Rock the Silver

March Weirdness

For basketball fans, this month is about March Madness. For me, March is about weirdness. Life and death and defying the odds. I've been lucky, but I should probably stay home tomorrow. I'm not getting on any airplanes, that's for sure.

First of all, March 11 is my sister's birthday. March 11 also happens to be my 14-year cancer anniversary. I've always felt bad that my sister's birthday will be forever marked by my own bad fortune. But I've actually had good fortune when it comes to surviving cancer, and we Pekars are good at rolling with the punches, so I'm sure she doesn't mind. Happy 60th, Cheryl!

Some of you have heard this before, but I repeat it periodically because it's important for long-term survivors to be visible. Everyone needs to know that sometimes good things happen to people who get cancer.

On March 11, 1999, I was diagnosed with cancer that turned out to be stage 3, grade 3 Primary Peritoneal Cancer. This type of cancer is virtually identical to ovarian cancer except it originates in the lining of the abdomen. I had surgery to remove the tumors, six rounds of chemotherapy and another surgery to check for any remaining microscopic cancer. I was given a clean bill of health and have been fine ever since.

Now I get to say I am in my 15th year of survival! How cool is that? I don't say I beat cancer, and I don't say I'm cured, even though I am a long-term survivor. It makes me sad to read about cancer survivors who use words like terminal and incurable, because in my mind, who really knows? In many ways, I am typically a glass-half-empty kind of person, but my inner sunny optimist emerges when it comes to cancer. I know firsthand that anything is possible.

Last year on March 11, I fell off my bicycle and broke my wrist. A minor thing, purely a coincidence, but it stopped me in my tracks. Nothing really bad had happened to me since cancer. How dare this happen to me? I had lapsed into my Type AAA behavior, and the accident made me realize it was time to chill if I wanted to live another 15 years.

Some say there is no such thing as a coincidence, especially if you look for the clues.

Then we come around to March 26. It is my mother's birthday, and she died on this exact day seven years ago. Her mother also died on her birthday. And if that isn't odd enough for you, my husband's mother and my mother died within hours of each other ... his in Maine, mine in California. We each went home to be with our families. What we really wanted was to grieve together, but there would be plenty of time for that later.

Sometimes we get wrapped up in life and all the things that drive us. Even after surviving this killer, I have to constantly remind myself to lighten up. Yes, we have dreams and demons and obligations, but please remember to pause from time to time, breathe deeply and inhale the goodness of being alive and the enormous privilege of aging.

Waking up to orange juice

When I was diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer in 1999, I made a conscious decision that I would not make my health all about what I could and couldn't eat. Some cancer survivors believe in eating a macrobiotic or other restrictive diet, but I have always maintained this strategy is really about the quest for control.

Controlling cancer with food? To me, that's like saying fairies dance on the lawn at night. It's possible, but we do seem to be unencumbered by evidence.

I made small changes in my diet I thought might enhance my overall health -- lots of water and no soda. Those were probably the big two, because I love to eat and wanted to live my life enjoying delicious food. Cheese is my downfall, but I don't eat fast food, and we only dine in restaurants occasionally.

Read this, and you will be inclined to think twice before ordering just any old thing. More than 3,000 calories in a simple pasta dish at the Cheesecake Factory. That's about the same amount of calories as a pound of butter! I cannot imagine what they did to fatten up this dish, but I can only assume other restaurants do the same thing.

So, OK, I want to be somewhat vigilant without getting crazy. Several months ago, I gave up orange juice, which I drank for years every morning. In fact, the only time I didn't drink it was during chemo, because it tasted awful. As soon as I was done with chemo, back to the OJ. I stopped when I mentioned my habit in a blog post, and a reader said, oh, you don't really want to drink orange juice.

You can Google how orange juice is made, or you can check out this article. Even the premium "not from concentrate" juice is not what you think. Yes, it is squeezed from oranges, but then all the oxygen and flavor is sucked out and replaced with tasty artificial flavorings made by perfume companies. Would it kill me to drink it? Of course not. I just thought, yuk, I don't need this.

But I do like something sweet and tart first thing in the morning, so I came up with a compromise that works for me. I juice six to eight lemons or limes with a chunk of fresh ginger root and then add simple syrup to sweeten. I freeze the juice in ice cube trays, which I put in a huge ziplock. In the morning, I pop out an ice cube, thaw it out in the microwave and add water. Delicious!

