Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving was beautiful this year.  The Ozarks were at their November best, the weather was gorgeous, and this Tucsonan was, again, fascinated by the proliferation of trees!!  The food, the robot-mugs, the cloth napkins, the behaviorally-challenged canines, the extremely-full car ride, the caboose in the woods by the pond, the grass - each of these could be the subject of its own blog post.  But none of them have anything to do with cancer.  That was possibly the best part - feeling so normal, being so normal, doing things that I would have done this year, and in this way, even if I hadn't woken up in pain four months ago and gone through everything that followed. 

Being together with family was extra-special, particularly Grandma, who's had health concerns of her own to combat.  Also, Grandma has chronically cold hands that felt amazing on my head when I would get a bout of my own personal summer (hot flash).  Needless to say, I was sure to sit by her often. 

My list of things I'm thankful for this year is very long.  I'm glad I don't have cancer anymore.  I'm happy I don't start another round of chemo tomorrow.  But those things (or perhaps more clearly, their opposite - having cancer, needing chemo) seem more like fate, something no one has control over.  So I'm most grateful for the people who have surrounded me and stood by me in so many ways the past few months. Because those people (i.e. you, and others) have made a choice to support me, have gone out of their way to make my life more pleasant by taking care of my physical, emotional, medical, and yes, even social needs in the middle of the yuck.  Thank you. 

Quitting Chemo - and Cancer

I got a call yesterday from my doctor's office scheduling my next appointment: January 20!  I might not go into the office for two months!  In the meantime, I'll get my blood tested and a CT scan.  I'll have some phone conversations, and can call or go in if I have questions or concerns.  And I get to talk to Shirley every week about the thickness of my blood.  I don't usually believe in more than one exclamation point per paragraph.  But I'm done with chemotherapy!!  And that is cause to celebrate with excessive punctuation!!!

Yes, I won't have the five days of yuck, and my hair will start growing back.  I can go back to work, and stop using antibacterial soap unless I just replaced a toilet or something really nasty.  But quitting chemo is not simply a happy occasion.  I worry about having made the right decision, about every little twinge, burp, or upset stomach - is that Grazelda?  Or is it Grazelda's mutant, back for the fight stronger than before?  It sounds like some terrible made-for-TV alien movie sequel. 

In the meantime, I have places to bike, people to see, books to read, music to dance to, and furnaces to start up.  "Sitting out" for a few months can give a person quite the ToDo list, and I have barely started on mine.  That is to say, I may be too busy to worry much.  

I won't say good-bye yet.  I want at least one more blood test before I'll be convinced that Grazelda has been entirely annihilated, and I will definitely be sad to lose you all as such a wonderful audience for my rambling thoughts.  But for now I'll hope for medical boring-ness and try to post weekly.  Emails are always welcome [pennermk AT gmail DOT com] if you find yourself needing a higher dose - I'll do my best to reply quickly.

Oh yeah, and for old times' sake . . .
Chemotherapy Side Effect #92: Ridged fingernails.
I feel a little bit like a tree, but instead of rings counting years, I have ridges on my nails counting chemotherapy cycles.  They'll grow out with my fingernails, but meanwhile I have a reminder, in case I forget. 

Decisions decisions . . .

It was a good news kind of doctor's visit this afternoon.  We all breathed a sigh of relief that my AFP was 7.  The reading of 22 was either a lab error or some stubborn cancer cells finally throwing in the towel, popping and releasing a bunch of that protein all at once.  My PET scan was basically clear except what is probably a little bit of over-active fat some distance away from where Grazelda lived, which will be confirmed by a CT scan at some point in the future.  And I got other little bits of good news, too: I am now officially allowed to floss, have blood drawn from my left arm, and play ultimate frisbee. 

Now what?  Well, now I get to choose whether I want one more cycle of chemo (=one 5-day week + 2 Bonus Bleo days) or that I'm done and watch my AFP count closely.  I've been thinking/talking/writing about it all afternoon and evening, and don't feel much closer to a decision.  Ugh.

