THIS IS ME

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For the last 8 months, since 7 August 2017 when I heard the words, ‘You have cancer,’ I have been dealing with a journey I never, and I mean NEVER, thought I would take.  As many of you know, it has been an incredibly difficult time.  There is light at the end of the tunnel though.  I am currently undergoing radiation as an additional preventative measure to (hopefully) keep any reoccurrence at bay.  I’ve done 5 weeks and have 2 more to go.  Yea!

None of this has been fun and it is my deepest wish that no one reading this will ever suffer through anything remotely similar.  Bottom line is, it sucks!  Cancer sucks!  There’s no other way of putting it.  And silly though it might be to a lot of people, losing my hair was HUGE for me.  As much as my hair has driven me crazy over a lifetime, not having it was worse.  My last round of chemotherapy was 12 December 2017, so, in theory, my hair has been growing back since then.  Let’s just say that all the other hair on my body has returned (one ‘benefit’ of losing it all is no shaving) and the hair on my head is taking its sweet time returning.  I am definitely growing a rug up there.  It’s thick and super soft. My oncologist, who happens to be half black, says it is coming in straight!  That’s what I am hoping for.

A couple weeks ago my therapist gave me an assignment…to stop covering my head.  She actually has been trying to get me to lose the hats and bandanas for even longer than that, but I just couldn’t do it.  Then last week after leaving the bandana I was wearing with her so that I would have nothing to put on my head when I stopped at the drugstore and grocery store on my way home, I thought, this isn’t so bad.  Nobody laughed at my hair, of lack thereof, at least not as far as I could tell.  Then the following morning the 21-Day Meditation series I was doing with Deepak Chopra and Oprah Winfrey resonated with me in a way that nothing else had.  It was titled “Taking Back Your Power!”

It suddenly occurred to me that I had lost my power and I realized that Beth (my therapist) was right.  I could come out of the closet (so to speak) and show other women that it is possible to survive and to still be beautiful (honestly, I am still working on this) even without hair.  That day when I went to my radiation appointment, I got nothing but compliments and praise for going au natural.  And the day after that, I was crossing a street in Ventura and a woman opened her window and yelled out, “I love your hair!”  Okay, so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all to be close to bald.  I really am not bald anymore, I just have super short hair.

So this is me now:

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And while it looks like my hair is totally white, that’s just around my face.  It actually starting growing in dark.  My friend Lisa Michelle mentioned that it’s interesting that my baby-black hair has come back.  I was born with a head full of black hair:

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This is me at 3 months.  When I was a little older it started growing in blonde.  I never lost the original hair, it just grew in blonde.  This is what it looked like before I was completely blonde:

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Now I’m ever hopeful that at some point the dark hair will stop and it will begin growing in blonde just like when I was a baby!

Will I keep my hair short?  Probably not because even though I almost always wear my hair up, I like having enough length that I can put it on top of my head and forget about it.  So although this is me now, it’s not what I consider the ‘real’ me.  It is much easier to take care of…oh, yeah, I don’t have to do a single thing.  It’s even too short to comb.  I am also counting on the warmer weather to speed up the growth process.

 

 

ULTIMATELY CHANGING BAD FOR GOOD

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Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of my sexual assault.

And while I still feel the need to acknowledge it, I can say in all honesty that 24 September 2011 is no longer the worst day of my life.  Unfortunately that title now goes to 7 August 2017.  That is the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  Neither of these events are things it ever occurred to me that I would have to deal with in my life.  Ever! And yet both have found their way into my experience.  The really weird thing is there are so many similarities between the two: neither were expected; I was/am fighting for my life; my body was/is in total shock; I had to/I have to now learn a new way to be, figure out a new ‘normal.’  Also, my startle response, which has never gone completely away, is back with a vengeance.  All I can think is, how did I not learn these lessons after my attack and why do I have to go through it all again, albeit from a completely different event?

What I really would like to do now, though, is change my mindset around my current situation.  To me, this means thinking about it in completely different terms.  For example, I am refraining from calling the chemotherapy that is running through my body as poison.  Instead, I think of it as the sweet elixir of life that is shrinking my tumor away to nothing.  Instead of lamenting that I cannot walk as far or play tennis for as long, I am doing my best to enjoy being able to rest during this time.  I know when it is all over, my strength and stamina will return.  I’ve always been more of a go-go-go-all-the-time kind of person, so this is simply as opportunity to relax and slow down.  Instead of wondering what I did wrong or what I may have done to deserve this, I am learning to accept that I did nothing wrong nor did I do anything to deserve this, it just happens and, unfortunately, it happens to millions of people.  All the care that I’ve taken up to this point most likely has saved me from far worse diseases, and will play a huge role in my beating and defeating the cancer I do have.