Today I am making my first batch of homemade yogurt. Wish me luck ...

A short guide to a long career

Work is hard. Get over it.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a job in this economy, you’re probably doing more with less, and it does get hard. Some of the people I work with talk about about bailing out. Some of these people are 30 years old. This is where having gray hair comes in handy. We’re tough to kill.

Maybe we are what they call slow burners. In it for the long haul. That’s me, but only because I reinvented my relationship with work. It’s all too easy to succumb to pressure and stress. I feel it, but I also practice letting it go. Over and over. I tell myself it’s not healthy to sweat the small stuff.

And it is small stuff. Having cancer and getting over it gave me that perspective. Right after I was diagnosed, I visited a counselor. I thought we’d talk about my disease and dealing with the possibility of death, but we ended up talking mostly about work. I had no good role models. My father was unemployed for most of my childhood, and my mother worked at a minimum wage job she hated.

The counselor helped me strike a balance. Work will always have a very high priority in my life, but it doesn’t define who I am. For those of us who missed the day on self-esteem, it takes a little while -- like maybe half your life -- to get comfortable in your skin, but after that, everything else snaps into place.

Once you stuff your demons in the trunk, you can turn your focus outward and use your talents to elevate the enterprise. I find it energizing to engage with an eclectic mix of people and help my team stay sane while they solve challenging problems one bite at a time. That’s good stress. But I also know from experience that the stress of constantly comparing yourself to others or taking every little slight, snub or dysfunction personally is destructive.

The find-your-passion people can keep looking, and I wish them well, but I subscribe to the theory of last man standing. In this model, I give it everything I’ve got and do my absolute best to add value every minute of every single day. But I don’t imagine that my job will fill an empty hole inside of me. We’re business partners not soul mates.

That’s my take on it, anyway. Roll with the stress, make it to the end and enjoy a rewarding career that pays the bills. Draw strength from the human interaction as much as the work itself because one day you will be in a room by yourself wondering where everyone went.

Team Ovary needs your support

This morning's newspaper was delivered with a local car dealership's big pink advertising sticker, "Driving Breast Cancer Awareness, One Car at a time." Earlier in the week I saw a Save The Tatas bumper sticker and a billboard reminding women to get a mammogram. The slogan was, "Make a Date With the Girls."

You think I am going to rant against cause marketing and the pink machine, don't you? Ha! Tricked you again. While I am troubled by the inconsistent use of capitalization in the car ad, I think it's grand that we can all talk about tatas without blushing. A newspaper can arrive on your doorstep with the word breast slapped on top of it, and no one bats an eye.

There was a time when you couldn't say the word breast in mixed company, so at least we can talk in our outside voices about a terrible disease that kills about 425,000 women around the world every year. Point pink machine. Talking about it lessens the fear and ultimately saves lives. For the less glitzy side of the story, read Ann's blog -- she writes about the disease with raw honest truth and humor, too.

As an ovarian cancer survivor, I am sometimes bothered by the lack of awareness and outright fear of this disease. That fear leads to death. No one cares about lonely little ovaries, no one will be driving cars one ovary at a time or wear ovary apparel for the cure, but breasts are prime real estate. I was lamenting about this to a male co-worker, who said, "We can't see your ovaries."

And we don't have cute names for them, either. Maybe that's the problem! We need to rebrand ovaries. I did a little internet research and found this adorable plush toy plus a few ideas:

• Lady Berries
• Blue Bells
• Toodles
• O's

Interestingly, there are 262 fun and catchy names for breasts, so you can clearly see that Team Ovary needs your support. What should we call these mysterious little sacs of eggy love? What will help us save lives?

Keepsakes from those who would abuse your trust

I saw this story where people who have worn the yellow Livestrong wristbands feel betrayed and are trying to decide if they'll keep wearing them. I’m keeping mine, but I won’t wear it. I’ll tuck it away with the ring I got from another guy who fooled me into thinking he was someone he was not.

It was 35 years ago. I was in the Army, which wasn’t a bad place for a girl who couldn’t find a date in high school. I was stationed at a base in Germany, where I think the male-to-female ratio was 3,000:6. Lots of opportunity.

