Vamping It Up

So we have some things in the works here. Some fun, nutty, totally outrageous things. Some things you can participate in, if you are willing.

In celebration that Phase II: Reconstruction (now called Re/DeConstruction), we will be enjoying the gap between Phase II and Phase III: Chemo with a little art project.

We are going to button bomb this town (and any town that wants some) with humor, with sassiness, with naughtiness. In lieu of asking you all to shave your heads with me (because what girl that spends as much money as I have on hair and loves her hairdresser as much as I do would ask for something like that?), I am asking you to think of a creative button to make. It has to be something cool or funny or naughty. The point being that these are buttons that we will pass around to folks in the community in "baldidarity" with others who have gone through chemo. They don't have to say anything directly about cancer or chemo, but they can. I don't even care if people know what they are for...actually, that would be even cooler. I would love people to think "wow, what a cool button" and just wear it and then others that are in the know will see it and smile. Something that someone will find funny or cute or silly. Something joyful and that brings a smile.

It can be words or designs, but nothing about me. This is a project about taking the piss out of cancer, laughing about stuff that can be brutal, freeing ourselves to find the humor and fun in things that are a little dark. Some examples that have been floating around here? My favorite: "I have killer boobs". Another...simply a tassel, yes, that kind of tassel. Another that I like is "foobs" or, a true favorite "fipples". Another favorite: "I'm with Baldy". Feel free to make renditions of these too. :) Any play on chemo, cancer, boobs, no boobs, you name it.

If you have a creative idea, but can't execute it, send it to me and I will see if I can get one of my friends with mad design skillz to make it up. Remember, it doesn't have to be perfect. This is for fun.  We will cut and press these and send them out and pass them out all over. I hope to get pictures of random people wearing them. I hope that when someone says "awesome button" to a friend they will pass it on because that's the point.

So, I have uploaded the template for the button to a google doc that you should be able to access. Click here to see the template. Send me the completed template at fran.loosen (at) gmail.com (replace the (at) with a @) and we will get it rolling on this end.

Again, if you don't feel like you can do the graphic design work, please send your ideas on to us and we will make it happen on this end. If we get responses, we'll post pics of all of the buttons on flickr so you all will see them.

I'm hoping that we can get these rolling and going soon. I start chemo in 3 weeks and would like to start passing them out by then (June 17th). Let me know if you have any questions! Love to you all!

Running the Numbers

Today was a day of ups and downs, more ups BY FAR than downs so here is to celebrating good things.

This day marked the first day I felt like myself again. I cleaned up a few vases of dead flowers, I read a couple of contracts, I responded to work stuff a bit. My brain was actually processing information. I felt like I had come back from the brink of something chilly and damp and into the sunlight of what embodied life is.

I also got the last of my drains out today. I won't go into the drama of drains, but suffice it to say that your body doesn't absorb everything quickly and it needs some help. A few days into having Nick clean these things and I was about to hurl every time I looked at the receptacles. In a day or so, I'll be sleeping on my side again (huzzah! It's been ages) and won't have to sleep sitting up any more. And, the allergic reaction seems to be receding. Small things seem miraculous these days.

I also had the joy of going to a building committee meeting for David's (and soon to be Ava's) amazing, wonderful school to approve the purchase of a new school building, a dream I've been working on with a wonderful group of others for over 2 years. It's true that if you believe in something/work on something long enough, it just might happen. This is proof to me that a dream can come true. Pretty amazing stuff and something to look forward to.

Finally the best part of the day is that my genetic tests for BRCA 1 & 2 came back as "NO MUTATION". That doesn't mean that I don't have a genetic mutation, but it means that the ones they screen for (the scary ones that mean no ovaries, forced menopause, and a higher likelihood of colon and pancreatic cancer) are not mine. Ava will have to start getting mammograms at age 29 and my female relatives still need to do their cancer risk assessments, but this is good news. 

But the downside today was that we also met with medical oncology to start talking about chemo. Their opinion is that I need it. So riddle me this...how after a double mastectomy, stage 1 diagnosis, clean margins, no lymph node involvement, *no* other evidence of cancer in the breast do I still end up with a 30% chance of having breast cancer in my body? And, even after chemo, that number drops to around 15%. There's no way to know if the little breast cancer seeds are anywhere else and the only hammer they have is a poison that might give me neuropathy in my hands and feet, possible heart failure, etc.  Nick is doing the research to make sure this is the right decision. It feels eminent, but I want to make sure I am making the right choice to take 4 months of pumping chemicals into my body. I don't want to make this an automatic "of course" decision. I also realize I am only turning 40, that I have many more years on this planet and dealing with breast cancer metastasized to my liver, bone or lungs is not something that will keep me on this Earth. It all feels like a really crappy odds game at this point, not to mention BEING BALD for my sister in law's wedding in October.

So, if we go with the chemo, it starts May 31st-ish. Still trying to work out how I am going to time it with work/other obligations that I love. But that's the next phase, so I am going to enjoy this week and next without giving it a lot of thought.

Some friends and I are cooking up a fun little guerrilla art project to make merrier the onset and duration of chemo...stay tuned (bwahahahhahahahaaaaa).