The past 11 plus years (since I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2010) have taught me to expect the unexpected. And, most of the time, I have learned to roll with the punches.

But March sucker punched me.

J.R.’s mom, Betsy, passed away after a very brief (comparatively) illness in late January. Betsy was 84 years old. Before she got sick, she was a very active, vibrant person. She was still active in a family business. I often referred to her as the Energizer Bunny. Her illness surprised all of us.

As mentioned above, I have learned to roll with these punches. Watching her decline was hard, but I’ve been through hard times before, and God knows, I am sure there are still hard days ahead.

But (seriously) March sucker punched me.

As I’m writing this post, I am also listening to a new to me podcast I recently stumbled upon (My Person Died Too) and the episode is titled “Those Griefy Days.”

So much of it rings true. Apparently, John, one of the hosts, lost his wife about five years ago, and the other host, Carolyn, lost her husband about six years ago. Given that J.R. will be gone six years in July, I can honestly relate to so much of what they are saying.

You might think that closing in on six years, the grief may not feel as raw as it did in the beginning. I thought so too, honestly. But I was wrong.

The nerve that grief clings to can be irritated at any time, and transport me back to 2016 like a time machine. I was not expecting March to make me feel like Marty McFly when he stepped out of the Delorean. I felt like I was standing in the middle of the hardest time of the early days of grief. Why has March been so hard?

Our wedding anniversary is March 6th. This year wasn’t a milestone anniversary (next year will be a milestone – 30 years), but it hit hard this year.

As I’m listening to the podcast they talk about having a plan for those griefy days. Especially those expected griefy days. And in the past, I have had a plan for those days. In fact last year, I went sky diving on our anniversary. It was a great celebration. Not because it was something J.R. would have wanted to do, but because I know he would have been very proud of me for doing something outside of my comfort zone and I know that he would have applauded (and called me crazy)

.

This year I did not have a plan. In fact, instead of coming up with a plan, I wallowed in self-pity. Not because of the anniversary and being without my person, but because of my broken femur and my limited ability to do much of anything.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized the self-pity had turned to anger. The raw anger I felt after J.R. died. I was MAD. So mad. At what?

Not what. Who! I was mad at J.R. (and God).

Twenty-nine years ago, J.R. and I stood in front of family and friends and before God pledged to take care of each other in sickness and in health.

[Note: We both took this vow seriously. J.R. took great care of me during my original diagnosis and again when I was diagnosed in 2010. And I would like to think that I took good care of him while he was sick, at least I did the best that I could at the time.]

I was FURIOUS that he was not here. Not only was he not here, but this was not the first time he had let me down – he wasn’t here when I had surgery for an infection in 2017. He wasn’t here when I broke my femur in December. He wasn’t here when his mom passed away.

HE WASN’T HERE! AND I WAS HOPPING MAD (literally since I wasn’t able to put much weight on my leg).

This weekend we will be hosting friends and family at the farm to Celebrate the Life of Betsy. We are celebrating on her birthday at a place she loved. Although Betsy has been passionate about soil biology for the past 20 years (Sustainable Growth and Betsy Ross Grass-Fed Beef), we have been reminded about all of the things she was passionate about over the years.

March has been a sucker punch. Betsy’s illness and death were unexpected. I think we all expected her to outlive all of us. I have cried more in the past two weeks than I have in a very long time. Tears for Betsy, for J.R. for my dad, for all my friends who have died too soon from cancer, and (selfishly) I have cried for me, for all of the unexpected that has become routine and expected in my life. These tears have been unexpected.

Maybe I got too comfortable expecting the unexpected. I am genuinely exhausted from always anticipating the unexpected.

If you follow me on Social Media, you already know I gave up spending my time on those platforms for lent (and yes, I know, the blog shares to my Facebook page and Twitter, I just won’t see any comments there).

Now I’m back to sharing on my blog to the few inquiring minds who want to know about my latest update on my broken femur.

After a few stressful weeks of trying to locate the surgeon who performed my hip surgeries, I finally found him and made an appointment.

Out with the orthopedist who performed the surgery on my femur; who was not covered by my insurance, and did NOT LISTEN when I asked him to reach out to the surgeon who Humpty Dumptied me back together again TWICE!

Hindsight is 20/20 – All we can do is try to

make better decisions next time

Wednesday morning started with new x-rays. Followed by a homecoming party, reuniting with the surgeon who believed I could walk without a hip.

Buckle up…it wasn’t the kiddie train ride. It was more like Mr. Freeze at Six Flags where they shoot you out of a tunnel at 70 mph straight up a hill, you do some flips and turns and then you do it all again in reverse.