So I'm experiencing a mixture of happy that bubbles up and says "Hey - I used to have cancer.  And now I don't.  Life is great!" and a slight headache from too much thinking in circles about chemo choices.

But.  I get to go to Missouri and see my family for Thanksgiving next week, and I'm working tomorrow and there will certainly be some sort of partying this weekend.

7 < 8.4 !!!!

Dr. Hallum called this morning bright and early with some very good news.  My AFP from this last blood draw was 7, which is in the "normal" range of below 8.4. 
I'll still go in later today to ask lots of questions, but I thought I'd share the news while it's fresh.

Happy Wednesday!!!

MORE Awesome!!

Here he is, friends.

I guess this picture gets the "hold you in the palm of my hands" line a little backward, but I needed some perspective.

For even more perspective, here are before and after pictures.  Just add faith (and a little bit of water). 

What sucks is that I'm posting the Grow Jesus pics on my cancer blog tonight because I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow (Wednesday).  I don't know what news it will bring - the results of my blood re-test (AFP tumor marker recount), the interpretation of my PET scan, and the implications for my treatment plan.  That is to say, I may learn that I have more sugary, more chemo, different chemo, or some other unknown. And then I might not feel like putting up Jesus pictures, no matter how awesome he is.

Meanwhile, I go biking and get those delightful endorphins and stay happy.

Socio-Political Side Effects of Cancer

I've written quite a bit about the absence of hair on my head.  I'm bald and female, and in this culture that's weird.  I stick out. 

Here's the other side.  The rest of my hair is mostly gone too - legs, arms, underarms, and all the other places I formerly had hair are basically bare.  Before chemo, I had always been very well-endowed in the body hair department, and now after I disguise my bald head with a favorite headscarf or hat, I feel like I fit in better than I did in my phenomenally hairy, not-on-chemo body.  These days, without spending hours waxing, shaving, plucking, or bleaching, my body looks more like what mainstream media tells us is feminine and beautiful and normal.  And I feel feminine and beautiful and normal. 

Do you realize what I just said?  "Beauty" is definitely not on the list of side effects I was handed during Therapy 1.1, but in the eyes of the media, the culture, and myself Chemotherapy makes me beautiful.  That sounds very very wrong to me.  Dripping poison in my veins makes me feel horrible and gross and sick and ultimately it makes me look good?  Something has got to be badly broken in a culture that holds up as attractive the appearance that arises from such misuse.  Misuse by chemotherapy, by anorexia, by cancer-causing tanning beds, by skin-damaging hair removal products, rib-crushing girdles, and joint-destroying heels . . . (Of course all of these torture devices are targeted at women.  The patriarchal political dominance through cultural opression is so obvious as to be put in parenthases.) Should we not instead value well-ness and celebrate its embodiment?  Should we not seek to live wholly in our bodies as they were made for us?  Finally it becomes a question of transforming the culture we live in while still living within it. 

P.S.  That eyelash is still holding on. 

The Late Last Lone Lash

It was a good day here, full - and I mean really quite full - of spontaneous social interaction. Sorry, Jodi, I didn't have time (or implements) to decorate my walls today, and my batteries ran out before I could capture the latest incarnation of Grow-Your-Own-Jesus in pixels to post.  So, you'll have to settle for a bizarre picture documenting the current state of my eye.  Not only are my eyebrows about 1/3 of their former glorious fullness, but my eyelashes are also significantly thinner.  In fact, on my one eye, on the bottom, there's only the one lone long eyelash left.  It's too late at night to have Profound Cancer Thoughts, and I am fascinated enough with having a solitary eyelash that I took a picture to share with the world:

Positrons and Positives

I went for my PET scan today. 

