Christmas Newsletters Worth Saving

Who would blog on Christmas Eve? Between baking cookies, preparing to drive to my brother's house in Dayton, and wrapping presents, I decided to sit down and give a little love to those people who take the time to write Christmas newsletters. I blogged a few weeks ago about how I hate to get Christmas cards that are signed -- no pictures, no news.
The newsletters aren't as popular this year as in previous years, but two of them got me laughing.
One came from a Florida friend. We worked with Steven at The Tampa Tribune. While we were all single, working late, partying hard, Steven was married to Joy and had three little boys. Now those little boys are all grown up and he has a daughter who is in 8th grade.

Steven has managed to keep his sense of humor, in spite of losing his job as an editor. Instead, now he manages a St. Vincent de Paul store.
"It looks like the store will be around longer than the newspaper because people still insist on being poor even though those Tea Party people tell them to get a job. We try to let them know, but the homeless people don't have mailboxes so the letters keep coming back," Steven writes in his newsletter. He considers hiring them to work in the store, but then the store would have no customers so he'd have to lay himself off.
His oldest son Matt became a lawyer last year, but couldn't find a job working in law. Instead, he worked as a hotel parking valet. This year, he's working for Florida as a child abuse lawyer.
"Child abuse is popular there so he is very busy," Steven writes. Sad but true. Yet, the family should prosper as they serve the poor and the abused.
I wish I could print Steven's entire letter, but that would be plagiarism, so I'll just tell you that his wife Joy broke a toe this year "because a fat man in a wheelchair ran over her toe at the hospital." Joy is a nurse. Steven tried to appease her by pointing out that is could be worse.
"Yeah, like it would be worse if you were a monkey because you couldn't grip the branches with your foot and you would fall on the ground and get eaten by wild animals." Joy did not appreciate his input.
Another great Christmas newsletter came from Dream Girl. I've written a number of posts about Dream Girl and her breast cancer treatment. Her newsletter begins:
"What I liked Best About Having Breast Cancer..."

True, it's an odd stand to take, but you should know that Dream Girl feels she has learned a ton from having cancer.
Some of the things she appreciated are "smaller boobs...baldness... being popular... playing the cancer card."
One of her gems of wisdom came under the "Baldness" heading. "Before my hair fell out, I was a mess. But once it began falling out, I was cool with it...It turns out that I had a really nice-shaped head under all of that hair, and I looked so good that I decided I would not be putting it under wraps, choosing to go au natural instead."
Maybe she'll write a book some day: Lessons I Learned From Cancer, cause I just can't see people buying "What I Liked Best About Having Breast Cancer."
So, people, once the presents are all wrapped and under the tree, once the Christmas ham or turkey is in the oven, take the time to write a Christmas newsletter. We want to know what is going on with your family, and we only hear from you once a year.
Not everyone can be as funny as Steven or as wise as Dream Girl, but everyone gets an E for effort. Merry Christmas!

And just be glad my cats don't fit in the Christmas box so no one is getting them as presents this year.