I am very fortunate.  I have a loving, supportive husband. I have great doctors and nurses and all kinds of support from family and friends.  I have people sending prayers and positive, healing energy to me from all around the world (thanks Facebook!)  So as much as I hate what I am going through, as hard as it has been on my body and will most likely continue to be, I am actually very, very lucky.

IT IS A BIG DEAL TO ME

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I understand that in the larger scheme of things losing one’s hair is a very small thing.  But guess what?  Being told by well-meaning people that I ‘just need to get over it,’ that ‘it will grow back,’ that I should ‘just embrace my bald head;’ none of these are helpful to me right now.  It is disrespectful and even hurtful.  That may have been your experience, but, as of right now, it isn’t mine.  I am sad, and I cannot even cry about it, as I am still in shock and my tears are still stuck in my body.  I think the hardest thing  is now I actually look sick.  While I still had my hair, I may have been sick, but I still looked relatively normal.  Now, not so much.

So tomorrow morning I am going back to the salon to get my head shaved.

HAIR TODAY, GONE TOMORROW???

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I have consistently bitched and moaned about my hair for as long as I remember.  Unbelievably, I was actually born with straight, smooth hair.   After puberty, my hair came in as bush head.  This is not normal.  The texture of my hair completely changed, suddenly having a rough cuticle, thus beginning the love-hate (mostly hate) relationship I’ve had ever since.

When I was 12 and 13 years old, I would wash my hair and put it in a ponytail at the base of my neck, and then proceed to put rubber bands all the way down the hair in an effort to make it straight.  Then I’d put bobby pins all along my hair-line for the same reason.  This sort of worked, but both the booby pins and the rubber bands would leave marks, and my hair never completely dried because it was so thick.  I also tried the orange juice can rollers.  Not at all comfortable to sleep on.  And by the time I was 14 years old, I had joined the swim team and was diving every day, so after that my hair was pretty much a chlorine mess all the time.

Fast-forward to 2001 when I moved to West Hollywood and had my hair flat-ironed for the first time.  Wow!  What a huge difference that made.  After my hairdresser finished and I felt how smooth my hair was and how shiny, neither of which I had since puberty, I really wondered if she had given me a hair transplant without me realizing.  Seriously, my hair felt so good.  It was then that I finally truly understood what having hair with a rough cuticle meant.  It would be several more years before I got my own flatiron and could make my hair magically smooth without paying gobs of money for someone else to do it.

All through the early 2000’s I kept my hair relatively short–I’d get it cut to right above my shoulders, let grow for a year and then cut it again to the same above my shoulders length.  Somewhere around 2010, I decided to just let it grow.  I mean, why not?  I had nothing better to do, and it really is easier to have it longer since all I do is put it on top of my head because it bugs me.  And while it has not been quite as long in the last couple of years, it is still longer than it is shorter.  Basically, I am super lazy when it comes to my hair.  Now, though, the prospect of losing it all is really doing a number on me.  If I chose to shave my head, that would be one thing; I did not choose this, it is simply coming out because of the chemotherapy.

Last Thursday, I got my hair cut.  My intention was that it be cut to chin length.  When I got to the salon and my hairdresser took out my pony tail holder, it still wasn’t apparent how bad things really were.  So his assistant attempted to wash it.  I told her that I always put conditioner on my hair first, before shampoo, because it helps detangle it.  And I use if after, as well.  She did not listen, although I am not sure it really would have made a difference at this point.  When I got back in Patrick’s chair, I thought he was gong to cry.  My hair had literally turned into dreadlocks, and there was nothing to do but cut it all off.  Luckily, that did not mean shaving my head, it just meant I was not going to be walking out of there with the hair cut I thought I’d be getting.  I did not take into account just how far along in the losing-all-my-hair-process I really was.  He did a really nice job (see picture below) with the only mistake he made being he used hair spray on it.  After a while it felt like helmet hair and I had to wash it out.

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Big mistake on my part.  Again, once water hit my hair, even though it was considerably shorter, I suddenly had dreadlocks.  This time I simply could not cut off the 3 big gobs of hair.  Instead, I painstakingly sprayed each one with leave in conditioner and slowly, but ever so slowly, used a comb to untangle the mess.  It took about half an hour and this is what I combed out:

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Half a sink full of my hair.  If I did not have as much hair as I do, I for sure would already be bald.  Unbelievably, today, Sunday, I still have hair, and while it doesn’t look great, it also does not look like I’m about to be bald as a cue ball.