There was a guy, sergeant somebody. I honestly can’t remember his name. He struck me as a bit odd, but he was very sweet, and I liked him. Not anyone I wanted to date, but several of us -- a mix of young guys and gals -- would eat together in the mess hall or go out bowling or to a movie in the evening. Nobody was dating anybody. No kissing, no hands in the pants, just friends.

I was buddies with this girl, Sue. We both liked to travel and spent a lot of time seeing Europe together. One Christmas we were planning a trip to Nürnberg to see the Christkindlesmarkt. The sergeant came to see me in my office and wished me happy travels. Then he handed me $100 and said, “Have a good time.”

I was kind of an uppity and obstinate girl soldier, and I said, “Look, you’re sweet, but I don’t take money from men.”

He blathered on about how he had some extra cash and wanted me to have it. Something switched over in me, and I said, "If you are so anxious to spend your money, I suggest you take it to a woman who makes a profession of it." I really said that.

He was like, fine. Have fun.

When Sue and I got back from our trip, guess who shows up at my office again? This time with a small box. Inside was an opal ring with tiny diamond chips. It came with a certificate of authenticity! I said, "Seriously, you can’t expect me to accept this?"

He said, “Yes, it is truly a gesture of friendship. I’m sorry about the money -- I was hoping you'd accept the ring instead.” I said OK.

We continued to hang out together, and then he went off on a special assignment to the United Kingdom. He wrote me a few times, but I didn't write back. I eventually was transferred to Fort Bragg, N.C. While unpacking, I found one of his letters, and I was consumed with guilt. He had been nothing but charming to me, and I treated him badly.

So I wrote him a nice letter just to say hi. He wrote me back and said how happy he was to hear from me, how much he had always loved me and that he still hoped we could get together. I was blown away and wrote back, “I’m sorry, you misunderstood me, I was simply reaching out as a friend.”

Then he wrote back and said, “No, you misunderstood me. I’m a married man with six kids, and I want my ring back.”

That was my Lance Armstrong moment. I did then what I am going to do now with my yellow bracelet. I put it away and forgot about it. Someday I'll be cleaning out drawers, and I will find it, and it will remind me of a story about someone who pretended to be someone he was not.

Heads in the sand

I gave a speech at work about my cancer experience. There were a lot of engineers and other quantitative types in the audience. I knew that if I said I was diagnosed at age 43 and was in my 14th year of survival, somebody could calculate my age, probably backwards and in dog years, too.

So I just went ahead and made it part of the speech. They were digesting the numbers when I called out to a friend who works in finance, as well as my colleagues in communications, who were there in droves to support me.

“Hey, Debra. I know you can do the math. Communicators, I know you can’t.”

Everybody laughed, and I said for those of you who need help adding it up, that makes me 57 years old. It was liberating to just say it and move on ... to take away the power of intimidation and own it.

You can dye your hair and inject your face, and that might create the illusion of youth, but I'm pretty sure they know how old we are. My thinking is that silence is a position of weakness, and being silent erodes confidence over time. I refuse to cower. About anything. Although I will say that some things come easier than others.

My speech was on breaking the silence about ovarian cancer. That’s the national theme, but it’s my personal theme as well, because I didn’t speak out for so long. Too scared. Five years, 10 years, at what point do you quit worrying about your own fears and help someone else?

It came full circle today. I had a meeting at work and confess to being a little abrupt at first. I had so much to do, and I really didn’t have the time to go through all this. But a guy on my team and a woman I didn’t know needed my input, so I agreed to a spur-of-the-moment meeting. About half-way through I apologized for being snippy, and I thanked them for engaging me in the discussion.

We were done with our business, and the woman said, “On another matter, I’d like to thank you for your speech two weeks ago. You probably saved my life.”

I’m like, whoa. Seriously? It turns out her mother died of ovarian cancer, and her grandmother died of ovarian cancer. She said, “I’m 52 years old. That's the age my mother died, and I just refused to deal with it. Nobody talks about it, so I ignored my risk. You inspired me to see my doctor. I couldn’t do it before. I was too afraid.”

She went on to say that she wanted to live, and after she saw that someone else had actually lived through it, she knew it was time to get her head out of the sand.

