Warning - High Radiation, enter with caution...

reads the sign on the door as I enter...no kidding. Enter with caution. Enter with fear. Enter with awareness. Enter with strength. And despite the overwhelming urge, do not run...especially in that gd awful gown.

It's what I battle every single day. For some radiation is completely tolerable. For me, it's a torture chamber full of exposure, humiliation and anguish. It's an active battle between me and cancer - it's loud, it's bright, it's destabilizing.

After I settle on the table, I begin to count. I know now it takes 150 seconds to get in position. 81 seconds for the first machine to begin. 24 seconds until the alarm sounds...and this is where it begins. Radiation techs scrambling to get the hell out of a room that will soon shoot radioactive poison into the air and there I am. The only thing in between the radiation and the cancer is me and I am defenseless on the table. 22, 23, 24, 25...it's almost there. There are three shots in every session and one is nearly over. Pause. I am deep breathing, I am willing the fear away, I am on the beach with my kids. Alarm. Machines move into place again. Laser beams light up...again...1, 2, 3...I am with Joseph at our favorite restaurant, I am wondering if I have paid my mortgage, 9, 10, 11, 12, I am planning Ava's bat mitzvah, I am losing 10lbs, 22, 23, 24. Done. Last one. Machines shift, alarm sounds, I remain still...again, I am mixing margaritas in my head, I am playing frisbee with my son...14, 15, 16, I am thinking about my day, wondering if I can get everything done, Ava needs a lacrosse stick, 21, 22, 23...almost there. I am counting the seconds until I can be done with this and hoping the weekend is kind. 25, 26, 27...running over a few. I am aware. Alarm sounds. Done. I want to ask why it ran over three seconds but maybe I missed counted, maybe I got three for the road. I don't care - don't talk...slows down the exodus I plan every day out of there.

I am up, off the table and fully dressed in less than 5 minutes. I am out of the clinic and nearly in the parking lot in 3. I am in the car, radio on and heading to the grocery store...trying to be normal. Trying not to feel like a victim. Trying to feel powerful. Trying to ignore that cancer has me yet again exposed, on my back, after taking my breast and 14 months of my life, it takes my peace, my sense of normalcy, my fight. I will keep going...this is never in question but there are days when I am tired of fighting. I am tired of going toe to toe with a disease that taunts me with my future, my children and my peace of mind.

I curl up with Joseph at night and pretend I am not scared to death he will brave this family and world without me and yet I also fear I will win but be so scarred and battle fatigued, I am permanently changed. Damaged somehow. Like an athlete who has lost her legs.

But I do know the longer I stay aware of this and of my battle fatigue, the faster I gain footing back into the ring. You see what cancer can't take from me is really...well me. I get it...I know what I am about and I am strong enough to admit when I am beat down. Radiation will fuck with my head everyday for the next five weeks and I hate every second of it. But y'know what? My children will see my legacy. That in the face of total adversity, I fought and scrapped and made cancer my bitch even when I couldn't look it in the eye.

Joseph and my children are who I see in all my moments of fight, of weakness, of victory...they aren't just my reasons for living, they are all my reasons. Joseph has always said "we"...I love the "we"...it means are in this together but late at night, I know it's me. It's me who lives and it's me who dies but the we keeps me going...especially when the me is just too tired.

Day 1 - Mapping...

If I come back in another life, it will be as an oncologist and I will invent a way to treat the breast that doesn't rival a mechanic pulling a carborator out of a pick up. Okay so I'm hardly a prude and really very fine with the body in general. Boobs, tits, melons, sweater puppies...I don't care, no agenda and I have them...boy do I have them...well one anyway. I was a champion nurser. I could do it anywhere and I didn't care. I could wear a lacy bra and I could wear a sports bra and never really worried about much except maybe a little TOO much cleavage (four kids...remember?)...not for show baby, these were working breasts.

So today is Day One of radiation. Prep really. Mapping my entire chest. Holding still and strong, topless on a cold machine with a mold so my arm can nestle without moving and I am told to freeze (like a Popsicle I think...thanks to my son). Then it begins. Barbarians dressed in camouflage and white lab coats take to my chest with a sharpie. Mapping beams, pawing at my neck and stomach, scooting my remaining breast out of the way, talking about me in terms I don't understand with numbers of beam angles I can't figure. I start counting...thank you Ronni. I count backwards from 100. I count in Spanish. I count in Hebrew (but could only get up to 9, sorry Rabbi). I am doing anything I can think of to remove my head from where I am and where I am is under a light and several loud machines with people over me like I am not there and really I am not. I am back...back to a older me. One where I could wear that lacy bra with a bit of seduction; one where I can work out on the treadmill and not worry about my prosthetic boob falling on the belt and flinging into the face of the guy behind me, one where I can look at myself in a mirror without blocking my own line of vision to my chest, hacked and scarred, battle fatigued...one where I am not walking fast, outrunning a disease that threatens to take me from my husband and children; one where I can walk into a doctor's office with ease for a routine visit, one where I don't look at pink ribbons and am reminded that I am one suspicious mammogram away from doing this all over again...one where I am just normal.

