It's Not All About The Hair

I’ve been a bit distracted from my hair this week, what with surgery and all – including a trip to the dentist for a couple fillings, which was rough enough to put me into tears. I know that using a rubber dam is best practice, but I really, really hate it.

This week, I don’t have anything inspirational in my head. My thoughts are focused on my dear friend and her family because her little boy has ITP, aka “idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura.” That is a very fancy way of saying that his body is eating up his platelets, which are the cells in our blood that play a key role in clotting. And “idiopathic” means we don’t really know why this is happening… the doctors believe it’s an autoimmune response.

His case is unusual because he had this last year, and it quickly resolved with treatment. I don’t think anyone thought it would come back, but about a week ago it did. Usually, it resolves or becomes chronic.

He had the same treatment as last year, but now, just a week later, his platelets are back at rock bottom. The “purpura” part of the name, the P in ITP, is how you can tell the platelets are low: there is pinpoint purple bruising, plus bleeding from membranes in the mouth and elsewhere. The risk with low platelets is that your body will bleed through microscopic openings in the blood vessels – which happens to all of us every day, but our platelets stop those mini bleeds quickly. Without platelets, it is difficult for the body to stop the bleeding.

There are several treatment options, but of course my frequent prayer is for healing right now, just like last time. I’m scared and sad for my friends, who have to watch their little boy go through this, all while balancing the rest of life’s demands. Being a by-stander is tough – there’s really nothing I can do to make it any better. So I pray every time I think of them, and I am thankful that right now all I’m doing is recovering from surgery and looking for a job, so I am pretty much fully available to hang out with their older kids if needed.

As a side note, this is a tough stage of life for my little friend to be getting lots of needle pokes and bleeding. He just turned five and, developmentally, kids that age have a very black and white view of cause and effect. They may think they did something to cause their illness, or they may decide the IV tube is causing pain because it’s there when they’re feeling pain. This age group also sees any skin break as a threat to their body’s integrity, whether it’s a scrape from falling down, or a needle poke to draw blood. That explains the obsession with band-aids at this age: they think band-aids prevent them from falling apart (as an adult, doesn’t that sound like a great solution to tough times? Hand me a Hello Kitty band-aid and everything will be OK). Needless to say, all the pokes my little friend gets for diagnosis and treatment add up to a traumatic experience.

Please join me this week in praying for peace and healing for my friends. Thank you so much!

Infomercials

I’m sprouting eyelashes and eyebrows, and it’s time to shave my legs! Exciting stuff going on here. :) If you look closely, the top of my head has a soft edge – that’s genuine hair, folks! Sticking straight up, too. Mike thinks it’s mostly white, but I’m in denial about that. After all, last summer it looked really light, but it was dark when it fell out, so I’m hoping more quantity will show more color.

While we were on vacation, I have to confess that we did something we’ve never done before: ordered something from an infomercial! Eek!

We were lounging at our rental condo in Palm Springs (much chicer, but less comfy than the San Diego place), and we got sucked into an infomercial for ceramic pans. As a recovering marketing professional, I’d love to know the science behind these programs. I’m sure there are hours of focus groups and internal debates about which segments to feature over and over – and over. They’re ridiculous and hokey, yet it’s easy to be transfixed, even when they move into a section you’ve already seen.

In our defense, our pans at home are pretty sad – cheapies we got at Ikea several years ago. So we decided to spend $19.99 on a new pan. Of course, you get a second one free if you call RIGHT NOW. So we called.

Word of advice – if you fall victim to infomercial hypnosis, go online and order it there. Because if you call, it’s not going to be quick.

Actually, the marketing psychology behind the phone call has got to be pretty interesting. It was ALL automated! Even giving your phone, address, and credit card. Feels a little sketchy, too. I never once talked to a real person, which is brilliant strategy on the company’s part, because questions and attitude are not allowed. For example, they told me I could have a second pan for $6.99. My answer (“Um… but the commercial says I get the second pan for free…”) just led back to a repeat of the question. It’s $6.99, so I decided not to argue with the computer. I’m sure they make their fortune $6.99 at a time.