[Pause while Margaret pulls her glasses down her nose and continues in her best teacher voice]

PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography, which means they injected me with radioactive glucose so I personally was emitting positrons from wherever that glucose (well, I think it was actually a glucose analog) went, and by measuring those emissions they make lots of cross-sectional images of me to create a 3d one.  For the glucose to get only to the proper, active, high-metabolism (i.e. cancer) cells, I had to lay in a recliner very still, doing nothing, and not being anxious, so the glucose wouldn't go to the muscles that were working or the brain cells that were worrying.  In other words, forced relaxation for a good forty-five minutes, after which I had to lay on the narrow bed that slid in and out and through the PET scanner tube with my arms way up over my head for another twenty minutes, again being very still and non-anxious.  The worst part was my shoulders starting to hurt after about 5 minutes in the tube, and let me tell you - after cancer and chemo and crap, sore shoulders are like a sunny day at the beach. 

It also struck me as bizarre that my job was primarily to relax.  I guess I am told to relax all the time by medical folks, but usually it's to keep my veins from contracting, or because there's nothing else to do while on the poison drip, or to make whatever little shot or exam easier.  Here, relaxing was vital to getting a clear and accurate scan.  So today I was particularly glad I'm not squeamish around needles or at this point very emotional about my cancer. 

The idea of forcing myself to relax brings to mind another phenomenon, which is that of the required positive attitude.  First, I think that overall, I've managed what could easily pass as a "positive attitude" through most of this crud.  I certainly haven't pulled the worst cards out of the cancer deck, and I have a large, strong, and loving community of friends and family who make my life logistically, financially, and emotionally comfortable, making it often effortless to keep a smile on my face.  (Thanks, guys!) 

BUT, it's unhealthy to expect a cancer patient to be happy and optimistic all the time.  It's okay to be sad, it's important to cry, and the people closest to me give me the space to have my emotions honestly.  But not everyone is so enlightened, and to claim that sustained cheerfulness alone will heal your body can cause more repressed anxiety and frustration than allowing them their natural space and expression.  These seem like obvious truisms, and yet I often am encouraged - by hospital nurses, strangers, and even fellow chemo patients (you get all kinds in there!) - to have a "positive attitude," even to the point of making declarations that I certainly can't know to be true and have no control over. 

Like today, I was chastised for putting "probably" or "hopefully" in a sentence about a timeline for getting rid of all the cancer, as if one little adverb revealed a latent negative mindset.  Not only do I do a pretty darn good job of keeping a cheerful face on the whole matter most of the time (again, it's because I feel pretty cheerful most of the time), but I was merely taking care to speak as accurately as possible given my minimal knowledge of what my life will be like in two weeks.  The encounter was irritating to me, and would have been downright disheartening if I didn't have such an arrogantly confident conviction that I am an emotionally healthy and generally positive person.  In other words, I promptly dismissed the suggestion to speak with undiluted assurance about the future, as simply wrong.

Now it is my bedtime.  I am hoping for pictures tomorrow, aren't you?  Perhaps an update on the growing/shrinking Jesus.  Or maybe the Very Last Eyelash.  Or maybe a shot of my newly decorated walls, though that would require decorating them first, which could be time-consuming. 

Bummer #372

If one were to be so brazenly polarizing as to classify days as "good" or "bad"/rough/tough/challenging/other sugar-coated euphemisms for bad, today would easily fall on the "good" side of the fence.  I went hiking, had a picnic with friends, cooked a large meal, and was able to blame its bland-ness on my lack of tastebuds instead of my personal culinary skill. 

And yet, in the middle of the day, just before I was going to get on my bike and ride to said picnic, I called the PET scan place to ask a few questions about the test I'm having tomorrow.  The woman was helpful and kind, and then said, "And you know not to perform any strenuous activity for 24 hours before the scan, right?"  No one had informed me of this, no, and I glance at the clock, relieved that my hike was completed before the 24 hour mark, and that I still had a grand total of 3 minutes to perform as strenuously as I wanted before I needed to stop. 

Me: "So, I shouldn't do something like go on a bike ride right now?" [Maybe I should have included the word "leisurely."  Maybe that would have helped.]
Her: "No, if you're scan is tomorrow, definitely not.  You don't want to get your muscles working and then have a false positive." 
Me: "Bummer." 