Loud orders to stay still bring me back...how come when they say don't move it's at that exact moment every follicle on your entire body begins to twitch?

They walk me back to the dressing area where permanent ink marks on my chest pave the way for a seven week radiation bath. I get dressed, pack on that smile and walk back into the lobby where my husband and son are playing games on his phone. It's why I am here and it's why I keep going...it's why I will win.

Reunion Tour...

My cancer team was shifted from civilian back to military which since my chemo ended and my rebuilding is about to begin, I was okay with until my new surgeon asked me to be reevaluated from radiation.  It was ruled out before so why this again?  It seems new information since 2010 (thank you Komen/Avon for the funds by the way) indicated my type of cancer, my grade of tumor, my age, my location of tumors, my shoe size, my hairstyle all point to a strong need for radiation to reduce my risk of local reoccurance...by how much I ask?  Well - no way to really tell.  What they can tell me is I run a 22% increased risk of reoccurance without it...well okay, where do I sign?

I came in yesterday to be 'fitted' and despite the absolutely humiliating experience of being strapped to a table with not one, not three but five men and women in uniform poking, prodding and shifting my boob around (Im sure in some circles this could be considered worth the price of admission but not yesterday) and now I am sporting some smokin' tattoos.  Yes, tattoos.  Markers if you will to direct the beams of radiation to pulverize the cancer cells and chest cavity.  Once it begins, I am back on the cancer fighting wagon.  It's my reunion tour.  Me and fight - together again.  5 times a week for 7 weeks (6 for chest and one extra for fun).

I can't really think of anything I will need - seriously...it's not chemo which means it's all uphill from there but it's a reminder to me that cancer is still around and not willing to let me sit comfortably for even a little bit in my recovery.  Yes, it's aggressive, yes, it's critical, yes, it's necessary, yes, women do it all the time and yes, I am still fighting and still winning but sometimes I am just done and today is one of those days.

Score remains Dawn 1, Cancer 0 but game went way into overtime.

Embracing...

Every now and then I realize this chaos is fleeting; that one day our very loud and very busy home will be silenced and we will call our grandchildren begging for visits but in the meantime, I am allowed to wonder what the hell is going on here.  I see so many social network posts about the kids...how adorable, how smart, how precious these long days are but can we have a day of honesty here once too?  Is it too much to ask that moms especially tell it like it is?  Some days we are fucking tired.  Tired.  Overwhelmed.  Our house is a mess.  Our bills are late and our car looks like a family of hamsters set up shop in there.  That no, I don't want to see Chipwrecked and no, I don't want to steam organic mung beans into a frothy shake that is "so good for them!".  I don't care if it's an hour past bedtime and the non hemp cotton, non flame retardant pajamas don't match.  Chicken nuggets and a go-gurts for dinner won't kill them.  Gasp...

Do I love my kids?  Passionately and unabashedly.  Do I love being a mom every second of my life?  Do you love what you do every second of your life?  Well then, why should I?  Gasp with a hand cup over mouth...

Okay let's so be honest here.  If we all just told it like it is, we'd be so much kinder to each other.  It IS hard, it IS life sucking and it IS overwhelming and if it's not for you, then you are doing it wrong.  I embrace my kids, adore them and live for everything that comes out of their mouth.  I quote them, photograph them, hug them constantly and attempt to make things matter but at night, sometimes I crawl into bed and wonder what the fuck I am doing.  My closest friends are the ones who deep in the night, over a bottle of wine admit this wasn't in the brochure.  That if this is all there is, they may not make it. But they will.  They will and I will because we get it.  We aren't bad moms because we don't embrace sleepless nights because it's fleeting.  We aren't negligent because Disney is more entertaining than a book about the environment and we aren't ignorant because our kids' list of sight words starts with Target and ends with McDonalds.  There I said it.