That’s how I feel about life, aging and gray hair. Let's get our heads out of the sand. If enough of us draw the line at pretending we’re anything but the age we are, and if we are lucky enough to live through it, we can help people see that the second half of life is rich with possibility.

And guess what? Youth doesn't even get you in the door.

Work, cancer and life lessons

September is National Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, and I am going to speak to our women's leadership group at work on Sept. 27. Although I have written about my cancer experience on this blog and will tell anybody my saga one-on-one, I've never given a speech on the topic. I've been a speechwriter throughout my career, and public speaking was my extracurricular activity in both high school and college, so that part doesn't scare me.

What scares me is this crazy idea I have that God forgot I was supposed to die, and now I'm like, "Hey! God! I'm over here!" Since I was first diagnosed in 1999, I thought it would be good to help educate women about ovarian cancer if I survived long enough to tell the story. But it seemed like all the good spokespeople died, so I wanted to wait until it was safe to go in the water.

First I said, well, I won't talk about it until I've gone five years cancer-free. Then I hit the five-year mark and said, well, I'd better not say anything until I've gone 10 years. Then I hit the 10-year mark and said, so far, so good, why speak up at all? Here I am in year 14, and it's time to give back. I'll take my chances with God.

I've been thinking about what I will say in my speech, which will only be 20 minutes or so. There's one story I share occasionally to remind colleagues why it's important to find a way to like the people you work with. As we all know, some people are not easy to like, and managing relationships in the workplace can be the hardest part of the job.

We were living in Charleston, S.C. I had a great job, but there were no opportunities for me to advance out in the hinterlands. The company was headquartered in Columbia, about 100 miles inland, so I knew I would eventually have to move to get ahead.

A fast-talking recovering lawyer I had been working with on a special project was appointed head of a new business area, and he told me my career would take off like a rocket if I came to Columbia and worked for him. He had deep roots in the town and in the company, and I fell for it. We call that move in our house, "The Big Mistake." The job turned out to be a snoozer, and we bought a fixer-upper we hated in a neighbhood named after my boss's ancestors. He said this was where we needed to be.

This start-up business area was being populated by people he hand-picked from all over the company. I was in a work group with three other women. Mary and Charlene were my age -- 40s -- they'd both been with the company a long time, and this was their first job outside of what we used to call the secretarial field. Sandee was fresh out of college.

The building was new, and the furnishings were arriving daily. We all had our own cubes with a desk and chair, but extra seating had yet to arrive. The work at first was rather undefined, and the three of them would sit on the floor in each other's cubes and chat. I decided right away I would have nothing to do with them. Even after the furniture came and we all started doing real work, I continued to tune them out. I did not need these three women to do my job.

I'd been there a few months, and it was time for my performance review. The boss said I was doing great work, but he noticed I didn't interact with the other three women in my workgroup. I was absolutely stunned! I explained how I found their behavior less than professional, and I focused on my work instead. He said fine, but finding a way to connect with your co-workers is part of the job, too.

I remember being so utterly pissed. I'd worked hard in my career, and now this was going to drag me down? It hadn't occurred to me until then that they didn't like me any better than I liked them. I made a decision to win them over. I can't say I reached this decision as a result of searching my soul or anything profound like that. I just wasn't going to let anything get in the way of my career. You want me to be friends with them, damn it, I will be friends.

We started to talk. I made it my mission to find out who they were as people. I only did this because I thought I had to  ... not because I truly cared. But somewhere in the process, I started to care. I learned that they were real people with real fears, and this gig wasn't working out like they thought it would, either.

At first I truly thought it was a waste of time to talk with them when we should be working, but I noticed a change. We started to build trust and actually discovered that we did need each other to do our best work. We learned to collaborate and ask for help when we needed it. It was more fun and less stressful to work there, and our productivity improved.

Things were humming along professionally, but I was experiencing bloating and pain in my abdomen. I couldn't eat a lot in one sitting. For lunch I'd usually opt for a small can of tuna. I'd eat it right out of the can, and my new friends teased me about my cat food. The doctors thought I had adhesions from previous abdominal surgery, so I was scheduled for outpatient surgery on a Friday. Back at work Monday.

Except that isn't how it turned out. The doctor found cancer. He was a general surgeon, so he knew to leave it alone and refer me to a board-certified gynecological oncologist. I had to wait a few weeks to see the fancy doctor, and it was almost exactly one month later that I had my big surgery. The incision is what they call pelvis to sternum. It's big. Lots of staples.

