Surprises and Sunshine

The last two weeks have been HUGE for me. The news of my latest scan at the beginning of the previous week gave me hope for many more tomorrows. I settled into the rest of that week and into this week with a slightly lessened eagerness to hurry up and finish my, before I die, to-do-list. After such news I never would have thought that more exciting news would come my way. 

But it did.

On Wednesday the 24th, I glanced at the traffic sources feeding into my blog. One website stuck out more than the others because I had not seen it before. It belonged to Healthline.com. I had not commented on any of their health-related articles so why their website was connected to mine was indeed a curiosity.    

I have crossed paths with Healthline.com before with my myriad of health-related questions. I have seen their “Best Breast Cancer Blog” award badges on others' blogs. And, not too long ago, a blogger I follow, Ann Silberman of But Doctor . . .  I Hate Pink, wrote a piece for them that again invited me to their website.

I clicked the referring website address. The words that met my eyes were: The Best Metastatic Breast Cancer Blogs of 2015. Huh, okay let me have a look at these. Still baffled, I glanced at the names of the bloggers included in the slideshow, many of whom are well-known in the breast cancer community. Then it happened. There I saw The Cancer Classroom. 

What? I mean . . . excuse me, but . . . WHAT?!!  

There was my creation. I probably went through a whole series of facial expressions and then eventually couldn’t see the words on my computer screen because of the fluid entering my eyes. Was it possible that somehow someone believed my blog was good enough to be included with these great bloggers?

No way . . . what is going on?

The daily views tracked by my blog have hit three digits on only a few occasions making it evident to me that not a great number of people know my blog exists. Comments about posts have come mostly from a few close friends. Sometimes family members call me on the phone and ask questions about my health making me wonder: Why aren’t you reading my blog? This is one of the reasons I publish my words. Considering all those facts, this recognition is a surprise; a surprise that is a compliment I never expected. These unusual few weeks of good news for me had to be shared on Facebook and my blog--how could it not? 

My email inbox soon held the congratulatory letter from Healthline’s Assistant Marketing Manager.  The letter explained that the Healthline editors had compiled the list of blogs based on “quality, frequency of updates and contribution to the community”. I happily embedded their badge into my site, and I hope you noticed it on the right when you first began reading this post. 

daffodils in my yard-little bits of sunshine for me

The beautiful weather that began over the weekend that I am still enjoying as I write today brings me the fantastic sensation I get every year when spring is near. I feel calm and content. The fact that I get to experience daffodils blooming in my yard and the sun warming my skin makes every single infusion I have had worth it. And now, instead of writing to organize my thoughts or writing so I won’t forget certain events in my life while still freshly captured in my mind plus providing updates for family, friends and followers, I get to experience what it feels like for others to find the words I pour into my computer as helpful and worthy of being read. My inclusion in a list like this feels good; actually, it feels great!

The Best Metastatic Breast Cancer Blogs list of 2015 SLIDESHOW HERE.

Thank you, Healthline.com!   

A Blogger's Goodbye Post

On March 1st, I checked my RSS feed to see if other bloggers that I follow had posted anything new. There I found a post from Lisa Boncheck Adams at www.lisabadams.com.  She was sending out an update concerning her recent health concerns. I read the words she wrote, “Things have gotten exponentially harder in last few weeks.” At that moment, I knew it was bad, really bad. A hot sensation grew from my chest and moved upward ending with a tingling in my sinuses. I struggled to see through my tears to read the rest of her post.

She had written in a post a few weeks earlier that fluid caused by the cancer in her liver was causing her abdomen to swell. She reported in this new post that the swelling was still an issue and had become more difficult to manage. To make draining the fluid easier, she explained, a catheter had been surgically inserted so she could drain the fluid herself at home.

She was suffering. I was suffering with her. Each day after the March 1st post I would check for new posts and news from her on Twitter. For days there was nothing, complete silence. I found myself feeling depressed. At times, I would start crying over something I had thought. I felt sadness for her, this person that I had followed since the beginning of my hell, but I felt sadness for me more. She confirmed my reality indirectly with her words that I too will follow in her footsteps.

At the end of her post she stated, “Still cannot walk—no change predicted in short order . . . For now that is all I have energy to update but should give you a sense of where things are. xo Lisa.”

Though I didn’t want to think it, somehow I knew her March 1st post would be the last words written by her on her blog. I wonder if she knew.

Since I began my blog in August of 2013, four (4) bloggers I followed have died--Lisa was one of them. Each had a unique personality and wrote what their personal experience with cancer was like. As life with cancer for them became more difficult, I expected a final post with words that told me they knew the end was near. I thought their last words would say “goodbye”. None of them did at least in the way I expected.