The appointment started with the same question everyone asks after seeing the x-rays: How did you do this?

I wish it was more interesting, but honestly, I fell on my knees in the grass while taking out the recycle. How did I shatter the femur and involve the joint? The doctor described it as “your femur acted like a pile driver” straight down into the joint.

After manually manipulating my knee and measuring the flexion, he pushed back on his rolling stool. Unsatisfied with the flexion there was a brief discussion about needing a possible knee replacement.

But wait… there is a new (for lack of the proper term) “procedure” allowing for a knee replacement and hip replacement all at once.

What? I could have a hip again? How weird would that be?

But this is the doctor who, when people ask about him, I tell them “you can see his mind working.” The rest of us can’t keep up with his thought process.

Concerned about what he saw/didn’t see on the x-rays, he sent me back for more.

This is where we reach the top of Mr. Freeze and start going in reverse. The second set of x-rays offered more clarity and in fact he saw”more calcification” which was a positive sign for all of us.

No actual smoke was seen coming from the doctor’s head, but the wheels were definitely turning.

So where did we leave the discsussion:

• We have a 2nd date/appointment set for April 1st
• No, there was no referral for Physical Therapy – why? He doesn’t want someone trying to overmanipulate before more healing has occurred.
• For the 1st time in 3 months, I am allowed to put weight on my leg (not a lot, between 25-50 lbs)
• Work to increase my knee flexion from 70 degrees towards 90 degrees (thankfully, my fabulous oldest daughter gave me exercises to help with this!)

I will check back in with you all after April 1st and let you know how things are progressing. Until then, if you see me out and about, ask me if I have done my flexion exercises for the day.

Are your Strong and Resilient? If so, I’m sorry you have had to go through whatever it is you have been through in your life.

If you have ever been inside a gym or followed any personal trainer or motivational speaker, you have seen/heard:

NO PAIN NO GAIN

And if you are a cancer patient or a caregiver for a cancer patient, you have likely heard:

YOU ARE SO STRONG

Or maybe you have lost a loved one, a parent, or a spouse and as you try to put your life back together you might have heard:

YOU ARE RESILIENT

But do you know what all of these things have in common? In order for someone to know you are Strong or Resilient, you had to endure Pain.

Admittedly, I would love to not have these descriptors when friends, or others, see me trying to keep my life moving forward.

It all starts with You Are So Strong. Apparently, you have to have strength before you can have resilience. Resilience is built by having to be strong time after time.

I have had doctors and therapists tell me I am resilient. At first, it sounds like a compliment. But really, it is just a placeholder. They are trying to wrap their head around everything I shared and wondering where do we start. I’ve actually seen it in their face. The eyes are the giveaway: they bulge or become as big as quarters. Then they clear their throat or look down at their notebook to hide it And finally they say it: You are so Resilient

After hearing how resilient I am over and over,

I realized every time I heard it, I put on a mask. In fact, I put the mask on before the words are even spoken. I know when something happens, it is time to pull out the mask and put it on. The words are going to come.

The mask I put on has a smile on it. It is uncomfortable to me but makes the people around me comfortable.

[As an enneagram 9, I used to think that outward peace was more important than inward peace – thus the mask].

For the past 3 months, I have picked up the smiling mask again. Between learning my mother-in-law was diagnosed with liver disease and liver cancer and breaking my femur. Friends saw my smiling face and knew that once again, I would bounce back.

Last week, before my mother-in-law passed away, when I looked in the mirror, I realized I was staring back at the smiling mask. I had been lying to myself. I believed all of the voices telling me how strong I am, how resilient I am.

This week the grief came back. Another chance to build resilience.

My mother-in-law passed away a week ago.

It brought back all of the pain of my husband passing away five and a half years ago -and the mask began to crack.

Using my walker the past 7 weeks was a reminder of the pain in 2010 when I first learned my hip had been destroyed by metastatic breast cancer.

And 2011 when my hip was rebuilt with 3 different prostheses.

And 2017 when I had to have surgery to remove the infected prostheses and learn to walk without a hip joint – and the mask cracked some more.

This week I broke down. Took the mask off and cried. But only in my own house.

The question is am I strong enough to leave the mask off when I am talking to friends.

I’m beginning to realize that true strength is allowing others to see me without the mask and resilience will be built by keeping the mask off.

With the advancement of research and drugs in the treatment of cancer, survivor’s guilt has become more common amongst cancer survivors.

According to Medical News Today, and other websites, survivor’s guilt is:

“When a person has feelings of guilt because they survived a life-threatening situation when others did not.”