I was recovering in the hospital. My husband had been there, but at first I wasn't allowed other visitors. They finally said it was OK to see people, and the first three visitors to walk through my door were Mary, Charlene and Sandee. They were smiling and overjoyed to see me alive. The three people I had dismissed because I didn't need them.

It was a terrible time, and they were so kind and caring. At the hospital, Mary wanted to see the scar, and I quickly flipped off my covers to show her. Young Sandee said later that she almost fainted. We laughed for a long time about that. The business unit was eventually dissolved, and we all went on to do other things, but we kept up our friendship as we moved about the company.

I left South Carolina for a new job in Texas and lost touch with them. But they have never left my heart. Building a relationship with Mary, Charlene and Sandee changed me. I learned life is not all about the work and not everything a fast-talking lawyer says is bullshit. I learned that even on the job, work isn't all about the work. 

Postponing medical tests

Whatever medical tests you're supposed to get that you've been putting off until after the zombies come ... please just go get this taken care of now. Now, I said. You'll be happy you did.

My oncologist cut me off a couple of years ago. I've outlived his usefulness, I guess. The only thing I really need at this point is an annual blood test called a CA-125. The onc said my family practice guy could do that, and if something came back hinky, he could take it from there.

I am not a doctor, but I play one on the internet, so I explained the deal about lab tests to him. I said my family practice dude uses a different lab, and I will get a slightly different result. The onc said that's true, you'll just have a new baseline. I said that will freak me out. He said it's not a problem. I said that will freak me out. He said just do it, so I didn't. Fuck him.

So, uh, two years go by or is it three? I haven't had a CA-125, and it's really the principal tool for detecting a recurrence of ovarian cancer. Well, that and symptoms. I had no real symptoms to speak of, but ovarian cancer is a sneaky bastard. The simplist things like being a bit, well, farty, can be a symptom.

What can I say, it was a farty party this spring. I now think it was the glucosamine I was taking for my knee issues and possibly the cucumber in my juicer drinks. It's not easy being me. I knew it was time for me to bite the bullet and get the blood test. I almost went back to the onc and begged just so he would send it to the same lab, but I told myself to man up and do this thing.

I went last week and told the family practice dude what was up. I said, look, my lucky number has been six for years now. I know it could go up a little with the new lab. Anything more than a few points of deviation will freak me out. If it comes back abbie normal, I don't want some stranger nurse calling me on the phone and cheerfully announcing that my new lucky number is 3,465.

The doc said, "I will call you if something is hinky."

The nurse called. She called the house first, and my husband freaked out. It was almost like, "The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!" He was scared for me. He called me on my cell, then she called me on my cell and said everything was normal. I said what's normal? She said 10. Ten is normal. Ten is good.

I called my husband back. I said hey, guess what? I get to live another year!

He said don't screw around with this anymore, OK?

The cat who saved my life

Today it is my pleasure to introduce you to the late great Spike, who went to join the Choir Invisible in 2004. He was a retired cat by the time we got him around 1997, but he reinvented himself in his later years and quite possibly saved my life.

My husband and I both loved cats, but we agreed that neither one of us wanted to be bothered with a furry friend. "No kids, no pets, we travel light," is what we used to say.

I loved cats as a child. My father, who was a troubled man, hated cats. Mom brought a kitten home one day, and my dad was pissed, but we kept the kitten anyway. I named him Cricket. I don't remember how long we had Cricket, but I do know that one day he was just gone. I vividly remember coming home from school every day for six months to check the newspaper under lost and found -- to see if Cricket had magically appeared somewhere and was ready to come home. I eventually gave up.

Several years later we had a dog. I was a teenager. While watching TV, my dad said it was time to get up and feed the dog. I said I would take care of it during the next commercial. He said, "Feed the dog now, or I'll kill it just like I did your cat." 

That's how I found out where Cricket went. Maybe that's when I decided this wouldn't happen again.

Fast forward to Charleston, South Carolina. My husband and I are living in a home by the marsh in Mount Pleasant, just across the bridge from the peninsula. We had both seen this white cat out in the marsh all winter, and we were curious. Neither one of us mentioned it until the spring, when Dale was out working in the yard. He came in and asked if I had seen the white cat. It had been kind of a cold winter by South Carolina standards, and we couldn't believe he had survived out there.