Look, I understand it’s just hair and that it will grow back.  This is still extremely difficult, even as my hair drives me crazy, though.  I’ve been shopping for a wig.  Even found a couple that aren’t horrible, but they look like wigs.

As I have my second round of chemo on Tuesday, I don’t expect that I’ll have what’s left of my hair much longer, which means I am going to have to make a decision sooner rather than later about my hair situation.  What I really want is for it not to fall out at all.  Clearly, though, that ship has sailed.

 

NEVER A DULL MOMENT IN MY LIFE

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Is this a good thing?  Well, at times it can be very exciting.  At others, not so much.  It seems I barely get through one thing and another rears its not-so-pretty head.  I do believe that everything happens for a reason, and that whatever it is, it moves us along our path.  Take my sexual assault–I knew right from the moment it happened that it would teach me many things, that it was, in fact, necessary to get me to the next phase of my life.  And as difficult as it was, I was okay with it.  Truth be told, though I am 98% healed from that whole ordeal, I still have certain triggers that set me off and either make me cry or really piss me off.  I am beginning to realize this may be a life-long thing, that I will never be 100% over it.  This, too, is okay.

For what is happening now in my life, however, I am definitely not seeing the big picture yet.  I know I am still in shock, and it still does not seem real.  Two weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  This is something I never, ever, ever thought would happen in my life.  I have no family history of any type of cancer.  I am super active and have been my entire life; I mostly eat very cleanly, though I definitely have a serious sugar addiction, which I fight sometimes more successfully than others.  Still, overall, as my wonderful husband put it the other day, “You look too beautiful and too healthy to be sick.”

Currently I am being biopsied and ultrasounded and MRId and PET scanned and poked and prodded to make sure I am, in fact, as healthy as I look.  The type of breast cancer I have is very rare; I am triple positive, which as I understand it means that estrogen, progesterone and a hormone called Her2 are over-expressing and have caused a tumor to form.  As of right now, I begin chemo on Tuesday.

I have told very few people of my diagnosis, until this very moment, that is.  I am still getting used to it and talking about it makes it more real, which I don’t want it to be.  My reason for sharing this with all of you is I am asking for your prayers.  I do know that prayer is powerful and I need all the help I can get.  Thank you in advance.

So begins another journey I do not wish to be on.

OUT, BUT THANKFULLY, NOT ON THE STREET

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The day I’ve been dreading since DCD was sentenced to prison on 25 June 2012 has arrived.  I knew it would eventually get here, and have known since 21 June that the date he would be released was today,  11 August 2017.

While I was on vacation in Zion in July, I received a call from a probation officer with further details of DCD’s release.  Although he is getting out, he is not being released to the ‘street’ as the officer told me.  He is being sent to the state mental hospital in Atascadero, a city in San Luis Obispo County, half-way between SanFrancisco and Los Angeles.  The facility is for men only and has approximately 1184 beds.  The largest group of patients, 48%, are considered Mentally Disordered Offenders (Penal Code 2962/2971.)  According to the hospitals web site, “Parolees who committed one of a specified list of crimes and who were treated for a severe mental disorder connected to their original crime can be committed to a state hospital as a condition of parole for a period not to exceed the length of their parole term.  If the person still requires treatment at the end of their parole term, they can be civilly committed under P.C. 2972 if it is determined that they are a substantial danger to themselves or others. These commitments last for one year and may be renewed annually by the court.”

I am hopeful that he will receive the help he needs.  I also know that he has to want to be helped, and I am afraid that is not the case.  All the help he had prior to my attack did nothing to stop his escalating behavior.  I am just very fortunate that my guardian angel came along and saved me before he was able to follow through with his intention to rape me.

I was also told that once he is out of the hospital, if he is released into the county that I am living in at that time, I have the option of having him removed to another county.  I guess that gives me a small degree of comfort.  As I’ve said before, though, I do not believe he will come after me.  That has never been, nor is it now, my fear.  At the same time, however remote the chance, I do not wish to run into him on the street.  Ever.

As I said at the end of my last post, I do pray for him and truly hope that no one else ever has to experience what I did on  September 24, 2011.

 

 

NOT GOOD NEWS

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I received a letter in the mail today from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.  Inside in big, fat, black letters it said —-

NOTICE OF RELEASE – CONFIDENTIAL

This notice is provided at your request.  The inmate is scheduled for release.

The inmate will be:

Released to parole under CDCR supervision.

