THE Search is OVER! Just Keep Reading...

...and the connection to the search for My Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss will become clear.  I tell my students the very first day of class; just stick with me.  It may not make sense in the middle, but just stick with me.  I almost always come full circle.  I should have probably said that in my very first blog entry.  Better late than never, I suppose.

<Scooby-Doo rewind to a few hours ago>  I am explaining to my son that I would give anything if I could magically make people feel about learning and education the way I did as a student and do, now, as a professor.  When I was in school (like starting in elementary school), it was the first thing I wanted to do when I got up and the last thing I wanted to do before going to bed.  The same is true now, except I now learning through teaching, both through what I try to teach students AND through what students inevitably teach me.  If everyone could feel that about learning - even just a little bit - I think they would struggle with school so much less.  It's what got me through the courses I absolutely hated - finding something within the subject I wanted to know.

It is the guiding principle of how I organize my classes.  I try, in the short span of ten weeks, to offer as many examples of how to approach history as possible, so that even if the student *hates* history and is just taking the class to graduate, I have the best chance of offering even just *one thing* that hooks them.  I love it when I learn I have students that hate history.  They are so much easier to please, if nothing else ;-).  I should start a teaching blog.  No....  a learning blog.

NO TANGENTS! (cue amused laughter/eye-rolling/head shaking/sarcastic retorts of former students)

I am explaining this to my son because he just started his third quarter of college.  He is a running start student, which means he is a junior in high school and a freshman in college simultaneous.  He's taking an online math and on-ground Japanese class through his high school and plant biology, philosophy of religion (200 level), and American multi-cultural lit (again, 200 level) classes at his college.  By far, this is the most intensive, in-depth quarter in school for him, so far.  By *far*.

And it's only the second week of the quarter, so he hasn't had time to find the rhythm of his new classes, yet.  This is one of the hardest areas of transition for running start students - for all students, really - having to adapt and adjust your *entire daily routine* every ten weeks to the demands of an completely new schedule that is usually radically different from any other that came before AND most often under the command of three frequently widely-differing bosses who NEVER coordinate their requirements, AND who, odds are, you either have never met before, or, at the very least, don't know very well.  People give students crap all the time, especially community college students and within that group, ESPECIALLY running start students.  "I mean, it's community college.  How hard can it REALLY be?  You aren't even out in the real world yet."  Those people have either never done it or have forgotten.

NO TANGENTS! (cue amused laughter/eye-rolling/head shaking/sarcastic retorts from everyone, now)

<Second Scooby-Doo rewind> He stands at the end of the couch with heavy eyes.  (Paraphrasing) "I am so tired.  I still have more homework.  And it's philosophy."  (We just had the discussion about the brain-sucking, thought-sapping, mentally-draining experience that is philosophy class yesterday.) I mentally scramble for the words that will impart this little piece of wisdom to him.  I want, in some way, to describe my passion to him about learning - how it makes me feel - so that somewhere in all of the craziness that is his life for the next nine week, he can find hooks that make him want learning to be the first thing he does when he wakes up and the last thing he does before he goes to sleep.  It's the only way to get through college AND get something out of it.  If he could just see a little of what it is like for me...  not was ~ *is*....

And as I look around the room at the stations I have set up for me to help me through recovery, it occurs to me that I am lying.

*We had just finished watching an episode of Modern Family, our latest favorite "feel good" show - there are so few, and this one is SO good - and the tv holds its breath in a pause screen of credits.
*The vintage eBay stuff to my left and right - left being stuff that doesn't have pictures, yet and right being items with pictures divided into posted and not-posted-yet piles - waits in baited anticipation.
*My book and syllabus for the faculty learning community I am part of this quarter sleeps at my knee.
*My box of vintage magazine pictures and its accompanying boxes of empty vintage frames (I make framed collage art out of vintage magazines) lounge at my feet.
*The curriculum I've created for "Intro to Gender Studies" taps its foot in a hidden window on my screen.
*My cross-stitch bag with the dragon I've put over 350 hours into - so far - cuddles up to my 4 ft Valentine's bear, who keeps me constant company on the couch.
*My "Listen to Your Mother" piece I'm reading in front of God and everybody in less than a month is pacing back and forth in Word, just waiting for me to practice.
*The non-fiction book I'm reading keeps company with my wallet and keys in my purse.
*My phone with my brain games to help with the chemo-brain recovery sucks juice from the charger on the chance I might play a session or two.
*Outlines of the pieces I am writing to partner with the pre-surgery portrait session in the hopes of creating an art exhibit and to use as voice over in the documentary are back row students, sitting next to the Gender Studies curriculum and LTYM.
*The grant proposal files I am going through to distribute to the Northwest International Education Association Board - on which I am the VP and the Grant Coordinator - haven't given up on me, yet.
*Living Richly and Fully - my chronic illness support group on FB - prefers the next to last row.
*LR&F is becoming great friends with my breast cancer research and blog drafts.
*And my list of free, online MIT course I want to start get the position of honor, perched triumphantly right next to me as the only learning opportunity I had taken advantage of all day, gloating over the rest...  and that only received maybe an hour of my attention.

