2019 in review

Or please go away, 2019.

I looked at last year’s posts and realized I never did a year in review post. I’m not sure why, but I never even posted anything in December last year.

But now we’re nearly done with 2019. Thank God, good riddance and good bye. So I’m answering the questions I’ve (mostly) answered over the last few years.

What did you do in 2019 that you’d never done before? 

• I can’t bury the lead on this one—I got a second primary cancer. I’ve blogged about it a lot this year, so I won’t rehash the diagnosis, surgery, treatment and so on.
• I also finished treatment for my broken pelvis and used my bone growth stimulator 243 days this year.
• I also amazingly won my age group for two 10k races this year—after breast cancer surgery and radiation treatments. Those two races were part of a series of three 10K races, and I ended up winning my age group for that challenge.

Did anyone close to you give birth? 

Not this year—stay tuned for late January when Jordan and his wife Amanda are expecting their first child, a girl, whom they are naming Grace Elizabeth. I'm incredibly honored that she shares a name with me and I can't wait to meet her.

Did anyone close to you die? No.

Did you suffer illness or injury? 

Yes, in addition to the breast cancer and the broken pelvis recovery (which took a lot of time), I was also diagnosed with osteopenia and I’ve got little benign tumors on my kidney. Oh and a tiny pleural effusion on my left lung.

What countries did you visit? 

Sadly, and again this year, none. We did take a wonderful trip to Key West in February, Biloxi MS in October, and did some family traveling too. The highlight of the family traveling was our reunion in Stanley Idaho the first week of July. And I’m still so thankful that Ben and Jen graciously host us at Thanksgiving.

What would you like to have in 2020 that you lacked in 2019? 

No cancer diagnosis. Two's plenty. Enough already.

What dates from 2019 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? 

They are nearly all cancer-related: April 9 (diagnosis), May 6 (surgery), June 28 (last day of radiation), June 29 (Chloe died). I have a slew of dates from this fall, but you get the idea.
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What was your biggest achievement of the year? 

I was absolutely determined to continue running this year as I recovered from my broken pelvis and then dealt with surgery and radiation. I vowed I would run all throughout radiation treatments, all 20 of them, and I did. It was really hard, and unless you’ve had radiation, I don’t know that words convey the exhaustion and fatigue but I did it.

What was the best thing you bought? 

We got a new Ninja coffee maker and I am in love. BUT I also love the changes to the yard, the new carpet in the bedrooms and the new windows. Oh and my new car.

Where did most of your money go? 

Oh gosh, well yes I spent a lot on medical bills (although thankfully I have good insurance) but honestly we spent a lot almost as a way of saying we are going to live fully. 

For example, once I knew my cancer hadn’t metastasized, I traded in my Volvo C30 for a V60 Cross Country. 

Then finding bras that didn’t hurt after surgery was expensive, then finding bras to fit my new reality (things are different in the chest area) meant more money, etc. etc. etc.

We also wrote a lot of checks to fix things around the house: massive yard clean up, including removing 10 trees (we still have a shady yard), we had new windows installed in the bedrooms to match the windows installed in 2006, and we put in new carpet in the master and second bedrooms (third bedroom has original wood floors, the other two bedrooms never did).

So yes, the spending was all about enjoying life right this minute.

What did you get really excited about? 

I don’t actually have a good answer for this one. I have things I am looking forward to (Grace Elizabeth!). But I don’t know that I got really excited about anything this year. 

Even something like the end of radiation treatments became sadness because we had to put my old girl Chloe down the very next day. I never felt happy or relieved to be at the end of radiation, I only felt grief and sorrow over losing my kitty.

It’s been a really hard year, maybe the hardest of my life. The accumulation of stress overwhelmed a lot of my good coping mechanisms just as I lost one of my best ones (running). As my psychologist said a couple of weeks ago, the work I did 20 years ago was sufficient for the normal wear and tear of my life. 

But in 2016 Kent lost his job, in 2017 I was diagnosed with melanoma, in 2018 I fractured my pelvis and this year has been more cancer, and more invasive procedures, with side effects and complications I'm still dealing with. So it's no surprise that my PTSD came roaring back.

On Christmas Day, I sat in church as we read the prayers for the people. There’s a section where we pray this:

For the sick and the suffering, let us pray to the Lord.

I realized oh hey that’s me this year and teared up.