The inmate is required to register pursuant to:

Penal Code Section 290 – Sex

 

It also has other information about his name, prison number, scheduled release date and which county he will be released into.  What the letter does not tell me is how long his parole lasts.  Let’s just say I am happy I am not longer in the same county.  And it is not so much that I am afraid of him or that I think he’ll come after me.  No, it’s more I simply do not like the idea of him being anywhere near me.  Do I think he has been rehabilitated?  That would be a resounding NO.  Given the violence of my attack, his lack of remorse at the sentencing and the fact that he will have spent almost 62 months in prison, I seriously doubt he will be anything but angry.

I do pray for him and truly hope that no one else ever has to experience what I did on  September 24, 2011.

 

CHANGE IS HARD

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I knew there were lots of changes on the way.  That is, after all, why I chose change for my word this year.  What has become extremely clear to me in the last month and a half since we left Coronado, is change is flipping hard.  I mean really difficult.  It’s not like I haven’t had lots of changes in life before now.  I have, and some of them were excruciatingly hard to come to terms with.  This is different though.  We actually chose to move to Ventura.  We came 5 or 6 times, starting last December, and we thought we liked it here.  It seemed like a nice community, the beach is right there and, most importantly, it is affordable.  By affordable, I mean that for a coastal town in Southern California, the housing prices are not so bad.  It’s all relative, of course.  It is still stinking expensive if compared to other parts of the country.

We arrived to our furnished rental house on 12 May.  We had been sort of ‘homeless’ since 30 March when the movers came and took all our belongings to my brother-in-law’s house for storage.  We stayed next door at our neighbor’s back guest house for 3 nights, went to Ventura for one day/night to meet with the homeowners of the house we are renting for 5 months and also buy a king mattress to be delivered on 12 May, then to Las Vegas for 4 nights (3 in a hotel, 1 at my sister’s,) back to San Diego for 2 nights at my cousin’s in Rancho Bernardo and finally ended at the Crown Inn on Coronado for the last 3 nights of our having-no-place-to-call-our-own time.  It wasn’t really that bad, but once we finally got to ‘our’ new house, we were so happy we would be staying put for a while. It’s the moving around every few days that got to me/us.

What has also become clear to me since getting to Ventura is we accidentally rented a Hobbit house!  I am not kidding.  The house itself is about 900 square feet, which is only about 100 square feet smaller than the house on Coronado.  The problem is the layout of the rooms.  Again, not horrible, it just takes time to get used to it.  (For me, apparently, a lot of time.)  No, what makes it a Hobbit house is that everything is so small.  For instance, we do have a washer and dryer in the basement.  For those of you who do not live in California, basements are not common.  This house is on a hill, which allows for a basement.  Of sorts.

That pretty blue door is the door to the basement.  It’s also where we keep our bicycles, and you can be sure, lifting the bikes up and over the wall is a total pain.  One of the first days here I almost gave myself a concussion because I did not duck enough to get through the doorway.  The height of the ceiling once in the door is about six feet!  And the crossbeam even has a padded wrap and the homeowner was kind enough to write BAM! on it, just as a reminder.  While I am able to stand up straight on either side of that beam, my husband being 6’4″ cannot.  Needless to say, it is my job to do the laundry.

Everything is just on a much smaller scale in the house.  The bathtub is teeny, not that I fit in most tubs anyway at 5’10”.  Even the door jambs are quite small, and I seem to regularly bang my shoulders when I walk through.  We sometimes wonder how we missed these things when we originally looked at the house back in February.  I think at that point we were just happy to have found a short-term rental house.

And now we are not really liking Ventura.  It is hard to figure out why.  It is so different from Coronado, and we (especially me, having been there for 15 years) are really spoiled from living there.  I could walk everywhere on the island; here, not so much.  Sure, I can go for walks, but I want to be able to walk to the grocery store, and here it just isn’t a possibility.  It is so much busier, too.  Island life truly was more relaxed and laid-back.  It could be that it will just take time to get used to my new surroundings.  Or I may never feel comfortable here.  Only time will tell.

A FINE LINE BETWEEN PURSUIT AND HARASSMENT

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The following is my husband’s take, his view on what happened to me the other morning:

 

There’s a fine line between pursuit and harassment, a lesson every young man needs to learn.

My wife came home in tears today. She was out of breath, sweating, and very angry. During her routine morning walk, a man had followed her and would not leave her alone.

It all began with a simple “good morning”. That’s where it began and should have ended. A polite, impersonal greeting between two strangers. But to this particular man it was an invitation. Never mind that she never said another word to him. Never mind that she completely ignored him, shut him down cold. Never mind that he was scaring her. He followed her anyway, talking all the time, flapping his gums. Perhaps he was trying to impress her. It doesn’t matter. She wanted nothing to do with him, didn’t even hear what he was saying because she was listening to music on her iPhone.