It's not a huge deal, driving what would have been a perfect-length bike ride for my Getting Buff Again Without Being Stupid About It Plan, but it's just one more in a long series of little - and sometimes large - bummers resulting from this whole cancer thing.  

Tomorrow's the big PET scan day, but I won't get it interpreted until next Wednesday.  Bummer #371 is that I can't eat all morning tomorrow.  No Egg And Toast.  No granola and milk.  Not even a mint.  I will pack a big lunch for afterwards.

In the meantime . . .

In my non-cancerous existence I am employed by Community Home Repair Projects of Arizona (CHRPA for short - say it: CHIRP-uh.  Yes, it's another awkward Mennonite acronym and no, we don't have anything to do with birds).  CHRPA does home repair at no cost for people in our community who couldn't otherwise afford it including carpentry, roofing, plumbing, coolers, and (my specialties) electrical and furnaces.  I've been at it about three years now.  And yes, I do all of that and am simultaneously a woman (if you didn't pick that up from the cancer I suffer starting in one of my ovaries). That is to say, normally I'm out in the field every day, doing the home repairs and training volunteers to do the same.  However, after major abdominal surgery and subsequently diving headfirst into chemo, I stopped that.  I have not been climbing ladders, crawling under sinks or trailers, or going out in the field at all.  CHRPA work is dirty and tiring, and not in a "clean dirt" or moderately tiring sort of way. Chemo patients are not supposed to be that sort of dirty or tired. 

So, for the past couple months on my non-bad weeks on my non-chemo days when I've been feeling well,  I've been going into the office to work on writing grants and occasionally answering phones and doing other things that need doing and don't involve physical labor or really grimy places. 

Today, though, for the first time, I went in to work with my pliers holster on my belt and my purple bandanna on my head.  I went out to jobs with my boss, and we did 4 furnace startups/cooler shutdowns and installed 2 grab bars in under four hours.  He graciously did all the ladder-maneuvering and roof-top stuff, anticipating that it'll take me a while to get my full strength and endurance back.  I'm not suddenly 100% again, but it does feel good to be so tangibly useful. 

I'm also not consistent at 4 days a week yet.  For example: tomorrow's a holiday, Thursday I have medical stuff most of the day, and CHRPA doesn't work on Fridays.  I'm still waiting, expecting to go back on the poison drip in a few weeks after I finish the next round of tests and an appropriate protocol is determined, but in the meantime, I might as well fix some houses. 

At the end of the day I got sent out to help a VSer who needed some supplies from the shop.  The project was some very aggravating, poorly engineered, cheaply executed plumbing to fix (de rigeur for a CHRPA day), and we ended up working quite late, which today feels more like an accomplishment than an irritation.  After getting back to the office, Daniel the VSer set down two bottles in front of me, saying they were for me, from the client (we'd driven separately and I'd left a few minutes before him).  Closer inspection revealed them to be shampoo and conditioner. 

. . .

What??

everybody's gotta wait in line

Here's what I know:

I have a PET scan on Thursday. 
I have a blood re-test next Monday.
I have a doctor's appointment next Wednesday.

That bit I wrote last week about needing lots of patience to get through cancer is so very true.  Today was pretty rough as I found those things out in a series of phone calls.  It is not an easy thing to sit on my laurels and wait for answers to my page of questions that can be summed up in two words: "What's next?"  But that's about all I can do for now.


Also.
While the following sentence may sound like a great metaphor for something, please don't go there.  My words are quite literal:
Today I discovered I can't taste the salt in my own tears. 
Huh. 

Dia de Los Muertos

This evening was the recently traditional Tucson All Souls Procession.  It draws on the Mexican Day of the Dead, the Catholic All Saint's Day, and doesn't shy away from Halloween, but really it's the poster child for a post-modern holiday.  Let me explain what I mean by post-modern, as that word should not be thrown around lightly. 