So here I am at 5am not embracing the "beautiful day Gd created" but cuddling a cup of coffee and hope today is easy but if it's not, it's not and I will survive.  And pizza for dinner with no side of vegetables and cut up apples is fine.  It comes with a chaser of "you will be fine" and I prefer that to vegetables.  It actually does make them stronger.

Four years ago today...

I was watching my children meet Jack for the second time.  Wondering how they will feel about having a brother, wondering how I am going to parent a boy, wondering how I was going to manage four children.  Nursing at midnight, rocking by daylight, dinner, toys, baths, homework...it was such frenetic energy with no time to sit and really wonder about anything at all.

And I guess what I got from that now is you really do just put one foot in front of the other and pray there is no oncoming bus.  Could it really be that simple?  You do what's in front of you, feed them, read to them, nag them to wear a coat...I dunno.  I tried so hard for so long to parent with wild abandon.  To be involved in every square inch of their lives...to create a world for them that is factory new.  Organic broccoli, steamed to perfection with three other nutritionally balanced choices, each of every appropriate color.  Cultural arts, dance, sports... And now I just wonder if more nights of just cereal for dinner, a warm blanket to hang under and no rushing to ballet or swim team might be more the way to go.  I'm not ready to lead the next Slacker Mom revolution because I am entirely too Type A for that but it's nice to think about.

Did my long days of riding bikes after school with no helmet, drinking from the hose in the summer and eating white rice and mechanically processed meats create the frightening prospects we are reading about?  I'm thinking our kids now are more neurotic and anxious than I ever was and yet they are more cared for, watched over and fussed with...I am not a statistician...hell I failed it twice in college but I just musing...

And let's just say while I don't have my pulse on this parenting shit...I can see it from here

My faith was strong...

Maybe there’s a Gd above, but all I’ve ever learned from love, was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.  It’s not a cry you can hear at night, it’s not somebody who has seen the light


It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah


Maybe this is what I taught my children.  To find within themselves the answers and when they can't, they fail.  I was never one to reach up to a higher self or higher gd because to me, years of praying never brought me what I had been praying for.  Sounds selfish for one with four beautiful children but it's true.  I was never one for blind faith.  Ever.  If I thank Gd for my children, I have to blame him for my losses.  If I thank him for my health, I have to blame him for my cancer.  I could never resolve a place so I decided the strength within my self was enough.  Through the pain of my children who can't find the peace I realize I have failed them.  They can't look beyond themselves...why should they?  I never did.


I see so much of myself in them.  My broken soul...my inability to recognize my own weaknesses. 


I said I could never be broken.  I could never give up.  I never would.  Stillborns, chemotherapy, divorce...and yet, the cold and broken cry at night is finally me.


Weakened and broken by circumstance.  Out of the shadows it comes...


It's not a victory march...it's a cold and broken hallelujah.  


I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Clean machine

Okay so the good news is, my chemo is officially over (waiting out applause...) but the not so great news is I am left with a very exhausted, dehydrated, slow moving, fried body.  Skin is that of a reptile, hair is curly (yes curly -I am rockin' the total Jew fro) and the steroids have added a refreshing water insulated coating over my body that it didn't need...water weight is for sissy's.  So after reading Kriss Car's Crazy, Sexy Cancer Diet I learned a few things.  I am going to juice myself - again - for the entire 21 days of cleansing.  I expect to be a cantankerous, moody bitch so my apologies in advance.  When I did the juicing for five days I LOVED how I felt but the holidays and a crappy lot in timing kept me from going, I am more empowered than ever now, post latke.  Costco is first on my list today for fruits and veggies.  This also calls for dry brushing, meditation and colonics...hold up...no thanks.  I can't meditate, I just wind up thinking about sex or bills and dry brushing makes me feel like my mastiff and a colonic?  Interesting in idea but will thoroughly fall flat in practice (for me - afterall, this is about me, right?)

So I am going for broke - a full juice cleanse for 21 days with some very limited raw foods for munchability.  All raw foods, all organic and I hope to blog about this each day so I can look back over the path.  I have recorded in my mind the hell I am about to experience...headaches, bloating, fatigue, insomnia, nausea, skin breakouts and irritability...so duly noted except that's what chemo offered.  No surprises here.

My goal is to kick this off tomorrow - yes, before the new year so I can get the early onset of hell out of the way before I head back to life.

So here I go - in prep mode...did I mention NO COFFEE?  But I can have caffeinated green tea until the caffeine headaches subside.  Yay.  I think.

Stay tuned...this cancer fighting thing moves forward into Phase 2.  Only good juju is welcome.

Happy New Year.