Dreamscape

Today, the dean of the college called to ask if I'd substitute this week. The professor who needed a sub was going to the beach with a friend who has breast cancer. I suppose some people decide to coddle their friends with breast cancer. As for us, we insist Dream Girl meet us in the freezing weather every Saturday morning at 6 a.m. for a seven to 10 mile run. Rain, snow, ice or even a full moon, we're out there slogging along the trail.
This week, Dream Girl finishes her last radiation treatment. Nine months ago, she told us on the trail that she'd found a lump in her breast -- a lump that she unconciously rubbed as she waited between sets of lifting weights. "I'm sure it's nothing," we all said, including her. Instead, we made it into a joke about the mammogram machine being broken and whether the jaws of life would be called to free a woman's breast.
Then we learned that she did have breast cancer. They removed the lump and some lymph nodes. Within weeks, she was back running again with a drainage tube secured. Next she ventured through the world of chemotherapy. In October, she ran the half marathon to celebrate the end of her chemotherapy. For the past few months, she has been going to radiation. She enters a room alone and has a beam of radiation aimed at her breast. She is nearing the end of her treatment.
Cancer has changed her life. Not just in the fact that she had to think about death and how she spends her life. She says she has learned so much, things she never would have learned without the cancer.
She hasn't been sick. Most people get throwing up, lying down sick from the cancer treatment. We worried that she wouldn't be able to run with us. We'd walk instead, we decided. Or, we'd meet for coffee. Now we laugh at our fears. She is in better shape than all of us.
Other than not being able to run, the two things she worried about were -- gaining weight because of the steroids and losing her hair. Dream Girl had long dark hair that she would cut off to donate to Locks of Love. She couldn't imagine that hair being gone. But after it started to fall out and she shaved it, she loved the way she looked bald. She refused to wear a wig or a scarf or a hat. She went au naturel. With her shiny head glaring, she started a job as a tutor at a high school. The students assumed it was her look. Dream Girl had no shame about her bald head.
She had planned to get in great shape over the summer before she learned that she had cancer. Then she worried that she wouldn't be able to exercise and that the steroids would make her puff up. Wrong again. She has lost some weight. She is in her best shape ever. When a nurse said to her, "Thin, small breasted women like you..." she wanted to look over her shoulder. Who was that nurse talking to? But it was Dream Girl who is now thin and small breasted!
Even before Dream Girl's chemotherapy ended, her hair was growing in. She looked like a baby chick, all fuzz around her head. Then, a few weeks later, a salesgirl called her "Sir" because she resembled a balding man. Now though, her hair is coming in thick and fast.
She's on target to meet her "goal" of having hair by her birthday at the end of the year, even though Pam pointed out that it is silly to make a goal for something you have no control over. Maybe a wish, but not a goal.
And, a few weeks ago, her eyebrows and eyelashes suddenly sprung to life too.

She's the old Dream Girl, except she isn't and she never can be again. She has lived through an experience, no, not lived through it, she has embraced this experience. She's learned so much about life by looking death in the face.
They say that cancer patients forget about their new outlook on life after a few years. I can't imagine Dream Girl putting this away and returning to a suburban life. She has plans.
She has backpacks and pop-up tents. A sleeping bag that weighs ounces and hiking boots that won't rub off her toenails. She dreams of hiking the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail. She wants to gather in every mountain and ocean, every bat and raccoon, every moonrise and sunset. The world is truly her oyster, and she has earned some champagne to go with those oysters.
A toast to you Dream Girl for making it all look so easy, for blazing the trail everywhere you go.

Chemotherapy and Exercise

Did you know this is breast cancer awareness month? I didn't, even though football players are wearing pink wrist bands. Truthfully, I've been especially aware of breast cancer for about the past six months.
I think it's time for Dream Girl to tell her story, but she won't write it for me, so I'll have to cobble it together the best I can.
It started for us on the running trail. I was complaining about some ache or pain when Dream Girl confessed she had a mammogram in the coming week.
"I found a lump," she said.
Now, most women have had friends who found lumps. It almost always turns out to be nothing. So that's what we told Dream Girl.
Then our conversation took a turn to the jaws of life. Dream Girl had gone to get her mammography but the machine wasn't working so she had to reschedule. We began to speculate on ways that a mammogram machine could break. What if it broke in the middle and a woman's breast was squeezed between the plates?
"They'd have to call the jaws of life!" Dream Girl said.
And we laughed imagining that call to the firefighters.
Then the next week they were scheduling a meeting with the surgeon. Dream Girl had breast cancer.
Here's what she worried about: gaining weight while on the steroids and unable to exercise. Oh, she worried about other things too, like watching her kids graduate high school, hiking the Appalachian Trail or the Pacific Rim Trail, keeping track of the birds that fluttered around her house.
After the surgery, which included some lymph nodes and drainage tubes, Dream Girl tried to run way too soon. She had to run with her arm clamped over the breast that was operated on. She came back to run with us our 7.5 miles on the trail.
She kept saying that she felt fine.
So we ran.
Oh, we shared a flurry of emails as she began her chemotherapy. Would we run without Dream Girl? No, we decided that we would walk if that was all she could do. And when she didn't even feel like walking, we'd meet at a coffee shop.
I pictured her wrapped in a blanket shivering as she lost her hair and battled cancer.
We couldn't have anticipated that Dream Girl would run through her chemotherapy with only a few extra naps on chemo day.
And, of course, she celebrated the end of her chemotherapy by running the half marathon. Here she is dwarfed by her rambunctious family after the half marathon.

