Fear of dying

One day recently I laid down on my bed and took a nap in the middle of the afternoon. I woke up facing the window, enjoying the exact view in the photo above. One of the things I love about the older houses here in Iowa is the lower windows. They sit right at bed...

Thoughts about dying

For the most part, having cancer is something that hangs out in the background of my mind, shadowing but not a part of my life. It's not a problem in the present, except in the efforts to keep it from becoming a problem in the future. Even that, I have certain specific fears. I fear...

I dreamed I was dying

Last night I had a dream that I was dying. It was a procedure that took several days. Each day I had to take a different set of pills, and then I had to complete a task, and on the fourth day it would be complete, and I would leave this life. One day I...

Loss in the shadows

Funny how sometimes you do something, and only afterwards realize that what you were actually doing was something totally different. I know this statement probably makes no sense. But I spent this morning roaming around Lake Chabot looking for my missing kitties. Someone on the street had recently trapped the cats on our street and...

Facing into the light, facing into the dark

The following is from my previous blog, and was originally published in July 2017. In nine days I will have finished chemotherapy. It has not been nearly what I’d feared it would be. The side effects were subtle. The nausea was fairly easily controlled with medication. I got one mouth sore, and my fingertips cracked...

If you only read one thing I have written, let it be this

The following is the draft of the final chapter of the book I have been working on. The book is called Dragons in the Garden, and is about parenting in its very broadest sense. The first chapter is called The Bravest Thing, and is about the courage we all display in putting our hearts on...

November

November is flying by! Already the baby shower for my son and daughter-in-law is upon me, and trip number one by my daughter and her husband from Oregon! How will I ever get the house clean in time, and is it even possible to wrap this box? Then at the end of November is not...

Love Anyway

Deep grief does terrible things to you. It's like an earthquake deep in your soul: everything tumbles and falls out of place. You are literally broken. There are about as many responses to this as there are people who grieve. Somehow, once the dust settles and you can see a little more clearly, you have to...

Into the darkness

For those of you who insist that I am so strong, so brave, yada yada, I thought it might be educational to tell you to what depths my soul can cower, and the relatively small things that can drive it there. Like heat. We have had a heatwave here in the San Francisco Bay Area...

Breast Cancer Journey: Don't be afraid. You can do it.

Well it is Wednesday, and time to start preparing for my second chemo infusion. That, to me, means some basic germ eradication in obvious places, washing and changing my bedding, and the dogs' bedding, which lives on my bed, and doing some grocery shopping before my white blood cell count is up for eradication again....