Et tu, Rubus?

When one eats berries in a bowl, regardless of the genus of berries being devoured, one is best served when the last berry consumed is of the sweetest nature. Bitter berries are only tolerable when there is at least one more berry of significant sweetness left to cleanse the palate, thus leaving the partaker of berries quite delighted and satisfied.

Hence the majesty and genius of pie...where all fruit is made equal, resting on the dulcitude of fellow berries. All being exalted together by sugar and crust, crust and sugar. Amen and forever.

Nothing Comes from Nothing

You might think the phrase "nothing comes from nothing" is attributed to Rogers and Hammerstein and "The Sound of Music". I know I thought that, but interestingly enough...it is actually comes from Parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher. When he said it it sounded more like this: ex nihilo nihil fit. That must have been profound, centuries ago, but really all it means is...I am bored! Which leads me to ask....is it possible to create a blog out of boredom? Can I turn 45 minutes of down time at work into an essay of any worth? Probably not, but I'm gonna try! Yesterday I was sick. Well, I've been sick for about a week now, but yesterday I got sick of being sick. Sleep deprivation caught up with me and viola! At 11 am yesterday I begged off work and went home to be alone with my Nyquil. Can I just say, I LOVE Nyquil. It's the only good thing about being sick.

Eternal Calculus

This post is going to be quite different than my last several posts. My last few posts all started and ended with a blank text box. There was so much to write, but no way to write it. Fortunately, a picture is worth a thousand words and some old albums have come to the rescue. But before I get to my slideshow, perhaps an explanation is in order.

Two days ago marked a year since my last chemo treatment. Hence, I have been growing my hair back now, for 367 days. That is, theoretically I have been growing my hair back for 367 days. T h e o r e t i c a l l y. Realistically...it hasn't been going so well.

It's been months now since I've started to worry. My chemo buddies all have short, but rather full heads of hair already. I have short, rather thin and transparent hair on my head. I have long since done the dreaded google search that went something like "hair always grow back after chemo" to find out that about 2% of women will not get their hair back. I'm holding on to the hope that since it took me a while as a baby to grow hair, that it will just take me a while as an adult to do the same. See:





this is how much hair I had when I was born












this is how much gas I had when I was born (isn't mom pretty?)














this is me 5 months later (isn't grandma pretty?)















this is me a year after I was born bald








I stuff this down every morning and quickly groom so as to move my mind on to something else as swiftly as possible. Layers and layers of this angst had built up enough that I knew it was getting pretty close to the surface and that eventually I would snap, slump into a corner of my bedroom in a pile of tears, and refuse to come out ever again.

I was partially right. One day I did snap. But I was in the shower, and I had just reached up to wash my hair when the thought of "what's it matter" and the thought of getting out of the shower to see me in the mirror again both collided. Let's just say...it's not the first time I've sobbed in the shower.

So there you have it. This is not a pity party for me. This blog has never been about that. This is for all the times I've dropped in on someone else's cancer blog and felt not so alone when I was done there. Maybe there's someone else out there that's 40 and looks like 80 and now we're soul sisters.

The Lord is reportedly counting the hairs on our heads. I am counting the days since chemo. I've never really liked math.. but this has got to be the worst story problem ever.

Getting your June Cleaver on...

My husband works so hard. He commutes to his full time job every day, an hour and 15 minutes each way (that's when traffic is good), through the burdened urban spectacle we call the Wasatch Front. Yicky. His commute in Maryland was somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes each way, and it took him through not only a forest but also rolling green hills that were speckled with gorgeous mansions and the occasional mounted hunting ensemble, complete with hounds, in pursuit of some poor little fox. Seriously, they still do that in MD. (poor things must get tired of golf and yachting)

When he gets home, 65% of the time he has freelance illustrations waiting for him. Which means he spends about two more hours at work in his basement. If that isn't enough, we have a rental property, which makes the occasional demand on his time as well.

So...when he comes downstairs to our "den", where I am trying to blog or read or whatever, and turns on Spyro Gyra so loud that I can't hear myself think........ that's ok. That's really ok. What did Julie Beck say last conference? Something like "the Lord needs women to be women, not babies". Yeah...something like that. So, I'll just turn off my computer, give him a kiss on the forehead, and go find something I can do for him...like iron his shirts or wash his car.

(but really...Spyro Gyra????)

My Reset Button

At the end of my cancer treatments, the nurses all said something like: "Now you need to go on a nice vacation." I remember one nurse saying specifically: "Now you need to find a rock on a beach somewhere and sit on it." I didn't take their advice very seriously, besides, my family had been doing without me for almost a year...like I was going to abandon them for one more day.

So, with both feet eager and ready, I jumped neck deep back into life as rapidly as possible. But something wasn't right. As time went on, and emotional struggles multiplied, I realized it was going to take something more than both feet to get my life back. But I didn't know what.