However, she was very aware of his presence. Deciding not to say anything, knowing that if she told him to go away or get lost, it might only encourage him, she simply walked away from him. And he followed. Finally, after some time had passed, she darted around a corner, ran down a side street, cut up another street and lost him.

At last she felt safe to come home; she did not want him to know where she lived. And then she told me what happened in a voice shaking with anger, fear and outrage.

What makes it worse, of course, is that she has been sexually assaulted before. And to a lesser degree, we had recently moved to a new city. Now she was afraid to walk along the beach, because he might be there. And she was angry that her freedom was being taken away from her by some clueless man.

Before I was married, before I became a father to my daughter, before I came to know and understand women, I was one of those clueless young men. If a pretty woman smiled at me or said hello, I assumed it meant she also liked me. Sometimes I tried to talk to her, sometimes I watched her from across the room or bar. And one time I followed her, because I wanted to be near her. Because I thought she was leading me somewhere. She wasn’t of course, and now I realize I frightened her on that day some 30 years ago.

Just as my wife was frightened today.

If I could give young men some advice, it would be this. Just because she says hello, it doesn’t mean she wants to talk. Just because she says hello, it doesn’t mean she likes you. Just because she says hello, it doesn’t mean she wants to sleep with you. That is all fantasy on your part. The reality is this. Hello means hello, nothing more or less. So don’t pursue her, don’t follow her, because it’s the wrong thing to do. Because you’re invading her privacy. And because there’s a fine line between pursuit and harassment.

NOT AT ALL RIGHT

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Yes, it has been a long time, over 5 months since my last post.  With all the changes taking place in my life, I simply did not take the time to write.  More on that later.  Right now, though, I need to vent about an incident that just occurred.

As many of you already know, my husband and I have moved away from Coronado, up the California coast to Ventura.  We are still in the process of doing our best to settle in.  That is also a story for another time.  This morning, though, I was taking my walk.  It was not even early because it was so cold last night, I had to wait until it warmed up a bit before leaving the house.  Not that the house is warm!  Anyway, I was walking one of my longer routes that takes me down Main Street and out to the bike path along the Ventura River Estuary and to the path along the ocean.  As has always been my habit, when I see someone passing me from the opposite direction I say, “Good morning.”  I think it is simply a polite thing to do.  I am not looking to engage you in conversation.  I am only acknowledging that I see you and that it is morning.  After I made the turn onto the beach path, I said ‘good morning’ to a guy on a bicycle.  He then proceeded to start yakking at me.  I did not slow down or respond to him and I have no idea what he even said, nor did I care.  Little did I know that he followed me.  Didn’t know it until I went to cross the street to go up and over the 101.  I wasn’t scared, but I was pissed.

He then continued to follow me at a distance.  I did not turn around because I didn’t want him to know that I knew he was back there.  After a few blocks I was able to look back when I crossed another street.  My main concern was that he not know where I live, so I started zig zagging on blocks.  I ran when he was unable to see me to put even more space between us.  I eventually wound my way around to my house and, again, made sure he was not able to see where I live before crossing the street and going up the driveway.

I came in the house and told my husband what had happened.  And now I’m telling all of you.  My questions are:  Which part of I-am-completely-ignoring-you-and-anything-you- have-to-say-to-me do you not understand?  Why do you think it is okay to follow someone who has clearly NOT engaged with you in any way other than to be polite and say good morning?  What gives men (I know this is a huge generalization here, but my experience has been it is men and not women) the ‘right’ to harass someone who is clearly not interested?  Do I have to be a bitch in order to get my intent across?  Now, given my history, this is an even bigger deal than it might otherwise be.

Part of the reason we left Coronado was that I continue to not feel completely safe.  I do understand that it wasn’t Coronado who attacked me, and I was able to go back to loving living there again.  And yet, there is still a part of me that was hoping a new place might, just might, allow me to feel safe like I did pre-sexual assault.

I am not saying that the guy this morning was anything other than a normal person, BUT I wanted nothing to do with him and he was ignoring this.  Is it kinder to tell someone to ‘fuck off and leave me alone?’  Okay, maybe not in those words, but why should I have to specifically spell it out?  I have been accused of being a stuck-up snob because I don’t speak to people, and yet when I do, I am followed.  I have also been told that I seem to have a shield around me and a look on my face when I am walking that says, ‘don’t fuck with me.’  Most of the time this works at keeping unwanted attention away, not always though.

So, is my only recourse to not speak to anyone ever when I am out walking?  Is it okay to say good morning to women but not men?  I seem ‘damned if I do, damned if I don’t’ in this situation.