Clear PET scan and walked with "titties in the city", tutus for tatas, and various other clever boob related teams all committed to the breast cancer

demon erradication. The pink and mauve military in wigs and camoflaged by humor to fight the devastation that is a death to cancer. I have concluded that the " survivor" identification is important more for those around you who need to see a life come through the other end.

Pictures do not do it justice but they give a flavor. the pink army marches.....

There was an article in the Sunday Tennessean society column about Governor Bredesen's lack of time to paint saying, at the end of the day "do I want to sit down for three hours and start working on a painting or do I just want a glass of wine?". The columnist calls to the public to "give this gentleman a break and let him at his canvas and Winsor Newtons. Noting further that " it's good to switch the right side of the brain when you're swimming in a sea of numbers and people making demands of you all day." Bredesen has found a way to feed his inner creator and I feed mine in much the same way. The fight is the same, do I sit still and enjoy a free moment or do I get out the paints and lose myself in a canvas.

Deadlines loom and pieces must be imagined, plotted and created . For me this takes a silent period of reflection and research on the subject matter. By comparission the actual painting is often best accomplished with eclectic IPOD mixes (followed by the inevitable dancing and slinging of paint).

I like to have a few pieces in all stages and stare at them until I know what does or does not work in a piece, although I don't think I ever finish I have to at some point frame and
move on.

So still working on sedona piece with pallette knife and desert colors and the symbolic piece for domestic violence awareness month depicting several sides of a woman/worshipful/athletic/pious/in control/ strong and always watchful. How's it going so far?

update

Just had my "after treatment" PET scan to get the all clear and await results. In the meantime I am planning on doing the Susan Komen Walk for the Cure at Maryland Farms Saturday with hubbie and good friends. Rain, Rain go away!!!!

Celebrate and Create

This Saturday I burned my pathology report and "drank a toast to now". I searched for something to mark the end of all chemo and this idea of burning the document that started it all seemed natural. After reading it over and over for weeks I have let it go.

Now I am on to a new project, creating an original work to be auctioned off for the Jackson Domestic Violence Project's "Butterfly Ball". I have sketched out a rough "thumbnail" and set out the paints in hope that inspiration will hit me - I think I'll just have to start putting paint to canvas to get into the groove - like anything else you have to flex your muscles again before you are ready to really move. I love the act of creating but there is always the fear that whatever inspired, enabled you previously has been lost - nowhere to be found and you are alone with yourself and a white expanse of canvas with nothing to say. So I put out the thumbnail sketch for viewing and comment. Turn it around 4 ways, I am searching for something that can stand on its own however the viewer chooses to see the message. Thanks for listening!

No more drama

I learned today that one of the fabulous friends I made in chemo room is having challenges. It's what we all live with-the return of what once was ,we prayed,gone forever. Metastasis. That word was the great unsaid thing that loomed over me from the beginning and you find a way to deal with it. My lovely friend, teacher, mother, wife,daughter is waiting for the "m" confirmation on 2 fronts and is determined to work and get treatment at same time-to fight this thing again. I love her spirit and am sure of her success but it made me wonder about my reaction his late in our treatment (1 year). What I always thought of as my worst case scenario is now just another mile marker and there is a calm and a peace that I could not have conceived of having in the face of this news even 6 months ago but today I have a different reaction. I think maybe the drama (in the crazy,unknown fearful, raging obsession meaning of the term) is not in me any longer. Maybe it's less unknown and therefore more amenable to a plan but as I lay here ready for sleep I think it, like patience, is something that comes with the experience. So blog 2 of what now creates the happy lawyer is, I hope, a leveling out of experience-less drama and more peace. Or it could always be the drugs....

Ready, Set, Go

Let's talk. 2008 was the year I wanted to see come to an end, that was until 2009. I called this blog "Live, Laugh, Love" because I always want to be reminded of the positive - things you can forget during cancer treatment, but also things you can discover. I have things I want to say but I wasn't sure how - let's talk here, maybe you'll see this blog, maybe you won't but it's here all the same.

I have so much I want to do now that the most extensive part of cancer treatment is over. What do I want to be now - back to "normal", do I want to change normal? A wise artist friend told me after I unveiled some watercolors I had dreamed about painting, then actually had the energy to paint, that they were my best watercolors ever because I had learned "patience". When confronted with that statement I realized that perhaps I had, not because I learned it, but because I had to accept a patient way of life (oh, the bad pun, but it applies). I don't make nearly as many lists as I did - I used to frantically list everything, haveing several at a time was the only way I could order my days. I do not do that any more because unchecked items/items still staring at me with their little clocks ticking away reminding me of the undone/ urging me to multi-task as the only way to get it all done (then start another list to fill the void) are too loud. I crave silence and time to sit and feel. Loss of Hair, that big "C" side-effect that makes you instantly recognizable as sick also teaches patience -or perhaps resignation. It is inevitable, requiring accoutrement of wigs, hair spray, sleeping caps, hats in all weather and, for me, avoiding all reflective surfaces. You have to sit through the kind, sympathetic, fearful (please God never me), knowing, "what does she have", "something is off", should I offer her my seat, "God Bless Her" looks when all you want to do is buy your groceries and get out of the line of sight of the teenaged cashiers/ baggers who, you can just hear your own teenaged mind saying, would rather not be confronted by your disease. LoH also teaches you that what you thought was always your best feature, that the fact you would never leave the house without your bangs perfectly in place because your forehead was too big or your eyebrows too low, whichever, really only matters to your current version of yourself - this new version is just glad not to have to wear the wig to go outside. Is that patience?