I pushed onward, only to find it more and more difficult to cope with the simplest things. After a while I noticed that everytime I learned of the loss of a friend or even a stranger, to cancer, things became progressively worse. I got to the point that I would become angry if I went to my survivor support group and found out that someone's remission had ended and they were back in the fight. It felt like for every person that lost their life, I had to be even more perfect, more effective and more capable to earn my right as survivor. It was in this state of white-knuckling survival mode, that a vacation we had planned and cancelled and planned and cancelled again, actually not only survived the planning stage, but magically came to fruition.

Our vacation was set way back in the mountains, just north of Sundance. BYU runs a family camp called Aspen Grove that we've gone to before and that I've always loved, but I never knew it would save my life. But after only two days, I felt the old me finally returning. I used to look at pictures of me before cancer, and wonder: "who's that? she looks so familiar". But now, even though I definitely don't look like the girl in the pictures, I can claim that girl as myself.

Ever try that mental exercise where you imagine yourself in a beautiful, peaceful setting, like a beach? I did that a lot when treatments got hard, and the place I imagined was always Aspen Grove. Maybe that has something to do with why being there had such an instant, palpable impact on my well-being. Or maybe humans have a reset button, like a lot of electronic devices. If that's the case, I know where mine is...ten miles up Provo Canyon.

Call me J.P.

Last week I walked in to each one of my doctors appointments, pretty sure that I was wearing a giant "hypochondriac" sign on my back. But as long as my insurance company didn't mind, I was ok with that. All I wanted was a clean bill of health, some assurance that the little aches, pains and coughs I had been dealing with were the kind you could safely ignore. But when I called myself a hypochondriac in front of my doctor he looked up and said "You're not a hypochondriac...we call people who have been through what you've been through "justifiable paranoids". I liked that a lot. You can call me J.P.

I had a blood test called a D-dimer. It was to check for a blood clot in my lungs, that could possibly explain my coughing. The D-dimer tested positive, which meant I had to go directly to the hospital and have a CT Scan. I'm not afraid of tests like that anymore, but I totally hated the feeling of driving to the hospital at that moment instead of driving to my house to make dinner for my kids. I was supposed to turn right at the intersection, not left. Didn't the D-dimer know I already had plans for the evening?

Long (painful) story short, CT Scan was clean. No clot. Still coughing? Yes, but I guess I have to live with that. When it gets really bad, I go online and diagnose myself. Doctors must hate the internet for that reason. All these little know-it-alls sitting in their waiting rooms, writing their own obituaries. At any rate, last week I decided it was Radiation Pneumonitis. This week I'm pretty sure it's Pulmonary Fibrosis.
J.P. signing out.

You're Rubber, I'm Glue

Several years ago (ok...at least a decade), one of the girls in my neighborhood playgroup showed up one morning distraught over the fact that that morning she had turned her back on her baby, just for a second, while he was on the changing table. The exhuberant little infant gave on good kick against the wall where his feet were and zoom! Just like a little torpedo, his big baby-sized head was on the fast track for the floor, with the rest of him not far behind. Smuggly, I half sympathized with her and half patted myself on the back for not being as stupid as she was. It couldn't have been two weeks later that I heard a large thump coming from my bedroom, followed by the familiar startled screams of a baby becoming aquainted with the law of gravity. (She was sound asleep when I left her on that bed, I swear!!!)

It was then that I became aware of a new law myself, the law of "if you think someone else is lame, watch out...your own lameness is just around the corner". This law or lesson or whatever you call it, has become far too familiar to me over the years. Best I can figure is, you're rubber, I'm glue...what I say bounces off you and sticks to me.

Interesting confession, you say. But wait, it gets better. The reason I tell you this is because I've lived most of my adult life without the ability to understand people who run to the doctor for every little hiccough. Who belch and say "oh no... I must have the stomache flu". My motto has always pretty much been; "I don't wanna be sick, therefore, I'm not." Don't scoff. It's worked. I've been sick (aside from tumor related illness) twice in the past seven years. The rest of my family, twice every year.

So what happens when you walk around with disdain for the non-believers? You got it! That old rubber-glue law kicks into action and the next thing you know, you're recovering from cancer and turning into a hypochondriac all at the same time. I've been trying to ignore little discomforts and quirky body irritations now for at least six months and it finally got to me last week. I broke down. I made at least 10 calls to my doctors and four appointments. It's like I couldn't get enough. I'm going to be picked over with a fine-toothed comb this week and they won't find anything wrong with me. I better find out what hyperchondriacs do after that. Hopefully it involves going for D A Y S if not weeks without thinking about my stinkin' health and my poor picked-on body!

Special "O" Info

If you wanna be part of the Special Olympics sometime, you can email volunteer@sout.org or visit www.sout.org.