Jeanne Sather, The Assertive Cancer Patient, was the first blogger I followed to die. Her website has disappeared which is disappointing. I am thankful that I could read her words in the beginning days of my diagnosis because her years of living with metastatic Her 2 neu positive breast cancer gave me hope. I was surprised the day I found out she died because I didn’t realize how difficult her days had become. From her short posts, I knew she was moving into hospice but otherwise she seemed ok. I suppose I was a bit naïve at the time and should have known the end was near when she wrote about the final visit with her oncologist. The cancer had moved to her brain and there were no other treatment options. She wrote she was having trouble with accessing the internet in the hospice facility she had moved into. The last and only word she typed on her final blog post was “test”. The next post was an announcement of her death posted by her son. That was it.

As prolific a writer as she was, it was sad to me that “test” was her last word and her last post--a woman who planned her funeral and wrote her own obituary. How could “test” be her last word?

Jay Lake, at www.jaylake.com was a blogger/writer I discovered while looking at the blogs Ann Silberman of  www.butdoctorihatepink.com  followed. His cancer was colon, not breast. In April of 2014, I read Jay’s last post. He said, “I continue to be miserable.  . . . There’s a bunch of medical stuff going on, as usual. Don’t know where it leads, as usual. Will report more when there is more to report. For now, bleh.”

In May his caregiver and family member started posting about his condition during his enrollment and treatment in a clinical trial. Nothing was going well. He was having trouble sleeping and eating. Her last post said, “I think it is this right now that is breaking my heart the most, how this most social and gregarious man has been drained to the point where a simple conversation is exhausting."

His last post gave no indication that it would be his final post written by him. He may have had no idea he would deteriorate so quickly. He died on June 1, 2014.

I followed Terri, at www.gracefulwomanwarrior.com, because she was a Her 2 neu positive breast cancer patient like me. Before November of 2015, I did not get the sense she was near the end. But on November 15th, it was clear she was very sick. Still, I didn’t realize how sick. Her cancer had spread to her sternum, ribs, clavicle, pelvis, vertebra, spine, neck, around her gallbladder, and around her intestines. Fluid had accumulated around her left lung as well. The cancer in her hip weakened that area so much that she broke her hip as she tried to exit a taxi cab. But, as far as I knew, her cancer was not compromising the function of her vital organs like the lung and liver. That would have made it clear to me her time alive was short.

In her last post she said, “. . . death didn’t feel so far away.” Was she saying goodbye, or was she simply feeling incredibly bad physically? I will never know.

On December 1st I read the words “. . . moving closer to dying”. Those words were no longer typed by Terri but were typed by a caring family member. Obviously, things were worse than I thought. Terri had moved into a hospice facility at this point. She told the typist that she would describe oncoming death, “. . . as a feeling like she imagines dementia might feel. Tell them it isn’t scary,” she said. I sensed that Terri was hallucinating. I was told by the words I read that she was experiencing, “Lots of images, people, dreams and a sort of veil of uncertainty between reality and something other.” She was also experiencing visits from people no longer alive.

Were her last two posts “goodbye” posts? She spoke of oncoming death, but was she saying “goodbye” to her readers?

Each one of these people I did not know personally, but each expressed through their words many of the emotions I am feeling and have felt. Their final posts made me wonder--what will I write in the end? Will I be too sick to care? Will I know my time is near? Will I wait until it is too late and can no longer open my eyes or ask someone to type my words? Will any of it even matter? Maybe I will have a final post prepared months before my unwelcome end. Yet, maybe I won’t.

I did not follow Bridget Spence of  www.mybiggirlpants.blogspot.com because she died in April of 2013, the year and month I was diagnosed with stage IV. I revisited her blog recently and am happy her posts are still accessible. She pulled the curtain on her blog in the very way I hope I am able. In Dec 2012 she wrote, “It is time for me to ask each of you to let me go. It is time to say goodbye.  . . . Please don’t forget about me.”

Those simple words ended her blog in the exact way I expected the four bloggers I followed to do, but did not. Their words made me feel there would be more to come.

I have lots of plans about what I want to do before I no longer can--including ending my blog. I have not decided exactly how I will end it though--leaning toward a few short words like Bridget. Admitting to myself, the end has come will be the hardest thing I will ever do. Perhaps that is why those four people I followed who are now gone from the blogging world did not directly say, “This is my last post--goodbye.” Maybe they were hopeful they would live to post another day.

Or maybe their entire blog is and was their “goodbye” post. After all, many bloggers write to tell their stories before it is too late. I am just one of the many telling the world, "I was here, and then I wasn't."