There's a very defined ritual - everybody dresses up, usually like someone dead, or in black at the very least, often with very large puppets or instruments or drums, or carts, or portable shrines, and processes through town.  At the head of the parade is a very large paper urn into which people are invited to put a name or picture of someone who has died.  Spectators eventually fall into the parade behind/beside, and everyone collects in a big empty parking lot at the end where there is otherworldly music, arialists suspended a great distance above the ground, and fire dancers.  The effect is ultimately surreal, and the climax is lighting fire to the paper urn (and everything in it), after which it is quickly hoisted up in the air and we watch it burn. 

It's a great ritual.  Absolutely spectacular in my book, and just for comparison I'll disclose that I'm rather bored by fire works.  I am fascinated and captivated every time.  It's a great ritual, but the meaning is left open, left to those who come to participate to find/define it for themselves based on what they bring to the experience.  Some march in memory of someone, some march for a cause, some march because they like dressing up in black and painting their faces, some march because they love drumming and dancing.  There's no narration, no plot, no words spoken to the crowd until after the urn is burned.  That's why I call it post-modern.  I love it. 

This year I decided to really dress up, and after I got sick I knew I wanted to go as something related to Grazelda.  I was really hoping and mostly expecting that she'd be gone by now, and that I'd march in celebration of her death.  Sadly, she is not yet departed, so I had to adjust my costume a little.  Kristi did my hair and back, Alison the VSer did my port decor, and I put eyeliner on my tummy scar to bring it out more; Fortunately, it's healing too well to be a proper parade accessory.

I got lots of compliments on my head.  As I suspected, Dia de Los Muertos is a great place to be a bald woman.  With all the costumes and makeup and surreal personages walking about, I fit right in.  Several people came up and asked about Grazelda.  I told them the truth, so they wouldn't think I had a deathwish for some unfortunately-named woman who had wronged me. 

It was a good evening.  Pulsing with energy and celebration (in the broad sense) of death.  In that setting, strangers talk to each other, take each others' pictures, and dance together to the drumming.  It was a great place for me to be.  And I hope that Grazelda burned up for good with the big urn. 

And now it is very late and I am very tired (the I've Been Up All Day And Am Sleepy kind, not the chemo-fatigue kind), so I will go to bed. 

Damn.

I think today qualifies as really bad.  Even without cancer, it wouldn't have been a good day - I woke up with my face feeling puffy and uncomfortable and some dimwit in a pickup ran into me while I was on my bike -  but cancer definitely pushed it over the edge to really bad.

I got the call from my doctor this evening.  He explained that my number had gone up.  Yeah, that's right, it went up and it was supposed to go down. 

Let's review.  The numbers we're talking about are my Alpha Fetaprotein (AFP) count.  It's a tumor marker, a protein produced by the kind of cancerous cells that developed in my body.  Before surgery it was 6,620.  It's been going steadily downward since then, roughly in an exponential decay pattern.  Three weeks ago it was 14.6.  The goal was 8.4 or below.  In the blood draw from yesterday it was 22.  Damn cancer. 

Not only is Grazelda not gone yet, she's growing (or there's a lab error).  So what's left has probably developed a resistance to the hardcore chemo drugs I've been on.  Not only would that mean more chemo, it would mean different chemo.  I mean, this regimen sucked, but at least I'm used to it.  I know what my body does when, and I'm always up and around again after a few bad days.  New drugs would mean new side effects . . .  but all that is speculation. 

First we (and by we, I mean Dr. Hallum) have to figure out what's going on, so I'll have some imaging done next week, have my blood test re-done, and go in to talk with him on Wednesday. 

I don't know which is worse - getting diagnosed with cancer, or getting told the treatment didn't quite work.  Getting diagnosed was pretty crummy and I was very afraid of chemo, but at least it meant an explanation and an end to my immediate suffering of having an ovary the size of a football tucked in my abdomen.  Right now I feel great (well, minus the kleenex and water I'm toting around tonight), and have been thinking about and anticipating moving on with my life after today, and I now know how much chemo sucks (which is a lot).  There is no silver lining (or even just a bit of silver lint laying around).  It's just bad news. 