They have events like bowling or swimming throughout the year in cities near you, with the big two day Olympics on the last Friday and Saturday of May every year at BYU.

Crave the Rave

As often as time and opportunity will allow, I like to take the kids to volunteer at the Special Olympics. The seeds of this tradition were planted long before I had children or was even married. I went with the singles group from my church and had such a marvelous time that five years ago when I decided I was long overdue to go back and help I thought for sure it would be hard to get in and they would be turning volunteers away. Not so. They've always needed us. And in a beautifully, almost poetic way, we've always needed them.

Sometimes when we go, we are assigned to act sort of like officials. We make sure they bowl when it's their turn, or stay inside the boundaries of the bicycle course, etc. always cheering them on along the way. But sometimes, cheering is the only thing we are assigned to do. This year the committee coined the phrase "Fans in the Stands" to describe volunteers assigned to cheering. Maybe some volunteers don't come back because they don't feel needed when they are placed as a cheerleader or a fan in the stand. But this year, the reality of just how much these athletes respond to the encouragement of cheering, became evident to me.

Three of us were sitting by the shot-put event cheering on the contenders when a large group of teenagers came to cheer as well. With their added volume and enthusiasm, you would think you were at an NBA game that was in overtime. The athletes perked up instantly. The shot was put significantly further than ever before. They smiled each time they heard their names being called from the crowd.
It was exciting.

As the event went on and the different divisions came to compete, the teenagers became distracted once in a while and would entirely miss a competitor here or there for no appearant reason other than a text message or an important conversation about something that happened the night before. Innocent and expected from a group in that demographic, but oh how my heart ached for those that didn't hear a crowd cheering for them.

I haven't stopped thinking about how significant it is to be encouraged, even cheered on. So simple, yet so significant. But we live in a world that is severely deficient in applause and approval. Unless of course, you're heads above the rest; bigger, sexier, richer, if you have -er at the end of any of your attributes, you know what it feels like to be cheered and appreciated. You also know what if feels like once the cheering fades. But what about those of us who are merely capable of only doing our best, like the Special Olympians, like the majority of the human population? Doing your best has become so under-appreciated that many people have lost the motivation to do even that.

But where does the fault lie? In the ravers or in the cravers? I believe it's the latter. If we focus on the perfect gifts that God has given us, that dwell inside of us, that bless those around us when we freely share them for the sake of beauty and not the sake of praise, we have serenity and a sense of fulfillment. We can see our perfect place in the universe and in the lives of those around us while being imperfect. We can hear God cheering, we can see five loaves and two fishes go a long way.

Three days ago I was assigned to cheer someone on. It was my job. But in reality, their willingness to take what God had given them and do their best was probably the most cheer-worthy thing I had seen all week, assignment or not.

Relax...I won't quit

I need your prayers. Or...maybe I need self-discipline. It's possible I just need to grow up. And I probably really need some other things too...but I think I'll just ask, ever so humbly, for your prayers.

Dilemma as it stands: I just realized I have a crazy bad habit. The first three times I "practiced" this habit, I was completely oblivious that there was any kind of trend to it. But fortunately, I'm only somewhat thick, and I realized yesterday, that I have a problem.

Hello. My name is Rosemary and I am a quitter. Can't there be another word for it? I hate "quitter", it sounds so lame and even despicable to some degree. But what else do you call someone who gets a job in the winter, loves it, but then wants to quit the moment signs of summertime start to appear? My last three jobs have all ended exactly that way.

I have wonderful reasons, other than summer, when I quit. Once I quit due to nepotism, an other time it was sexual harassment, and then there was "religious reasons". See...they're good reasons, aren't they?

The answer is yes, those are good reasons, but...I've run out of 'em. I have no reason to quit this year, hence my moment of self-discovery: I just wanna play all summer! Thanks to the public school system, that was firmly engrained into my psyche for twelve of my most impressionable years. Work all winter, play all summer. How can I not want to quit?! (Thank you...I feel your sympathy and compassion already)

Dad, if you're reading this, relax...I'm not going to quit. First of all, this was the hardest job ever to get, the economy IS a little scary to say the least. Second, I don't think I could go to another job interview and keep a straight face knowing what I know about myself now. I'd be laughing through every question. Potential Boss: "Why should we hire you?" Me: "Replacing me is half the fun?"

So now I've just limited my readership by about eight people. Eight people at my place of employment that can never EVER read this blog. (Shhhhhhh.....be very, very, quiet.)

But if they did read this...hmmmmmm...I wouldn't have to quit.....

Ok...I'm so kidding. C'mon...I just said this job was hard to get. And I do currently have Friday's off. So really...this is the best job ever. Right?! No quitting. And no getting fired on purpose. (Thank you...I am a good girl, aren't I?)

(But just for the record, that moving my desk downstairs...from a private office to a S H A R E D office??? That was lame people...so lame.)