Her husband apologized for not parking close by and she waved it off. It was only a half marathon.
Dream Girl doesn't want to tell her story because she doesn't want to give other women false hope. If they find out how good she felt, they might feel resentful or guilty. They might blame themselves for feeling too lethargic to move. Dream Girl feels like she did nothing special. She just got lucky.
But maybe Dream Girl buoyed herself up for those chemotherapy treatments with all of that exercising she did, not just last year, but the years before. Maybe exercise does make a difference in fighting cancer and recovering from chemotherapy. Shouldn't she tell that story. What if she could help someone else?
Before Dream Girl started chemotherapy, she was asked if she'd like to join a study about chemotherapy and exercise. She said, "Sure."
Then they found out she was a runner and said she was too fit to join the study.
Maybe someday we'll see the results of that study. Maybe it will announce that moderate exercise or intense exercise helps counteract the effects of chemotherapy on the body.
Or maybe we can just look at the results that Dream Girl had and decide that exercise makes things better, cancer or no cancer, chemotherapy or no chemotherapy.
Then again, maybe the study should be on friends and it might discover that chemotherapy is much easier to bear if it includes a weekly meeting with friends -- on the running trail or in the coffee shop.

Run, Dream Girl, Run

Sunday morning, as the sun rises in the east, Dream Girl will join thousands of other runners in surging down Broad Street eastward from the starting line of the Columbus Marathon.
She plans to run a half marathon to celebrate her last chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer. I think that was about a week and a half ago, maybe two weeks.
I can't imagine going through surgery and chemotherapy for six months then running a half marathon. That's 13 miles.
Dream Girl is truly amazing. She tries to say that she isn't doing anything special, but that she hasn't felt bad.
All I can say is that when I think of Dream Girl, I think of a word that Grace texted me last week: awe-full. That's me, full of awe for all that Dream Girl has gone through -- with a smile while trying to make other people not feel so bad about it.
My friend Pam is running too, but she doesn't want anyone to know, so don't cheer for her, like we did one year, yelling, "Go Pam!" at every group until we finally found her.

Overactive Morning

Man, am I feeling the aches and pains of age, or maybe it's just overexercising. When I got up this morning at 5:30, I could feel the muscles in my booty and thighs groaning. I've been devoted to P90X again this week and yesterday's "Legs and Back" workout took its toll.

Of course, I was up at 5:30 so I could meet my friends for our Saturday morning run.
We ran our 7.5 miles, although a cramped calf about half a mile from the end caused us to walk a bit. That wasn't my cramped calf, it was Dream Girl.
Dream Girl had her last chemotherapy session for breast cancer last Friday. She plans to run the half marathon next week to celebrate. Her hair is starting to grow in wispy and light, as opposed to the dark lustrous locks she had before she shaved it off. She looks like a downy baby duck with the hair standing in a short, fuzzy ball around her head. Now that the chemo is finished, it should start to grow back in full force. She's the only woman I know who actually looks good bald.
Running with my friends doesn't even feel like running. They listen to my stories and they say the wisest things. Pam points out that Grace processes all these experiences as they happen, rather than waiting 10 years and learning the lesson afterwards. They just put a good spin on what some might see as failures.
On the drive home, about 15 minutes, I flexed my hands trying to get feeling in them again. It wasn't that cold this morning -- 50 degrees when I left the house, so I wore shorts rather than the running pants I had laid out last night. We could see our breath throughout the run and I left my fleece on.
I've learned that the only way to warm my hands after a cold run is to hop in the shower. Even a cup of hot coffee doesn't help, but I wasn't finished exercising yet.
When I walked in the house where the men were still sleeping, husband and elder son, I put in the CD and started to do the Kenpo workout for P90X. I skipped the warmup, figuring that a 7.5 mile run was enough of a warm up. Kenpo is sort of like kickboxing or martial arts. Lots of kicks and punches. My hands finally started to warm up about half way through that workout. Then I turned on Ab Ripper X. I only made it through about 10 minutes of that before I decided I'd hit the wall on exercise.
Earl and I walked downtown to the farmer's market where we bought apples and tomatoes then stopped for a coffe.
I don't think I'm leaving my chair for the rest of the day while I grade papers.
Oh, shoot. I forgot that I have to take Tucker to a swim meet this evening. Midnight Madness. I am definitely not lasting until midnight!

