Limo Talk

In my quest to blog on a regular basis I struggled tonight to think of something to write. Only moments ago I was falling asleep while trying to write an email. Matter of fact I did fall asleep….I woke up with a few lines of: kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk. Obviously my finger fell asleep when I did!

Many days I feel guilty because I don’t get much accomplished in a day. Wake up at noon (or 1 or 2pm). Watch Oprah, Dr. Oz, Ellen, Dr. Phil if it’s not too trashy, sometimes The Doctors. Depends on how much time I spend on the couch before I feel so guilty that I haven’t really done anything so I get up and maybe put away the dishes in the dishwasher. I feel useless, guilty, and totally lacking ambition and thought I was the only one. Until the ride to the airport on Sunday after the Breast Fest Film Festival in Toronto.

My husband and I were sharing a car to the airport with two young women who’d got scholarships to attend the film festival. One of them asked me “What do you do with your spare time Lisa?”. I honestly said “Sleep in. Watch Oprah, Ellen and pretty much anything else on TV”. I was sitting in the middle of the back seat with each woman on either side of me and as I answered the question truthfully they both said “Me too!”. They are younger than me, have less disease than I do, and I believe they both still work. But you know I felt so good knowing I’m not the only one who seems to totally lack energy most days. It seems I just can’t get anything accomplished until after 3pm. Maybe the reason for that is because my husband will be home in a little over an hour so I figure I have to do something to make it look like I’ve been doing anything but laying on the couch watching TV and playing on the computer.

I think the reason I feel guilty is that I am always saying you should ”live each day to the fullest”. Is laying on the couch watching all the daytime talk shows living life to it’s fullest? Not in my books. When I expressed these feelings to Donna and Debbie in the back of the airport limo they told me that whatever I feel like doing  is living life to it’s fullest. It’s whatever makes me happy. Ellen DeGeneres always makes me happy. Oprah has her days, but she’s no comedian with goofy games/contests and joking around with guests and that’s what I need. Something to make me feel happy. I admit to liking the new Dr. Oz show because I’m learning a lot about the human body. Who else talks openly about POOP and answers all kinds of embarrassing questions?

The Doctors answer embarrassing questions, but Dr. Oz has a way of explaining how the human body works. Just yesterday (Nov 24) he addressed the hot topic of whether women 40-50 should get mammograms, and whether women should be doing BSE (breast self exams). A panel released this news last week and it resulted in a lot of angry women all over the world. Dr. Oz had a great demonstration of the difference between the breasts of a young woman (say 20-50) a woman in her 50’s or 60’s and then even a picture of a much older woman’s breasts. The difference in the mammogram view was stunning. It is very difficult to see suspicious areas in dense breasts that younger women tend to have with a mammogram, but they DO catch things. Ultrasound and breast MRI offer much better views.  BSE saves so many women’s lives. Dr. Oz showed a graph depicting how the death rate from breast cancer has fallen over the last 20 years. I think it’s fallen because of better testing methods, better medications, and the main reason I think it’s fallen is because of BSE! Women feel or notice something different in their breast, hence finding it early and getting treatment long before the cancer is too widespread to save their lives. Please do your breast self exam (the week AFTER your period…your breasts are different at “that time of the month”), and discuss mammography with your family physician when you have your annual check-up. Have your doctor do a breast exam, and be sure to get your Pap Test too. It’s a simple test that can find pre-cancerous cells which can be treated before they develop into cervical cancer. A simple laser procedure is much better than chemo don’t you think? Get your Pap test!!!

So, is laying around all day watching TV living life to it’s fullest? I still don’t think so and I don’t know that I will ever stop feeling guilty about that. But sitting in the back of the car with those other two young women made me realize that I’m not the only one who’s doing it…and enjoying it! That’s one thing about cancer. When you’re going through chemo and radiation you spend a lot of time on the couch or in bed and you watch a LOT of TV. You should have heard the conversation the three of us were having about the reality shows we’ve found ourselves watching! I thought I was the only one who seems to watch almost anything that’s reality based TV. I found myself answering questions about what happened last week on Survivor. You’d think we all knew these people intimately by the way we were talking about them and knew their first names! That limo driver must have wondered what the hell kind of young women he had in his car My husband sat in the front and likely was fairly enlightened by the conversation, as I was. I’m not the only one who watches a lot of TV!! Do you know how good that makes me feel? What a silly thing to find common ground on, but we did,  and just knowing that someone else spends a lot of time with the remote in their hand made me feel better about the days I spend doing just that. Even when I’m OFF the couch I have the TV on and watch it while I do housework, which by the way isn’t that often.

 Right now I’ve got a layer of dust on everything that is so disgusting. I’ve written my name in the dust on the bedroom dresser and it’s already filled in with new dust! I don’t do much housework during the summer because I spend so much time out in my garden. Summer is long gone but I still haven’t got in the groove of trying to keep the house spotless. It’s not one of my favorite activities. I used to hate it when I lived at home and it was one of my weekly chores. I used to write in the dust on the piano (hmmm I see a pattern here!) and it would always be something goofy like “Lisa was here. 1200 B.C.” I was trying to make that dust look really old, when in reality it had only been a week since I’d done it. When you live on Railway Avenue with the trains and grain trucks and other small town traffic driving by all week the house gets pretty dusty!! I’m not on Railway anymore, but sometimes I wonder if I’m having a childhood flashback. Where the H does all this dust come from??! Likely from my kitchen floor….which has a mighty heavy covering of it too!

A breast cancer friend stopped by today and as I was sitting on the steps talking to her I noticed the dust on the bottom of the bannister area going down the stairs. I apologized for the dust and started to stretch my feet out to “dust” it off with my socks. My friend said “You only see it when the sun shines in!”. When the sun shines into my house the cat is curled up in a ball loving every minute of it, and I can see the heavy layer of dust everywhere. It’s on my list of things to do this week. Dust, dust, and dust some more. Dust away the guilt. Why feel guilty over doing nothing? I’m 44 years old and I can damn well do whatever I please with my day! If that happens to be laying on the couch watching TV then so be it. Who’s gonna stop me?

I wonder though if I’d be making an effort to do the dusting this week if my parents weren’t coming to stay this weekend? Oh there’s nothing like company coming to get my butt in gear to clean the house  It will be close to spotless by the weekend and maybe I can do a better job at trying to keep it that way for the remainder of the winter. A girl with cancer can always dream….