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LilBit vs. the Big C

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    LilBit vs. the Big C

    My friends in the Newbies Nest suggested that it might be therapeutic to author a thread about this cancer battle that I suddenly (just this week) found myself immersed in. I agree with them, especially the one with all the chickens. You just don't argue with her.

    I'm still kind of reeling from the new diagnosis and trying to learn the lingo. Trust me, words like "oncologist" and "invasive" are not words that you want in your vocabulary. But enough grousing. Let's start the thread on a more positive note with:

    Things I Have Survived and Beaten During my Lifetime
    • A 15-year, pack a day smoking addiction
    • A devastating cocaine habit
    • A husband who turned violent after we married
    • 3 hurricanes
    • 2 tornadoes
    • Swept out to sea in a rip current
    • Carried away in the car at night by a flash flood
    • Run off the road by a truck @75 mph and slid sideways in the median for ~50 yards
    • Robbed by a ski-masked man holding a gun to my temple
    • 3 car wrecks (none my fault, one totaled)
    • Broken leg, broken wrist, cracked head, 2 concussions (all on different occasions)
    • Near-fatal childhood kidney condition & surgery
    • Backward SUV slide down an icy mountain stopping only inches from a steep drop off
    • Sudden loss of a parent to heart disease
    • Layoff from a long-term job
    • Total hip replacement surgery
    • 2 divorces
    • AL addiction (the whoop-ass is still in progress but at 2+ mos. it's lookin' good)


    Now, there are many other things, and I'll write about the less-life-threatening ones for fun in a subsequent post. For now, suffice it to say that I'm somewhat resilient and therefore, I think my chances here are pretty decent. When I was a kid, my favorite toy was one of those "super balls." Remember them? They were sort of blue-black and made of an amazing sort of rubber that made them bounce much higher than they ought to. Perhaps, while playing, I absorbed some of their properties.

    In the other corner, we have Invasive Ductal Carcinoma, 2.5 mm, Grade 3 (highly aggressive), triple positive (fast-replicating) just hanging out there in my left breast, just being an ugly nuisance, not unlike husband #2.

    Ding. Ding. Ding... Round 1 begins next Friday with a lumpectomy and lymph node biopsy. Then we'll know if it spread, which has all sorts of ramifications that I'm not allowing myself to think about just before going to bed.

    Before I close this post, leaving you all hanging, there are a few simple Rules to this Thread
    1. I intend to be honest but not graphic. You won't find any selfies taken during a biopsy or intimate details of what spurted from where. Nope. Nope. Nope.
    2. From time-to-time this thread might actually be fun.
    3. I am not religious but I am a stone-cold believer in God and I love Jesus, so if I ever talk along those lines and it offends anyone -- sorry in advance.
    4. No worrying about what to post! It's sometimes tough to know what to say to someone in my situation, although the Newbs. Nest folks have done an amazing job so far. If you ever want to say something here, but don't know what to say, feel free to:
    A. Post a funny pic
    B: Quote anything by Monty Python
    C: Just say "Hullo" or better yet, "Piss off"
    5. Any encouraging words are ALWAYS appreciated!

    So, thank you for stopping by the ring. To be continued soon…
    "If you fell down yesterday, get up today." -- H.G. Wells

    #2
    Brilliant post. Brilliant.

    With your attitude, I reckon the Big C's got a snowflake's chance in hell.

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      #3
      Hey lovely! Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, right? I'm on my phone at the moment. Will jump in line later but just wanted to say hello. I'm not a cancer expert, I'm an expert on my cancer only. Which I survived. So here's to kicking yours to the kerb x

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        #4
        Oh...and ps....I love these and thought you might too. I particularly like the lemon one. And I still hate the "j" word....

        After a friend died of cancer, Emily McDowell, a cancer survivor herself, designed a line of Empathy Cards for people with serious illness.

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          #5
          I am a survivor of almost the EXACT same diagnosis.
          I figured the devil didn't want me coz he knew I would take over.....that attitude, my faith, my family, and wonderful doctors have me sitting here 11 years later.
          I am here for you anytime.
          Mama
          I love my family more than alcohol.:h
          Live in the Solution....not the problem

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            #6
            What a great start to your thread - I am rooting for you!

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              #7
              Peace to you LilBit! Thanks for the thread.

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                #8
                Wow Lil!

                With that survival list - what's one more, huh?
                I have complete faith in your ability to get through this & write a damn good book too

                PS: I will send Stella if needed, just give me the word!!
                AF since 03/26/09
                NF since 05/19/09
                Success comes one day at a time :thumbs:

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                  #9
                  What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

                  xo

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Lovely to see you all.

                    Tawny, I have always been curious abut your user name. Upon looking it up, I found something that was neither tawny nor a frog. It looked more owlish.

                    MHP, I feel so honored that you stopped by. 'Have been back-reading your threads as highly recommended by several members here. Love, love, love the empathy cards. LOL!