Just like that we agreed that we would try to feed him. We discussed what it meant -- that we most certainly would end up with a cat, and we shrugged as though we'd been planning it all along. I bought some cat food and took it out to the backyard. I saw the cat on the edge of the marsh, and as soon as I even walked out there, he was gone!

I waited and watched from the kitchen window, and a couple of hours later he came back to eat the food. We moved the food closer and closer to the house over the course of a couple of weeks, and he eventually came to the screened porch, where we kept the door propped open for him and all the bugs. He didn't run away anymore, but he wouldn't let us touch him either.

We actually thought he was a pregnant female because his belly was so swollen. It was after a couple of months of feeding that we were finally able to pick him up and get him in a carrier so that we could take him to the vet. That's when we found out "she was a he" with bad worms. The vet presented us with a handsome bill and a bagful of stuff to fix him up, and the transformation was unbelievable. He was a white cat, but it wasn't until he shed practically his entire coat that we discovered how white he really was. All the dingy yellow fur fell off and this beauty emerged. We named him Spike.

The shedding annoyed me. I actually remember telling my husband that I wouldn't stand for it. He said, he's a cat, cats shed -- what are you going to do? I said we'd have to put him down or something. Dale looked at me in sudden recognition that he had married a cold-hearted bitch. I said, oh, OK, let's just see what happens.

Over the course of six months, Spike morphed into an indoor love cat or maybe it was me who did the morphing? However, he never got over his fear of other people, and if the doorbell rang or someone else entered his sanctuary, he was under the bed. People didn't believe we had a cat. But with us, it was like he surrendered to the lap. He was retired now, done with the mean streets and just wanted to snuggle or dance. Spike was like a dishrag. He'd let me to anything to him -- I'd tuck him into my denim robe for an effect I called, "Ralph Loren Kitty." Spike also loved to dance to Gloria Gaynor's, "I will Survive." He'd let me spin him at the end.

Funny we should pick that song. Our health problems emerged at about the same time. Spike was wheezing, and we ended up taking him for a series of tests. The vet said he had never seen such damaged lungs in a cat. He wondered if someone had sprayed him with chemicals. We put him on human asthma medicine, and his symptoms improved. At the same time, I was going through a battery of tests trying to figure out why I had this incredible pain in my abdomen, but the tests revealed nothing. I was tired a lot, and Spike and I used to take naps together on the couch.

We moved to Columbia and in 1999, I was finally diagnosed with advanced stage primary peritoneal cancer, which is a variation of ovarian cancer. I went through surgery and chemo, and Spike remained steadfast by my side. Right about that time, I found a spot on his eyelid, and that turned out to be melanoma. We had to take him to Charlotte, N.C. to an advanced surgical center, where they successfully removed the tumor. This boy was a survivor!

Things were good for a couple of years, but then I found a lump on his hind leg. That turned out to be vaccination-associated fibrosarcoma. The vet, Shawn, said this type of tumor typically doesn't spread to distant organs, but it would keep growing and eventually kill him. The only hope for survival was to amputate his hind leg.

We took him to a specialty clinic for evaluation. This young female vet looked him over. She said this was a bad cancer, and her recommendation was to let it takes its course. I bolted from my chair. "We do everything we can to survive cancer in our house!" I was furious and shared this with Shawn, who was a breast cancer survivor. Regarding the other vet, she said, "Oh, her. She's young and smug and life hasn't knocked her around yet. We'll use her and lose her."

It was a tough decision, but we agreed to have Spike's leg amputated. It was so awful seeing him post-surgery. I felt terrible -- did we do the right thing? Were we being selfish? But the surgery was successful, the margins were clean and he recovered and adapted very quickly. He moved about quite efficiently on three legs -- but he couldn't jump. He had never been much of a jumper anyway -- I think he had arthritis in his hips. We bought a ramp so he could easily get up and down from the bed.

The lab work for his surgery revealed weak kidneys. Shawn said he was probably a much older cat than we originally thought. As Spike adapted to three legs, he also adapted to a kidney diet, and he had a good three years of quality living.