Well, I think it's time for a little whiskey. 

Therapy 4.7

Today was a good day.  As in, the kind of day that non-cancerous people would mark as good.  Hm, except the best parts happened in the chemo room, which isn't a place that non-cancerous people typically hang out . . . Jeanne went with me to chemo this morning.  One of my chemo friends, Martha, was there who remembered it was (possibly/probably/hopefully) my last one.  I was next to her on her first day, along with a couple of her teacher friends, and she really bonded with my mom.  Martha and one of her teacher friends brought me a goodie bag full of neat stuff, including a bag of yummy homemade cookies.  The nurses were very busy running around today, so before I got hooked up I opened the cookies and took them down the row, inviting everyone to join the party because it might be my last day and asking how they were doing.

Even better than the cookies was the chance to go around and talk to everyone and listen to them a little while.  Many of these women I'd met before - and everyone on the drip was female today, though there were some husbands around, too. One woman remembered my name, my whole story, my football-sized tumor, my "very long hike". . .   Another woman had thought my headcovering was actually my hair from far away.  Like I said a couple posts ago, someone who hadn't met before wouldn't be able to tell that I didn't naturally have neon orange hair!  So we compared bald heads and talked about the curls that might grow in.  Younger than the average patient age by 40 years or so, I get a kick out of fashioning myself a little bit like everyone's spunky granddaughter, and today I think I did it pretty well. 

It's hard to see people doing worse than they were before - Three weeks ago Helen could transfer herself from wheelchair to recliner.  Today it took two nurses.  Stupid cancer. 

Shirley wouldn't give me my certificate yet, since I might not be done, but I did catch up on my stickers-on-my-cancer-binder count of number of chemos I've gotten. Here's what 28 stickers looks like:

So if Grazelda's not dead yet, it's not for lack of capturing the magnitude of the effort visually!

The afternoon was also pleasant: after a little bit of loafing, I loaded my bike in its various parts into my car and took them to the bike coop, where, after 4 hours work, some more frustration, but more learning things and being successful at truing my very first wheel, I got my bike back together.  So now I'm a Probably-Cancer-Free Young Woman With A Functional Bike And A Full-Size Accordion (as of Monday evening!).  What more could a person ask for, really?!  Oh yeah, grease stains.  The picture doesn't show it too well, but there are even bike grease stains on my shorts. 

Tomorrow I have my blood test.  Friday I get the results.  And I guess you could say I'm a little nervous, but more it's irritation at not being able to plan next week until I know whether it's totally taken up with chemo and feeling bad ,or if I just have my first follow-up visit on Wednesday.  The test won't change anything in my body.  Everything's already been done, endured, and survived.  This test is just a measure of that which has been done (oh yeah, and I get poked again because that's what always happens).

Cancer and . . . whatwasIgoingtosayagain?

I've been meaning to write this post for a while, but it's just kept slipping my mind.  

Most people know that chemo makes you feel yucky.  Nausea, vomitting, fatigue, hair loss are all famous results of the Big Drip and things people ask me about.  Here's a lesser-known joy of cancer treatment: Chemobrain. 

Studies have shown that people undergoing chemotherapy experience mild loss of memory and concentration.  It's in the literature, it's something the oncology nurses explain when going over the Long List of Side Effects at the beginning of treatment, and it's another one of those things that just creeps up on you so gradually that you don't really notice it for a while and then can't be entirely sure that it's not just your mind under stress or being its usual clumsy self.  And by "you" and "your," I mean, of course, "me" and "mine," because this is what happened to me.