                    Mama bear, you had almost exactly the same thing? Wow, GREAT for you for surviving with style and thanks for your kind words.

                    Frances and Spiritfree, it means a lot to me that you stopped in and posted.

                    Soft Focus, your mother was a hamster.

                    Lav, just knowing that Stella is on hand gives me great comfort.

                    Dear Pav, always great to see your shiny toes. Of course, you must specify African or European swallow.

                    Someone bring me a shrubbery or I shall have to say "Ni!" again.
                    "If you fell down yesterday, get up today." -- H.G. Wells

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                      #11
                      Hi LilBit,

                      Yep - it's the Tawny Frogmouth, my favourite Oz. bird.

                      LilBit, another Undie, A Better Me, has also just had her annual follow up CT scan - so she is now 3 years BC free. YAY!

                      "I wave my private parts at your aunties"

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Pavati View Post
                        What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?
                        Hi Pav -thanks for the lol.
                        All that I know is that someone said that it has to flap its wings 43 times every second -wow! That is the way that I use to feel when I was drinking.


                        It’s a simple question of weight ratios:
                        A 54-year survey of 26,285 European Swallows captured and released by the Avian Demography Unit of the University of Capetown finds that the average adult European swallow has a wing length of 12.2 cm and a body mass of 20.3 grams.4

                        Because wing beat frequency and wing amplitude both scale with body mass,5 and flight kinematic data is available for at least 22 other bird species,6 it should be possible to estimate the frequency (f ) and amplitude (A) of the European Swallow by a comparison with similar species. With those two numbers, it will be possible to estimate airspeed (U).

                        In order to maintain airspeed velocity, a swallow needs to beat its wings forty-three times every second, right?

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                          #13
                          LilBit,

                          An oldie but a goodie!

                          AF since January 7, 2014 *Never, never, never give up. ~ Winston Churchill*

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                            #14
                            Lil, so glad to find your thread. I'm by your side for this!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              On Silver Linings

                              This week was filled with all the fun pre-op hoops that one must jump through to get to one's surgery. And, while I expected to be poked and prodded in all kinds of places, I didn't expect a call from the admin office with a cheery individual who blathered on with some kind of empathetic-sounding, yet meaningless script until I finally realized that she was really asking for money. "And will you be putting this $4k copay on your VISA today?" she eventually asked, as if I was ordering a set of Ginsu knives with the free orange peeler. Nor did I expect to have to sit through 1.5 hours of required online PowerPoint training along the lines of "What is cancer?" with more slides depicting breast anatomy than any human ever truly needs to view. Least anticipated were the bright green, stick-on "nipple studs" with metal tips that one must don before getting a chest x-ray. (They might at least have put tassels on them. This IS San Francisco, after all.) After a while, in spite of my determination to treat the whole thing like a huge scavenger hunt, I eventually began to feel like Michael Keaton's Beetlejuice taking a number in an endless waiting room.

                              looks-like-a-looooooooooong-wait_o_391706.jpg

                              And so, I began to think about silver linings to pass the time.

                              Silver Lining #1. A recent article said that a possible side effect of my upcoming radiation treatment is that my underarm hair near the radiated area might go away and not grow back. Hmm...that sounds like a "win" to me. 'Wonder if they'd notice my sticking the other underarm in that crosshair area?

                              Silver Lining #2. I've actually been considering having some work done on "the girls" but not sure I had the nerve to do it. As Pav described, they've become size "38 longs."

                              Silver Lining #3. I finally had the chance to fill out an "Advanced Directive" which is, as you know, the document that tells people what to do with you if you lose the ability to decide for yourself. The form asked these open-ended questions like: "On a typical good day, I would be _____," and "Life would no longer be worth living if I had to ___." Kind of makes you think, doesn't it?

                              monty-pythons-meaning-of-life-1983-eric-idle-terry-jones-pic-7.jpg
                              Before we lapse into the Galaxy Song, let's move on. Note that I did answer the second question, "Life would no longer be worth living if I had to____" with "...live it like a carrot." Signed, witnessed, and filed.

                              Silver Lining #4. This is the actual reason for my posting this whole train of thought, although it took me bloody forever to get here: This bad experience is amazingly effective behavioral cognitive therapy. I now have an excellent deterrent for ever even thinking about picking up a drink again. Because this disease was diagnosed early enough in my quit, I will forever associate cancer and all its horrid ramifications with drinking AL, and the current literature that says AL can cause cancer helps solidify this mental association for me. I'm just glad it came along far enough into my quit that it didn't send me reeling back to the wine aisle.

                              So, cheers to all of you with big glass of AF bubbly water, and you can't have the liver. I'm still using it.
                              Last edited by LilBit; May 12, 2015, 07:25 PM.
                              "If you fell down yesterday, get up today." -- H.G. Wells

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