here.  Are you not grateful?"  You may be sent to rheumatologists or dermatologists. (I declined.) Still - no real solutions are provided.  X-rays and scans of joints are usually negative. Patients are often told that "nothing is wrong".  Skin weirdnesses are very common.  Soon after starting chemo I developed thick waxy yellow plaques to my face, arms and hands, improving some once off chemo.  Since then my skin in those areas has peeled repeatedly.  My joints - and bones generally - hurt everywhere, all the time, during chemo.  With chemo completed, the generalized pain improved, but my joints continued to ache.  What's a girl to do?  I started short workouts on the elliptical.  I took walks.  I began to run.  It hurt.  But, today the joint pain is better.  I started using some OTC retinol products to the plaques on my hands and face, based on some research B found.  They improved gradually.  Apropos of nothing, my face will still randomly peel, but the plaques have resolved.  Neuropathies remain pretty much unchanged, waking me some nights, not on others.  It is what it is.

Mentally, it has been a struggle.  It was hard to accept the need for help from others.  Hard to be the cause of worry - again!  Hard to lose the "future" I had drafted for myself.  Hard to make garments - something I had been excited about - for a body so radically changed.  A body that may not need said garments period.  Besides, a body not going out and about can't justify the production of new clothing, can it?  Self worth is hard to find when you don't seem to be doing anything productive!  But gradually, through the love and encouragement of my dear ones, the beauty of books and nature, the resilience of the human spirit - I began to MARCH FORTH!

Over the past few months, I have taken baby steps to rejoin my world.  Roo's wedding.  Visiting friends engaged in their own struggles.  Sewing projects for myself and others.  A bit of travel with B.  Finally feeling free to play!  I even got a job!!!  YEP! Sho did!  As a Census Worker, to begin later this summer, a useful and interesting way to start being a productive human once again.

Which brings me back to IRONY and COVID-19! Just as I attained the strength to end my personal sequester, our globe has been attacked by nasty strands of RNA using human cells to replicate and grow.  Like cancer, COVID-19 is not impressed with how much money you have, the color of your skin, the state or country in which you live.  Neither cancer nor viruses value maps.  They are not deterred by walls or lines drawn in the sand.  It is immaterial to them who you vote for - or against.  They don't care if you are young or old.  However, the data for this particular virus tells us that the older and immune-compromised among us are at greater risk for significant illness.  THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOUNGER FOLKS WON'T GET INFECTED!!!!  It just means they are somewhat less likely to be at risk for hospitalization and death.  Given the numbers expected to be infected in the US (and across the globe) and the data already demonstrated regarding the proportion who will require hospital care - it is clear that if the outbreak is allowed to occur all at once, the capacity of our healthcare system to provide care to all who need it - both the suffers of COVID-19 and those with heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis, trauma and all the other expected illnesses those systems address daily - would be overwhelmed!  Therefore, it is obligatory for all of us to do our part to slow the spread of this virus as much as possible in order to ensure the availability of healthcare resources for those who need them.  Apart from needed testing, the common sense action we can all provide to stem the tide, is social distancing.  It is just that simple.

As disappointing, frightening and strange as this new reality is - WE CAN DO THIS!!!  Last Friday, Roo was told - starting Monday you will teach online - from home.  Okie dokie then.  A bit of brain storming with fellow teachers and she is up and running.  Work and assignments posted on line.  Videos of instruction produced at home.  Check her utube channel Moore Math with Mittens if you want to beef up your geometry and algebra 2 skillz!!!! I am so incredibly proud of her and teachers across the globe who are stepping up to meet the needs of their students on incredibly short notice with lots of love and creativity!!  Sadly, for many children in this country, their school lunch is the only significant meal they have.  At Roo's school her principals (already amazing multi-taskers and certified bus drivers) are traveling the bus route, taking lunches to students along with delivering and picking up printed school work to students without internet access while simultaneously working to get those kiddos online! She and ever so many other teachers have stepped up to this unprecedented challenge, keeping our nation learning and our kids busy and comforted by caring faces - even if they are only "virtual"!!

You parents are awesome, too!   Granted, it is more than you ever asked for, but I know you are are doing a great job for your kids and the rest of us really do appreciate you for it!!!  Still, responses to this new arrangement posted by some of my friends with kids at home have made me laugh out loud:

There are all the unsung heroes of our everyday now juggling even greater burdens - the delivery workers (from mail, to food, to products), checkout clerks, grocery employees of all stripes, pharmacy staff, all our healthcare personnel - from housekeeping to radiology to respiratory therapy to nurses to doctors and everyone in between ~ blessings, gratitude and strength to you all.

Then, there's this guy!  Petrified of bringing crud home to me - given the history shared above, having had asthma from childhood, donating half of my right lung to melanoma and wheezing my way through 2 1/2 years of immunotherapy in that ta dah - this is the crazy get-up that B donned to make a run to Wally World yesterday!  He didn't really think his attire was going be completely protective against the corona virus, but did report being the recipient of a lot of side eye and folks definitely gave the #crazperson a wide berth - which was exactly what he wanted.  That pic cracks me up every time I see it!!!

Yes, things feel out of control.  Plans made even days ago - from the mundane to the adventurous - are turned on their head.  Loved ones may suffer.  Elderly in nursing homes are most certainly confused with new routines and the absence of expected visitors.  Children are at loose ends.  Parents are burdened further.  The global economy and incomes of friends and family will certainly be affected.  Jerks - IN MY HOMETOWN!!!! - try to benefit from the desperation of others:  He has 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and no where to sell them  WHAT AN A$$HOLE!!!!!!!!!!  But, despite disease, difficulties and despicables - the world is filled with beauty still.  A young family in my neighborhood volunteered to make grocery runs for those who are unable to do so for themselves.  Brent and I are searching for ways to put our skills and training to use. Yes, personal dreams and plans have been for the moment dashed. But, if ever there was a time when society was blessed with the technology to allow physical distancing WITHOUT social isolation, it is now.  As we cancer survivors have already learned, when shit hits the fan, that which is most important in life comes to the surface very quickly and the rest - didn't really matter after all.

Stay safe.  Take care of yourself.  Take care of each other.  Alone we are little more than ripples in the sea of life.  But together, we can do great things.   Love, les