What book(s) did you love this year? 

I have been an indiscriminate reader (escapism at its finest) and devoured all sorts of fiction. I enjoyed Anne Bishop’s The Others series, and right now I’m reading some of Laini Taylor’s works. There's nothing like an alternate universe to escape this one for a hile.

What song will always remind you of 2019? I can't think of one song so here’s a link to a playlist of mine on Spotify. I listened to this one a lot. 

Sometimes I get creative

We got our duvet cover from IKEA oh five or six years ago. It’s very calming, with neutral colors and no quilting. I bought a couple of them and made matching curtains from one set and we’ve used the other set on our bed.

See the holes?

As with many duvet covers, you can slip a down comforter inside and this one has a zipper across one end. We’ve never put a down comforter in ours for two reasons: one, it’s much easier to wash the duvet cover when you don’t have to wrest with a down comforter; and two, when (not if) a cat pukes on the bed, I’d rather have two layers of duvet cover before the down comforter.

But as you might imagine that zipper has stressed the fabric every time we’ve washed and dried the cover. It’s not premium fabric, it’s IKEA after all so it’s gotten holes across the bottom.

Unfortunately, IKEA no longer makes the same item. Instead they have a weird quilted packaged set with sheets and pillowcases. You can’t just get the duvet cover and it’s certainly not plain and flat, it’s quilted.

I’d been bummed about those holes and wasn’t sure what to do—I didn’t want to have to make new curtains again, plus I really like what we have. And then the other night, I realized I could piece together a band of fabric the width of our current cover, remove that zipper and stitch the band to the end. That would extend the life of the duvet cover and also give us more fabric at the top of the bed.

So that’s what I did. What’s interesting is how much whiter the duvet cover is than the fabric I used at the bottom. It doesn’t matter, all that gets tucked under the bed anyway, but I did find it funny.

Back to Bryn Mawr (briefly)

After we got home from our Thanksgiving visit with Ben and Jen, we flew out the following Friday to Bryn Mawr, PA. My younger brother had a significant birthday this month, and all his siblings and spouses flew in to surprise him at his mother’s house (she’s my stepmother).

We had a great, rowdy, boisterous visit over the four days we were there, and my brother Stephen was completely surprised by it. He told me later he saw me about the second person in and then it dawned on him—hey wait a minute, the whole family is here!

It was good to see everyone. Technically, the step-siblings aren’t my step-siblings any longer. Well legally anyway, but I’ve known them since I was three years old so they are absolutely family.

Church of the Redeemer

That Sunday I attended the church we all went to when I was little. It's a gorgeous building and I was so happy to see the parish is still flourishing. That was also the only Advent service I was able to attend this month, because the day after we got back from Bryn Mawr, I hopped on a plane for Las Vegas. That one was a work trip, and anyway I don't care for gambling nor do I drink much these days. So it was a long week.

At the end of those 10 days, I was thoroughly confused about what time zone I was in. We'd spent nearly a week in California, home here in Kansas for a few days (Central time zone), then four days in PA (Eastern time zone) and then I spent nearly a week in Las Vegas (Pacific time zone again).

Last weekend, we drove to Tulsa to see Kent's mother. She's in a nursing home and unable to travel so we make sure to celebrate Christmas with her. Kent's brother gets her room decorated in early December, which she loves, and we buy the presents from her to us then have fun opening them with her.

So this weekend is the first and only weekend I've been home this month. I won't lie, it's nice to be home if only for a couple of weeks.

Everyone, including spouses

Melissa (brother's GF), me, Jennifer

All the siblings plus my stepmother

Silly family--Kent, Erin, Matt in the back, then Jen, me, Pierce

Good-bye and good riddance

Bone growth stimulator

In March, my physiatrist prescribed a bone growth stimulator to help my broken pelvis recover better and faster. As I shared then, this is a medical device that could only be used once a day for 30 minutes; once I started using it on day 1, I had exactly 269 treatments left. At the end of the full 270 days, the device would turn into a piece of expensive inert trash.

On December 7, the device pulled it's version of Cinderella and is now dead. And I’m pleased to say I used that thing faithfully all but one day I was at home (we got home really late and I just said no). I even used it on the day I had the lumpectomy. The rest of the days I missed, I was traveling. The device can’t be put through any sort of TSA screening so thankfully I didn’t have to try to take it with me on those trips.