Friendship Runs

I do not want to go for a run this morning when my alarm goes off at 5:15. Princess texts me at 5:20 that she isn't going to make it for the run. In diplomatic fashion, I text back, "Oh, you wimp. Let's go." She ignores me after that.
I am yawning as I meet my friends at the lake. We wear long sleeves in the morning air that hoveres in the 50-degree range.
It is dark again when we start, now that the sun is getting lazier and rising so late in the morning.
Dream Girl is still bald as she continues her chemotherapy for breast cancer. She usually lets her shiny head glint in the sun when we run, but she wore a hat this morning and wishes for ear muffs as we start.
We talk and talk as we run. We interrupt and chide and praise and laugh then laugh some more. We pause (from running, not from talking) at the 3.75 mile turn around while we drink water then we run more. And when we get back to the lake, rather than stopping at 7.5 miles, we run the 1.2 miles around the lake -- twice. So we ran between nine and a half to ten miles this morning and it wasn't bad.
As we go around the lake again, we notice artists set up, their easels open painting in the brilliantly clear morning air. They take in the trees, the lake, the clearest blue sky.
"The light is just like Provence today, isn't it?" I say to one artist and he nods in agreement.
After I finish, I stand facing the lake with a weeping willow obscuring my view.
"See," I tell my friends. "If you look from here, it is just like being in Monet's Garden." Which is where Earl and I visited in April, see the following picture as proof of the willow and the lake and the sun.

Dream Girl has started to do some calculations in her head. She has four more chemotherapy treatments. Her last chemo will be the week before the Columbus Marathon and half marathon. She thinks maybe she should do the half marathon to celebrate the end of her treatment.
"Great idea," The Queen of Privacy and I agree with her. Neither of us volunteer to run it with her. Of course, the Queen just ran a half marathon in April and she may be planning to run the full marathon in November. She doesn't like to commit ahead of time.
But the possibility of that half marathon is one of the reasons we kept running this morning rather than stopping at 7.5. When we finished the nine and half to 10-mile run this morning, it felt like Dream Girl could definitely handle the half marathon if it were tomorrow. The run felt good, but the therapy on the trail felt better.
These friends, who I see only once a week, are not there to say, "Good job" to all my choices. They correct me when I'm wrong and argue with me. These runs are good for my body and my soul. They take me to task when I've done something dumb and love me anyway in the end.

American Heroes

My friend Dream Girl is making me feel depressed. You remember her. She's the one who found out she has breast cancer. I was all worried about whether I would act differently around her, what I would say. And, of course, I was worried because I want her to get better.
I see her every Saturday for our weekly runs and we stay in touch by email the rest of the week. Her emails have depressed me and it's taking a toll on my body.
I've already eaten a small box of malted milk balls and I just ordered pizzas for dinner. I haven't run this week at all either. I left the house two mornings to run and ended up walking around the block before coming back.
Today was Dream Girl's echocardiogram to make sure her heart wasn't affected by the heavy duty chemotherapy she has taken. Here's part of the message we receieved from her afterward:

So I ran far and did 6 hill repeats this morning to crank my heart up before my echo. I bombarded Janise, the girl who did my echo, with questions about how high a score I could get on my echo. Average/a good score is 55, and she said my previous 62 was really good, but I wanted to know what the best number would be. She said a younger person could get like 75-80, and that there were people my age that could get up to 70-75.