I'm pretty sure I've got chemobrain - not so much a matter of memory loss, but of reduced concentration, of talking and having to put a big pause in the middle of a sentence as my mind goes away and comes back.  Any way you slice it, it's not as big a deal for me as hair loss or fatigue or the constant chemotaste in my mouth.  Heck, I've avoided doing anything that requires too much concentration for the past three months, granting some tiny bit of [insert big pause so Margaret can think . . . hmmmm, what's that word that means truth and would sound good here? . . . veracity? . . . merit?  no . . . ah, here it is] credence to the "chemo-vacation" paradigm.  Nevertheless it's a frustrating experience and one that I don't really like to admit to, except of course on a blog read every day by people across the globe. 

I think I cover for it pretty well by pretending to be thinking hard or speaking slowly (feel free to comment otherwise now that you know the truth!).  And even before I identified my increased verbal lethargy as chemobrain, I recognized my occasional difficulty forming sentences as a time to be intentional about having patience with my ailing self.  Cancer takes lots of patience: I've had to be patient when I couldn't cook or sleep through the night or drive or poo or lift heavy objects or return phone calls, not to mention put my whole life on hold for three months to kill Grazelda .  So I have every reason to give myself time to think and to speak, and who cares if someone has to wait a little bit longer to hear what's dawdling through my head?!


Tomorrow's Bonus Bleomycin Wednesday may be my last chemo treatment ever!  And it might not be, but we'll hope for the best - and that I'll feel good enough to go finish fixing my bike afterwards.

PT/INR

I had another blood test this morning.  Not the blood test (that's Friday), just one to make sure I'm healthy enough (i.e. recovered from the last dose) to get chemo on Wednesday, and also, as always, they took a (vile) vial to measure the thickness of my blood.  This is called the PT/INR and stands for Prothrombin Time / InterNational Ratio, and I get it checked about twice a week.  As always, I got a call from my nurse Shirley in the afternoon telling me that my PT/INR was low, once again, and that I should basically double my blood thinner for the next few days.

It was only a matter of time spent getting poked twice a week in order to get a phone call telling me that important number before a graph came out of this one, too. 

PT/INR vs. time

And here is my deep thought of the day: If I met someone who hadn't met me before, they wouldn't know what color my hair is.

Upon further (deep) thought, I realized they'd have some good clues in my eyebrows.  No one would think I was blond.  But they still wouldn't know what color my hair is.

Upon even further (even deeper) thought, I suppose that I'm not entirely certain what color my hair will be when it returns from its chemovacation.

hm.

Two things I really really really really like

1) Contra Dancing. 

We did go contra dancing last night.  And despite the smaller-than-usual crowd, it was a great time.  The music was good, and everyone was in a goofier-than-normal mood in their Halloween attire.  I only sat one out and got to dance with a lot of people I enjoy. 

We sort of  dressed up for the evening.  Miriam dressed up as me . . .

That's the dress I always wear dancing, as it has the best twirling action I've ever experienced.  You can't see it, but she has my nametag/necklace on, too.  The braids are a relic of Margaret past (and probably future). 

I was going to do something Star Wars-esque with the bald head, but in working on a back-up plan, I fell in love with a new style of headwrap that I happened upon, so this was my costume of sorts.  This one involves a few straightpins though, so it's not too great for everyday wear.  The bald head idea will have to wait for next weekend. 


2) My Bicycle
I pumped up my front tire today (which was keeping me from riding before) and got on my bike, for the first time since mid-July.  It felt so good riding down the street, crouched over my handlebars with the wind in my helmet that I may have cried just a couple tears of sheer physical joy.

I proceeded to bike straight over to the bike co-op to work on getting it really fixed (I had a cracked rim in July, which makes it a little unsafe), and spent a frustrating and mostly fruitless afternoon looking for bearing parts to make the used wheel I found interface with my bicycle.  So currently my bike is in a less ride-able state than this afternoon, having only one wheel that is complete.  Bummer. 

On the up-side . . . I came home with grease all over my hands and had to use Fast Orange to become domestically functional again.  In my non-cancerous life I do home repair work and most days end up somewhere on the grimier end of dirty, needing to clean up, but I haven't had that chance since mid-July either.  So the Fast Orange felt pretty good, too.