Altogether, I completed 243 of 270 treatments. And while I got really sick of using it (seriously, you cannot do anything other than stand or walk around awkwardly while wearing it), I hope my broken bone got the full benefit.

And then what happened?

I mentioned that I’d had a thing removed from my arm in October, and that my dermatologist thought it was a dermatofibroma, but it wasn’t. Instead it was an atypical leiomyoma, and because of the location, it’s quite rare. The pathology reported some alarming features and no clear margins, so I had to have it re-excised in late November.

Boy, I’ll tell you what, that local anesthesia injection really hurt with the re-excision. My dermatologist said that’s because the body very quickly forms thick scar tissue in the healing process, which later gets remodeled into thinner, less bulky tissue. Because I had the re-excision just a month after the first excision, the injection just sort of ripped all that thicker tissue apart.

He showed me how much tissue he took for that one—it was a lot more than I thought he’d take, and I could see the fat globules just like you see in anatomy books. It was oddly compelling. The incision itself is less than beautiful, although I still think it will improve. At least I hope so.

The path report came back with minimal information—basically all it said was yup, you got clean margins.

But at my annual physical with my PCP in November, I mentioned all this and shared the path report. Because these atypical leiomyomas are also associated with kidney cancer, he ordered an ultrasound. And guess what? I have a couple of small tumors on my right kidney. So a week ago, I had a CT scan with and without contrast dye.

Now here’s the thing. I’m allergic to contrast dye, and the last time I had it, I got hives. So I had to take prednisone and Benadryl ahead of time only . . . I got hives again. Worse than the first time. Any thought I had that maybe I wasn’t really allergic? Gone. I’ll finish up the new course of prednisone today, and thankfully the hives started going away pretty fast once I started on the full course of treatment.

And to put a pretty bow on the story—yes, I have some small benign angiomyolipomas on my right kidney. I’m sure we’ll follow those to make sure they don’t grow. The report also said this: incidental noted is prominence of the IVC. I wondered if that’s because I’m a runner? Who knows.

Since last we met

I’m digging out from the absolute whirlwind of the last month while simultaneously getting ready for the roller coaster ride of January. So I wanted to catch up here before I forget things.

Let’s see—in November, we made our annual trip to see Ben and Jen and the kids for Thanksgiving. They’re no longer in Yuma AZ (which to be honest I was glad to have seen and I’m good never going back), but live in the most amazing area in Camarillo CA. I could live there so easily, the ocean is right there as are mountains, and the climate is pretty sweet too.
Jordan and Amanda couldn’t come this year; Amanda is in her third trimester and didn’t want to risk air travel at this point. I get it, it’s a long flight and these days flying isn’t all that much fun.

But we had a grand visit with Ben, Jen and the kids. In no particular order, we:

• Indulged my strong desire to go to a brick and mortar Uniqlo (in Santa Monica, which was not at all crowded on an early Sunday)
• Drove up the coast and then took Malibu Canyon to get the rest of the way to their house.
• Took a hike and saw forever across the ocean to the west. While I love mountains, I’m Team Ocean all the way.
• Saw tide pools on a very brisk day, and clambered all around the rocks finding more to see.
• Took Alison shopping as a small thank you for all the years she’s given up her room and her bed when we visit. 
• Ran a Turkey Dash race as a family in less than ideal conditions (40F and pouring—I do mean pouring—rain). The link is to next year's event, but the details are basically the same. The kids ran a 1k and were champs, and then we adults ran the 5k race. Sometimes the more miserable conditions make races more fun, especially once they’re done. I know we all felt a real sense of achievement that day.
• Enjoyed amazing food (always a given there), and got to visit with a niece (is she still a niece? She once was so I say she still is) I hadn’t seen in a while.
• We had some amazing Indian food at a place Ben loves. 10/10 would go back there again and again.
• We got a gingerbread house kit again for the kids, I wasn't sure if they'd be into it or if they were too old. I needn't have worried; they built it and then in 20 seconds, tore that sucker apart. 

In Santa Monica

VERY windy at the top of our hike.

Alison is taller than I am now. Jen is still slightly taller.

Tide pool--gorgeous.

I could watch this all day.

Just before Armageddon. 

The boys' racing gear laid out the night before.

Every single item was so good, best Indian food I've had in the States.