See, some people might think, "I have cancer. I need to treat my body gently." But Dream Girl thinks she should whip her body into its best shape ever while going through chemotherapy. She's running 60 minutes a day and doing extra hills, plus riding her bike on paths that run through corn fields. She's swimming laps without needing a swim cap (since she's bald).
She doesn't know the score on her echocardiogram yet, but here was the follow up message she sent:

I don't know my new score yet. I have to wait until I go back to the Dr. I'm hoping for a 70! Hee hee! It probably would be too if I had been swimming. Dang.

And you can probably see why this level of activity by someone healing from breast cancer can be disheartening from those of us who are complaining about plantar's warts or heavy periods.
Really, can any excuse stand next to the woman who is having chemotherapy, the woman who got jabbed five times at the doctor's office last week because they couldn't get a good vein. As she left the office, she reassured the lab technician that it wasn't his fault that he couldn't get a vein. Can Mother Theresa have been reincarnated into my friend's body if she was already alive when Mother Theresa died?
Some people might see this kind of reaction to breast cancer and be inspired to try harder. I wish it had that kind of effect on me. Instead, I feel defeated before I begin.
So, I'm eating malted milk balls and pizza before a night on the couch watching bad sit coms.
Don't get me wrong. Dream Girl is amazing. She's my hero. She's just flown so far out of my realm that I can barely see the soles of her feet any more.

Outward Signs

Dream Girl had her second dose of chemotherapy on Thursday. Then she met us on Saturday morning for our 7.5 mile run. "What?" you say. I know. I feel the same way. She doesn't think she is amazing, but she inspires me. I would be one of those women who stayed in bed expecting people to wait on me. I'd be like, "I have Cancer!!!"
She just keeps going.
Her luxuriant brown hair has hung in there pretty well. Two weeks after the first chemotherapy session, as she prepared for the next one, her hair began to fall out.
Here's part of the email she sent to describe it:

"I'd been feeling the gentle touches on my arms and shoulders as my beautiful hair leaves me, just like autumn leaves falling gently from the trees to the ground. But just like the trees and their leaves, my beautiful hair will return in time."

So, on Friday, the day after her second chemotherapy treatment, her friends gathered to help her shave her head. She still has stubble that comes out in clumps if she pulls on it and she still has eyebrows which, she says, makes a difference.
I can't believe how gorgeous she is without hair. She feels comfortable like this -- Demi Moore as G.I. Jane or Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta.
Take a look:

Dream Girl's Life

I have a friend who now goes by the name of Dream Girl. I'm not sure why she called herself that because she is currently making her dreams come true instead of just dreaming about them.
I met her this morning at 6 a.m. for a 7 1/2 mile run before she was off to class to be a teacher for special needs students. She finished her first chemotherapy treatment on Thursday.
Last week, she went hiking on the Appalachian Trail. We've gone twice before to do small sections. This time, she went to Springer Mountain, the southern end of the trail and began hiking. She had just recovered enough from the lumpectomy, that removed cancer from her breast and lymph nodes, in time to carry a pack on the trail. She had to schedule the hike carefully so it could fall between the surgery and the chemotherapy.
During our run with the Queen of Anonymity, Dream Girl regaled us with tales from the trail. The weather was perfect, almost too hot. They saw clothes and food discarded along the start of the trail as hikers tried to lighten the load of their packs.
She arrived at a creek and stripped naked to bath in the clear water and the gorgeous nature around her. (Have you seen a video of this anywhere? Just curious if it's gone viral. JK)
On our run this morning, we saw four deer, a racoon, squirrels and birds of all sorts. I felt like I was in a Cinderella movie the way the animals seemed drawn to us. That's the effect that Dream Girl has on nature though. It comes to her.
Dream Girl has a long way to go -- seven more weeks of chemotherapy. She'll lose her shiny brown hair. She plans to keep running with us each week and she's going to start lifting weights again now that she has recovered from surgery and can raise her arms up over her head.
Being fit and healthy is something she's fought for and she isn't going to let it go. Maybe she's being optimistic, and maybe her trail name "Dream Girl" does apply to this situation.
Whatever I can do to help her dreams come true, I'll do.
That may not make me a "Dreamgiver" but I'll definitely work on becoming a "Dream Enabler." Actually, she doesn't need much help. She seems intent on creating her own happy ending.