And I know.  I am lying.

Premise A: If someone made me choose one activity to do for the rest of my life, I would choose learning (and not in a scape-goat, twist-of-words-you-learn-from-everything-you-do-so-I-learn-from-doing-nothing kind of way).  Premise B: If learning is the first and last thing I have *always* wanted to be doing every day.  Then Conclusion: I am lying.  I am not doing it.  I've had all of these options surrounding me all day, and I devoted maybe an hour to all of them combined.  Now, don't get me wrong.  I had major surgery two weeks ago tomorrow.  My left breast was "augmented," and the side we cut off now houses an expander placed underneath the pectoral muscle.  Since the surgery, I've gone into the office twice to have a total of 100 cc's of saline injected into my right lump so the expander will slowly stretch the pectoral muscles to allow them to cradle the eventual reconstruction of my right breast.  I will go in three or four more times for saline "fills," and then, when my bump is big enough, I will sit with that for three months in an effort to assure a successful reconstruction comprised of a breast implant combined with lipo-ed tissue from other areas of my body.  It would be fool-hardy to "work" from the time I get up until the time I go to bed.  I have to be rested and healthy, if I want to continue this journey and be the best version of me possible on the other end.

But I'm being ripped off.  And I'm the one doing the ripping off.  I am denying myself - consciously, for the most part - activities that I enjoy.  No, not just enjoy; these are activities I love.  Am I trying to punish myself?  Am I depressed?  Am I just damned lazy?

I could drive myself crazy trying to answer those questions.  Does it even really matter why I didn't do much of any of these treasured opportunities today?  I guess you could argue "yes," it is important.  It makes sense that knowing the root or cause of a problem takes a huge step towards fixing said problem.

But I'm also a firm believer in the first step to overcoming a problem is identifying it.  My problem is that I'm not consistently doing the things I love.  At any given time, I am sure all of the possible explanations apply.  Sometimes, I am punishing myself.  Others?  I am depressed.  There are times where I am truly not physically able to work on anything that takes any brain power, you know, what with two major surgeries, radioactive tests, and chemotherapy (to name a few) since July, it's bound to happen.  And sometimes, I am just damned lazy.

So now I've identified it AND explained it well enough.  Now, I fix it.

And there she was, surrounding me the whole time.  Since the beginning of this journey, really.  My Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss was always with me.  I didn't have to search for her.  She started doing her thing immediately.  The earliest days of this experience were filled with research and posting, research and posting, research and posting.  I had to learn about this new entity in my life - this parasite, a living thing, that had taken the opportunity grow in me.  And then I had to talk about it, to tell people what I was learning because I knew I needed help - and I knew I wanted to help anyone I could.  My Inner B@d@ss has been with me my entire life.  She has carried me through every dark day of my existence.  First, we learn.  Everything we can.  Then, we talk.  To anyone who will listen.  She is a philosopher, a biologist, a historian, an author, a child, a sociologist, an artist, an entrepreneur, a performer, a supporter, a professor, a student.

I found my Inner Breast Cancer B@d@ss.  She is a B@d@ss Scholar.

Scholar:
1. a learned or erudite person, especially one who has profound knowledge of a particular subject; one who learned and analyzes

So she is a teacher.

2. a student: pupil
3. a person, especially a child, who studies

And a student.  

4. savant

And...  a little bit crazy.

The Search is now officially ended.  Elvis has left the building.  (That one's for you, Aunt Sheila ;-).  I hear the fat lady singing.  (I REALLY don't like that phrase)  Stick a fork in it.  Roger, over...  and... out.