Then he stopped eating and was wasting away before our eyes. None of the tests revealed anything bad. His kidneys were actually doing pretty well. Shawn said the only thing left was to do an exploratory surgery. She warned us that if she got in there and it was bad, her recommendation would be to let him sleep forever. We agreed.

Shawn had a special waiting room, and we both stood up when she came in a little while later to tell us Spike was gone. He had liver cancer, and it was everywhere. Dale and I held onto each other and cried.

Old Spike -- he survived a rough childhood and a bad kind of cancer. I was telling a friend how odd it was, him finding us as though he had been sent on a mission. How we were both damaged souls who got this rare kind of cancer that typically doesn't spread to distant organs but just keeps growing and usually kills anyway.

She said, "Oh, I get it now."

"What?"

"He took a bullet for you."

Maybe so. I like to think he was my kitty guardian angel, sent here to save my cold heart and show me how to love unconditionally and survive. He did his duty, and it was time to go. Thank you, buddy. What a good little teacher you were.

Cancer in my pocket

I am as amazed as anyone that this french twist comb works on my fine hair. Melissa at Stone Bridge Hair Accessories demonstrates how to do it. Melissa inspired me to give it a try, but I purchased it from France Luxe because she doesn't sell outside the UK. For extra holding power, you could use spin pins and then add the comb.

But enough with the hair. I couldn't wait to share the epiphany I had this week about the joy of breathing. You'd think I wouldn't need a refresher course in the pleasure of being alive, but as you know, sometimes the bastards grind you down. I already wrote about my silly computer trauma. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing, yet it still made for a rough week.

Thursday I visited the dermatologist for my annual check-up. My husband is one of the pink people with lots of little glebs and blebs, but I have darker skin and have fared pretty well in the sun wars. But I go every year for the big naked look-see, because I respect cancer. I figure, well, I got it once when I least suspected it, so I should be vigilant about everything.

I saw this particular doctor for the first time last year, and I remember him being amazed I was an ovarian cancer survivor. If you read through my archives, you'll learn I actually had primary peritoneal cancer, which is pretty much the same thing as ovarian. If it's a drive-by, I say ovarian. If I'm sitting next to you on the airplane, I'll tell you everything if you ask nicely. Or maybe I'll just tell you anyway, because I am working on an e-book about my experience, and I'll be posting some excerpts from time to time. Consider yourself warned. My encounter with the dermatologist may or may not make it into the book, but telling this story is a public declaration of my intent. No backing down now.

So, the doctor walked into the room as I sat there naked and draped in a flimsy paper robe, and the first thing he said was, "You're the ovarian cancer survivor."

Me: Yes, 13 years next month.

Him: Wow. You're lucky.

Me: I know.

Him: They must have caught it early.

Me: No, it was advanced. Stage 3.

Him: You're really really lucky.

Me: Believe me, I know.

But sometimes I have to be reminded! He asked me a lot of questions about my surgery and treatment and was surprised they had Taxol "back then." I said absolutely, I had a chance encounter at a golf course of all places with a researcher who helped develop the drug, and he said I was the poster girl for Taxol. It was approved for use in 1992, so by the time I needed it in 1999, they had worked out the optimum cycle.

Following the surgery to remove as much cancer as possible, I had a cocktail of Benadryl, Taxol and Carboplatin infused every 21 days for six months. I've been fine ever since. Benadryl is an anti-allergan, and I am pleased to let you know it was one hell of a rush when shot directly into your vein. The rush didn't last long, but I looked forward to it just the same.

Anyway, I passed the dermo exam. Another stroke of good fortune. No bad moles. I have mild rosacea on my face, you almost can't see it, but he gave me the name of a cosmetic dermatologist who can laser it off if I want. I'm thinking about it.

It was a good visit, and I'd go back again right this minute just to hear him say how lucky I am. Sometimes I imagine that I carry around cancer in my pocket like an emergency dollar bill. And sometimes I just have to reach in my pocket and fish it out to remind me that every minute of every day is a gift. I wish I had learned all this important stuff in some other way, but I ignored all the little sticks. It was the big stick that got my attention.

For those of you who are better with sticks, I think the thing to remember is that whatever we're doing, wherever we've been and wherever we're going, no matter how bad it gets, we're lucky. We're really, really lucky.