Hero

My running friend who found out she had breast cancer just had a lumpectomy this week.
She has a drainage tube and she says the doctor will allow her to run 48 to 72 hours after the procedure. I have my doubts, but find that any of my excuses not to run sound incredibly lame in comparison to her fortitude.
She sent an update after she got home.
A nurse was trying to reassure her and promised that she would be healthy again someday.
My friend replied, "I am healthy (now)."
And, I'm going to have to agree that she's one of the healthiest and strongest people I know. She's not just a breast cancer statistic. She's an incredible individual and she'll handle this her own way, like she does everything.

The "C" Word

No one has actually said the words.
Breast cancer.
Thud.
The words fall beause they have no meaning. I can't equate those words with my friend. Yes, I followed the saga from lump, no big deal, to mammogram, to biopsy, to now.
But that isn't my story to tell.
All I can say is that I'm scared for my friend, but I can't allow myself to think for a moment that she's not going to be the same person who meets me every Saturday morning at the trail.
This isn't some mother of a basketball player who I wave to across the gym. This isn't the woman who drives the silver car, you know, you see her pull into school a few minutes late every morning.
This time it's different because she is my friend. She's my friend who has spent years convincing me that I can run a marathon and I can write a book, no, I should write a book.
She has hiked with me on the Appalachian trail and she has run with me through snow and rain and beating sunshine. She has stopped to listen to bird calls, to watch geese take flight and to pick up a nursing bat that lay in the middle of the path.
She has listened to me whine about my marital issues and my kids' problems and she has shared her own.
Now she has to face something horrific and she will face it with guts and love, but I wonder what I will do. Because, even though my family has survived tragedy in the past, my modus operandi is avoidance.
And I don't want to be that person, the one who asks her other friends, "Hey, how's she doing?" because I've been too busy to actually spend any time with her.
So, I resolve to be there for my friend.
But I don't know what that looks like. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to say. I feel like I'm floundering when she needs me most.
Is there a right way to do this?

Remembering What's Important

As the new year dawned, I decided to slack off on the hair straightening. I was getting tired of all that time with the flatiron. Although my hair started off with nice long curls in the morning, it frizzed as the day wore on until I looked like Roseann Roseanna Danna from Saturday Night Live. To combat the frizzes, I tamed it in a high ponytail, imagining how romantic the curls looked cascading down to my bare neck.
Before mass on Sunday, I had pulled my hair into the ponytail with a clip and I stopped in front of the mirror to loosen one curl so it hung down from the nape of my neck. Sexy!
Then I got to church and was thrilled to see many of the friends I hadn't seen during our busy fall schedule. That's when Michelle walked in. She beamed and looked radiant and wore a blue knit cap on her head. Michelle's hair was very like mine, dark and curly, but she had lost it all in chemotherapy since I'd last seen her. Michelle is two years younger than I am but has much younger children -- four of them ages 9 to 3.
Here are Michelle's beautiful
children from last Easter
Seeing Michelle, whose latest MRI shows tumors too small to measure, I wanted to pull down the curly ponytail which seemed ridiculous. I at least wanted to tuck up the errant curl that I had so lovingly released. Michelle didn't notice. She hugged me and asked about Grace's college search.
And I sighed, realizing that once again I'd been caught up in the minutiae of life with hair and teaching and kids' sports eating up my thoughts and my time. I bet Michelle doesn't spend time thinking about those things any more. I bet she sits with her kids and reads; I bet she gives them hugs that never end. I bet she doesn't give a thought for the long curls that are missing, but gives thanks every day that she can comb her little girls' hair.