I may have mentioned feeling survivor’s guilt in the past. And if so, I apologize for the duplication. So why am I bringing this up now, you ask?

I’m not really sure the best way to start this. So how about I start at the beginning.

When I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer in 2010 I did exactly the opposite of what everyone told me. I looked up the average life expectancy on the internet – turned out the average was about 3 years (and just so you know, that number has not really changed significantly in the 11 years since then).

I discovered along the way, that the average life expectancy included women and men who were diagnosed de novo (stage 4 from the start), and that there were women and men living longer than 3 years.

I also learned via my doctor that my life expectancy could be longer since the metastasis was all in my bones. He has told me on more than one occasion “as long as it stays just in your bones we can manage it.” Also, there are new drugs being developed all the time. In fact, the drug I am currently taking was only approved by the FDA in September 2017 – a full 7 years after my diagnosis.

When I hit the 3-year mark, I was surprised but grateful. Vowing to be thankful for my bonus time.

Fast forward to September 2015.

On September 21, my husband and my father were admitted into hospitals 3 hours apart – my husband in Temple and my father in Houston.

My father had already battled through stage 4 melanoma. He had been successfully treated and was in remission when he started having problems with his lungs. Not to beleaguer the details, but when he was admitted to MD Anderson they believed he was having a recurrence of the metastasis in his lungs from melanoma. Only later did they discover that his lung problems were actually a result of small cell lung cancer.

Meanwhile, in Temple, my husband was admitted to Scott and White hospital with a tumor on his kidney the size of a volleyball.

When your spouse is diagnosed with cancer, you drop everything else and focus on the next steps. Doctors, scans, blood work, more doctors, clinical trials, insurance. When you also happen to be living with metastatic cancer beyond the average life expectancy, you try to tell yourself and your spouse “if I can beat it so can you.” You even start to believe it when the clinical trial is showing good results.

You believe it right up to the moment that the doctor tells you, while your husband is sleeping in his hospital room, that the metastasis has spread so far there is nothing else that can be done and recommends hospice. You stare at this doctor and wonder why he just punched you in the gut. Because that is how it feels. The doctor punched me, took my breath away, and my heart began to break off tiny pieces that would lead to shattering in the next few days.

July 20th, standing in my living room, we received the phone call from Houston when my father passed away. Standing in my living room with my brother and his family, trying not to be too loud, while my husband was resting in our bedroom after coming home from the hospital for the last time the day before.

July 24th, my husband took his last breath. And more of those pieces of my heart broke.

It took me a while to understand that my compound or cumulative grief was also exacerbated by Survivor’s Guilt.

Here I was, still living with metastatic breast cancer, almost seven years after my diagnosis. Four years longer than the average life expectancy I had looked up in 2010.

They had ten months. TEN MONTHS. Why did I get SEVEN YEARS and they only got TEN MONTHS?

That lump in my throat whenever I thought about how to continue living was GUILT. Grief and Guilt do not make good roommates for someone trying to move forward.

As I learned to lean into my grief, I was able to begin to live again. But Guilt would still find its way into the guest bedroom occasionally.

For example, when my husband’s aunt was diagnosed with cancer. She, too, lived less than a year after she was diagnosed.

Enter GUILT.

Then there are friends that I made in the breast cancer world. Some that did not live the full three years from their diagnosis, and others, like me who had lived beyond the average expectancy, but still not as long as me. Why do some drugs work for me, and fail others after weeks or months?

My mind cannot wrap itself around the seemingly arbitrary outcomes, allowing Survivor’s Guilt to open the wound again and again.

This week the GUILT came raging back.

On Saturday morning my mother-in-law passed away. Last fall (October/November 2021), she saw her doctor and learned she had liver disease. Shortly after that, she learned she also had liver cancer.

Even though she was close to turning 85, she was still actively participating in running two different businesses. She loved the land and the cattle that grazed it at the farm where she lived.

As I watched her decline, I could feel the PTSD on the verge of eruption. I tamped it down as much as I could in order to offer a sounding board and shoulder to lean on to my sister-in-law. My MIL had a week-long stay in the same hospital my husband had been in the week before he passed away. She declined very quickly once the doctors told her there was nothing more they could do and she would benefit most from being on hospice. I watched my sister-in-law take care of her mother while putting her own needs on the back burner.

Once hospice was involved, I was unable to keep my PTSD in check. Hospice was not a good experience when my husband came home from the hospital. And I have done my best to stay out of situations where I have to relive that experience.

Once she passed away, there was no escaping the PTSD. And PTSD’s unwelcome friend Survivor’s Guilt.