It's time for a new blog.


P.S.  This Search has given me FAR more than it could *ever* take away.  The one thing I *can't* say....  good riddance.    

<voice from the future whispers> "I wish you the best of luck. You're going to need it."

Look Right Through Me

Menopause - /ˈmenəˌpôz/ - noun

the ceasing of menstruation; the period in a woman's life (typically between 45 and 50 years of age) when this occurs.

Okay.  Well, that definition is pathetically simplistic.  Let's try a medical dictionary.

Definition: Menopause represents the end of menstruation.  While technically it refers to the final period, it is not an abrupt event, but a gradual process.  Menopause is not a disease that needs to be cured; it is a natural life-stage transition during which women often make decisions about "treatment" options, such as hormone replacement therapies.

Now we're getting somewhere.  That one reads more like the opening of a conversation.  Unfortunately, it's a conversation, it seems, no one is having, not with any kind of full-disclosure honesty or in-depth exploration.  Or maybe it's too complex and unique for a true conversation; I just don't know.

What I do know is that 3 months ago, one of my favorite nurses at CCNW looked at me and said, "Well, you are fully post-menopausal, so we don't need to do anything there."  Uuuuhhhhhh, WHAT?  Before chemo started, I wasn't even PRE-menopausal, and now, less than 4 months later, I'm fully POST!  What the F@CK!?!  Couldn't SOMEONE have thought to mention to me that my hormone levels were changing so drastically that I would be through menopause in record time?  Maybe there's a meditation practice I could have done to ease the symptoms.  Maybe some gentle yoga.  A pill with no harmful interactions?  SOMETHING?  I thought I was *losing* my mind.  I really, seriously thought I was going crazy and that I wasn't going to come back from it.  At least if I had known it was menopause, I could have focused on the....  temporary nature of the mood-swings and physical changes.  I figured my care team would KNOW to say something about it, but no one thought to say anything.  No one thought to mention it.  I felt so invisible that day.  So trivial.  Glossed over and unseen.

And now I'm going through it again.  Not menopause (I don't think), but the great, invisible Phantom Nipple strikes, this time.  The weight of misunderstood assumption is *so heavy.*  I completely understand why anyone in their right mind would look at breast reconstruction following malignant breast cancer as a positive, celebratory thing.  Maybe I'm not in my right mind (ha. ha. ha.) but it doesn't feel that way.  I just hurt.  Badly.  Not as bad as I did after the mastectomy, but almost.  And definitely more widespread.  This pain is temporary, though, I know that.  Who, (there's that phrase again) in their *right mind* WOULDN'T celebrate their return to looking "normal?"  Apparently, not me.  I am on my way to the full breast augmentation I have wanted for *years,* and I am not happy about it.  And I don't know why.  I'm sure I will be, eventually, but right now, in this moment, no.

There's a sense I get that many might think I am now on the road to "over;" that I am officially  on the road to "recovery" with this first surgery.  Maybe that's what's pissing me off, because I don't feel the "over" - the "recovery" - that so many seem to see.  I still have Herceptin infusions through September.  I still have many minor and at least one more major surgery between now and February of next year.  I have Tamoxifen pills (the ones that will KEEP me post-menopausal) for a minimum of 5 years, or 10 years, if the current studies say 10 years is better.  Maybe I'm pissed off because I can't seem to see this step like others do - for me, this is one of twelve thousand steps I simply never wanted to *have* to take, one of many pills I never wanted prescribed, one of many chemicals I never wanted injected, one of many surgeries I never wanted to have.  I can't seem to find the "at least" in this, yet.

And underneath it all, every time a migraine sets in, or my damaged heart starts pounding too quickly and too hard, or my vulnerable lungs show the slightest sign of ache, I will have to fight the urge to beg for more tests - just to *make sure* IT hasn't come back somewhere else.  Just to make sure I don't have to start this *hell* all over again.  I now know, intimately, how much this experience sucks.  And I can never *not know* that again.

Ignorance is bliss.  And in this, I am not blissful.

(In honor of my dearly departed cousin, Ashley Carol, age 52, who passed away on Good Friday.  Your pain is relieved, your fears are allayed, and your suffering is at an end.  God speed and take care of you, "Sis."  You've earned it.)