Once we got the second pan straightened out, there was another offer. And then another. And then another. If you say no, the computer pitches each offer to you two more times. And you can’t, politely or otherwise, interrupt the computer to say you really did mean NO the first time.

And you can’t hang up, because they haven’t confirmed your order yet.

After 30 minutes, we finally got off the phone, without a clear understanding of what we were getting. Of course, you can always go through the hassle of returning everything, so it’s “perfectly” safe. The pans were on our doorstep before we got home, in spite of the 3-6 week shipping promise. Talk about under promise, over deliver!

We haven’t used the pans yet. The garbage disposal went out when we got home, so our sink was out of commission for a few days, and I didn’t want to wash the pans in a small bathroom sink. But they’re pretty and look sturdy.

While I was waiting to get my sink back, I had lots of appointments in preparation for surgery this week. These appointments felt a lot like the infomercial ordering process: you think you’re done, but there’s a lot more around the corner. Originally, it was supposed to just be a mammogram. But I was due for an MRI, so I asked if I should do that instead. To which my doctor replied, “We should do both!” Whining did not change her mind (she’s tiny but tough). I did both on the same day (so efficient!). Then I got called back for more/better MRI images. Of course, there was something there they wanted to look at with ultrasound. The conclusion from the ultrasound was that, most likely, these lymph nodes had just moved as a result of my last surgery. But to be super sure, I could have a PET scan. Really?! These poor nodes have been the object of much poking and prodding over the last year, all revealing nothing of concern. So if one of my surgeons or my oncologist read the report and call me to do a PET scan tomorrow, fine, but I’m definitely not asking the question since I’m quite certain that would be a huge waste of time and resources. At least I’m more certain about what’s going on than I was about the infomercial order!

 My sink is back in play now, so I’d better go and wash those pretty pans before I go in for surgery. Happy week to all of you!

Your Hair is Getting So LONG!

This is what Mike has been saying all week. :) Can you see anything yet? It’s kind of hard to capture in a photo, but my hair, albeit very thin, really is noticeably longer every day. And I have stubbly eyelashes! No brows yet – except for one brow hair that grew ½” long overnight. You’ve had those weird hairs that appear out of nowhere, right? They just have to go, even if you’re cheering on every little millimeter of growth.

So today Mike and I are sitting in the Cancer Survivor’s Park in Palm Springs. There was one in San Diego, too, but we didn’t stop. We’re on a high perch – it’s not really a bench, but the only bench in the park was occupied by someone taking an early morning nap… The park is a very neat idea, and, after months of physically fighting cancer, it’s nice to take a moment and celebrate surviving.

I think I shared that within a week of finishing chemotherapy, I started wondering about recurrence. Wondering, worrying… so I bought a book. It talks about living in cancer’s shadow and it’s written by a Christian woman, so the content and values were exactly what I needed. By the way, I think she has the coolest job in the world – she gets paid to provide moral support to cancer patients! Maybe someday.

The book was an enormous help. It has lots of stories of how real people deal with surviving cancer. And she says “survival,” according to the American Cancer Society or some other high profile, trustworthy source, applies to anyone who is alive after a cancer diagnosis, whether it’s five days, five years, or fifty years. I like that definition a lot, because I sure don’t want to wait five years to say I’ve survived!

The story that helped me the most was about a gentleman with a terminal diagnosis. He wasn’t supposed to live long, but, before he knew he couldn’t be cured, he was planning on campaigning for an office. He decided to run in spite of his diagnosis. He was elected, and he survived many years after that. The story reminded me of my cancer treatment strategy (I called it Cancer Defiance): I planned to continue with life as planned. School and my teens at church would be my priorities, and I’d include whatever else I could, and only scale back if I needed to. This gentleman reminded me that I should have the same strategy for life after cancer. I’m going to concentrate on life, and living it more fully, based on what I’ve learned through cancer, and trust God with the rest. He knows if and when my cancer will return, and, if it does, He will give me the strength to deal with it – just like He gave me what I needed to get through all the past difficulties in my life.

Tomorrow we head back home: back to real life, including surgery and recovery. But first, we’ll spend a couple days with some of our favorite Canadians, making chili and watching football. Maybe this will finally be the year I win the pool!

Grace and peace to all of you.