It's My Birthdaaaaaaay!

It's my birthday month, my birthday month.... tra la la la la, it's my birthday month....

This is the song I sing to myself and my poor family every year. I don't get just one day or one week to celebrate the fabulous day I was born, I get a whole month. Dammit.

I turned 37 today. Last weekend we had our annual BBQ extravaganza with lots of people, food, drinks and fun and togetherness and that was the party. This weekend is about relaxing and feels very nice.

I am so grateful to be having another birthday. I don't mean to sound morbid or make anyone uncomfortable because I know my cheering section is full of "what are you saying? you are going to have a lot more birthdays" and yes, I would agree with you. I'm not disputing that. But something has to be said about just pausing and really taking it all in.

I was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer at the age of 33. Growing up, hearing about that would have been followed by a death sentence. At no time has my doctor given me any projections or evaulations of time in my prognosis. She insists that I am not a statistic and stage IV is now considered a chronic disease rather than a terminal one. I am happy to fully support her statement and be literally living proof of it.

But there are still women dying all the time of stage IV breast cancer. So will I or won't I? Who the hell knows? I just take one day at a time and enjoy the shit out of my life and those around me. Isn't that what we are all supposed to do? I just love my life and can't worry about when it's going to happen. I continue to meet stage IV survivors that are 5 years out, 10 years out and every once in awhile you hear about many more than 10 years out. If I'm going to think I might die like other women in 1 or 2 years, it would be so unfair not to stretch the fantasy to include the possibility of being like the women who are 10 years out. So I try to keep my mind in the place of possibilities. And in the present.

On today's birth anniversary, I reflect on surviving for 4 years after diagnosis. That is just simply awesome. Especially because I have had metastatic disease in every possible place it can travel: brain, liver, lungs, bones and soft tissue. And here I am. Holy shit. Thank you God for letting me enjoy myself and my family and friends and for being able to express this gratitude to them through this blog. I hope they all know that I could not make it through one day of treatment without them.

Let's recap some recent miracles. My brain is stable and the spots they were watching are actually getting smaller. Last week we saw the doctor and she gave me a graph of my tumor markers over the last year. The numbers are dropping SIGNIFICANTLY now -you should see that damn graph. It peaks in January at some horrid number like 1500 and takes a straight drop down to somewhere around 100/150. Holy shit again. The doctor, nurses and I are doing crazy random happy dances all the time now. We are very encouraged that the current chemo is doing it's job. Yay Carboplatin/Avastin/Tykerb/Herceptin/Zometa. Thrice I say holy shit. If it keeps working and I tolerate it well, I could be on it for many months or even many years... all the while hoping for the next big thing to be discovered. That is what treatment is like for me. And it's all good. Very good. Hopefully I'll pull it together and scan in the graph so you can see it and post it here. Then you can see the joy of all the time the medicine is buying me and all of the blessings I get to experience every single day. If you are reading this, you are definitely one of my miracles, thank you.

As grateful as I am to be having this birthday, I wish I could say that the declaration of the "birthday month" was something that came after the cancer diagnosis and that I've earned it after having to take shitty chemo and go through all this inconvenience and fatigue and cancer bullshit. But alas, I subjected everyone to my birthday month well before cancer because I'm really at my core a selfish little bitch and everything is about me. I'm not proud. I am so grateful for this chance to be myself. It's my birthday month, my birthday month. Tra la la la la, my birthday month!

Muchos smoochos!

Laura