Once again a family member was diagnosed with cancer and died sooner than anyone expected. This time it was just three months. And now I can’t stop asking the age-old question: WHY?

Over the years I learned to not ask Why, as I will never be satisfied with an acceptable answer. But when emotions are raw and exposed, GUILT is like dirt that finds its way into the open wound and, if not treated, causes infection and spreads.

It has been a long time since I have written anything for my friends and readers here.

I’m sorry for that. I’ve started and stopped several different posts. I even told myself that it was because I was dedicating myself back to my book writing. Which was true – for a while. In September I went to San Diego for a writer’s workshop with Bob Goff and Kimberly Stuart. It reenergized me. I had focus and was ready to finish the book.

But life interrupted again. There are a few people in my life that have some serious health concerns. And while I was not the one dealing with it on a daily basis, it brought back some very difficult feelings to deal with. Although writing should have been my go-to to deal with those feelings, I didn’t.

Then the holidays hit. Thanksgiving (which has never been my favorite holiday, if I’m being honest) and Christmas. I was looking forward to Christmas (which has been my favorite holiday in the past but is starting to lose its charm if I’m being honest due to the stress that comes with it, both mine and those around me).

Thanksgiving week I had minor surgery to correct a deviated septum in hopes of not having to use a CPAP machine anymore (good news, that seems to have really helped). Not realizing how miserable I would be during recovery, that may not have been the best week to schedule it. I did order food for Thanksgiving so we did not have to cook (that was definitely a lifesaver and I highly recommend doing it).

The next week I had my ‘every 3 month scans’ scheduled. For those who don’t know, living with metastatic cancer, scans bring about another layer of anxiety. Beginning a few days before the scans until I read the reports -or get the reports from my doctor – it is as though I’m holding my breath, waiting to know if this will be the scan that changes my current treatment plan. Sometimes I don’t even notice the anxiety until I release it.

This time was no different, except there was also the added anxiety of a close relative being in the hospital.

I went to the doctor on Friday, December 10th, and got the results from my scans. The news was what I expected, thankfully. There was no change, no new lesions, I was “stable”. I usually like to tell people “These scan results are brought to you by the letter S for stable” – thank Sesame Street for the reference.

The next day, December 11th, wasn’t anything special. It was a little chilly out that morning. And with all of the online shopping for Christmas I had done, my recycle pile was growing exponentially. It was time to take all the recycling out to the recycle receptacle. An activity that I have done numerous times without incident.

But then it happened. My ankle and my lifted shoe worked against me. I’m not really sure if my ankle gave out, or my foot just slipped off the lifted shoe, or if the slope and the shoe combined to take me down. But whatever it was, it wasn’t good. I fell and hit the ground. Hard.

And I knew. I knew it was bad. I tried to get up. I couldn’t. A neighbor saw me on the ground and came to offer assistance. He tried to help me up, but the pain was intense. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t even roll over to a sitting position.

Thankfully, my oldest daughter was home for the holidays and she assessed the situation, said “yep, you need some x-rays” and then (after she retrieved a pain pill I had leftover from the surgery a few weeks before) I was being lifted by four people into the car to head to the hospital.

The ER nurses managed to help me out of the car and into a wheelchair. After all of the “tell me what happened” too many times to count, they finally ordered the X-rays. My left femur was broken near the knee cap.

And since I have metastatic cancer, they also opted for another CT scan, just to make sure the break wasn’t due to anything cancer-related. Thankfully, it was just a “regular break”.

After a quick surgery to put in some plates and screw, and impressing all of the OT/PT and nurses with my mad walker skills (“this ain’t my first rodeo” might have been said once or a hundred times with each new person that saw me get out of bed and use the walker even with stitches and a lovely new incision from hip to below the knee), I was back home resting and recovering on my couch by Tuesday.

If you have read any of my story in the past, this may sound a little familiar. Four years ago, December/January 2017, I was also recovering from surgery when they removed all of the hardware in my hip.

I’m hoping there will be no infection resulting from the screws and plates down the road. (Fingers crossed). I am very thankful this happened to my left femur and not my right since I am already so accustomed to compensating for my left leg. It has made the recovery much less frustrating. Still frustrating, don’t get me wrong, but not as frustrating as it could have been.

2022 has not started the way I was hoping it would. The pandemic is still here, I’m using a walker and can’t put weight on my left leg for at least another 2 weeks, and the other family members I mentioned earlier could use lots of prayers (if that’s your thing).

I hope 2022 will be a little kinder as the calendar turns. If the last 10 plus years have taught me anything, life will knock the wind out of you, but it is your choice on how to adjust the sails to move forward.