Beauty in the Mess

Well, it’s 6 months to the day since my surgery!

As you all know, I’m doing GREAT. This extended healing time – which I’ve only been able to afford because of YOU – has included lots of visits with loved ones, travel to faraway lands, weekly therapies, and many underwater miles.

 

It’s been just what I needed. Thank you.

Meanwhile, Aly and Samantha Sowers have been plotting our upcoming weekend in Austin, complete with food trucks (for breakfast tacos *and* housemade pasta), live music, a cool dip in Barton Springs, and, of course, the Komen walk on Sunday, September 30. If you’ll be joining in the fun, please RSVP (below) ASAP – we’ll need counts for some activities.

1. Which weekend activities are you in for? Let us know here!

2. If you’re walking, don’t forget to sign up here! Just click Register, then Join A Team. We’re “Peachy’s Peregrinas.”

3. For out-of-towners, rooms have been blocked out at Liz Lambert’s Austin Motel.

Wahoo! I’m really looking forward to this. XO

Peachy

I could write a Fuck You Cancer note too, but I promise it would be much shorter than my Thank You Cancer note. So here goes.

THANK YOU CANCER:

For reminding me that our most primal human instinct really is to rush in, lift up, help out. To create community.

For bringing my closest even closer to me.

For reconnecting me with sooo many friends near and far.

For teaching me how to show up for others – in creative, practical, generous, intimate ways. And not just for those in my inner circle. A lot of folks who could have easily told themselves – “I’m sure she’s got plenty of people surrounding her already” or “we’re not even that close” or “I don’t know what to say” – chose instead to reach out, send their love, and accompany me on this journey too. It’s meant the whole world. I’ll be sure to pass it on.

For prompting my loved ones to get their mammograms.

For helping my friends in med school ace their repro exams.

For strengthening my faith – and revealing my spirit animal.

For all the laughter.

For FaceTime happy hours.

For uniting so many in prayer – to God, Allah, and Jayasha.

For giving me the chance to test my visiting friends in fun ways. Like, how would you feel about hopping in the shower with me? Shaving my legs? Wrapping my wounds? (Everyone passed with flying colors.)

For offering me admittance into a cool new girls club – with support and solidarity from perfect strangers.

For allowing me to play the cancer card and finally get longstanding home improvement projects done!

For all the baby love. OMG.

For homemade meal deliveries.

For giving me a whole new appreciation for oncologists and surgeons and nurses and radiologists and anesthesiologists and therapists.

For reminding me how to be gentle with myself.

For bringing me back into my body and maybe, in a paradoxical way, making me less angry at it. (I didn’t even realize I’d been angry at it – for not getting pregnant – but I know I must have been because now I feel the opposite of anger. What’s that? Acceptance? Hope? Self-Love.)

For healing time.

For presenting an opportunity for the littles in my life to learn the true meaning of family and friendship and being there for each other.

For rearranging everything inside me, once again.

My deepest gratitude. XOXO

I’ve been dreaming about my first dip for weeks.

Deep Eddy is to me in Austin kind of what All Souls was to me in DC – a still place of restoration and deep solace.

When I’m there – usually a few times a week, year-round – I swim a mile. That’s 52 lengths in clear, 68 degree, natural spring-fed water. I soak in the sun’s vitamin D and the muted whooshing underworld sounds. My lungs and heart and skin and muscles rejoice. My mind quiets. Feels like home to me.

I had to wait until a week after my drains came out to get back in.

So today was a very good day.

Couldn’t quite do freestyle, but I managed to swim 10 lengths.

Breast stroke.

Imagine that.

 

My friend Martha says Dad sure has a charming sense of humor. Ha!

Today, for the first time really, I felt a little loss.

I’d been wondering when it would arrive and how it might announce itself.

This morning I was excited to put on a cute top I hadn’t worn in a while. I pulled it out of my closet and set it on my bed, then realized a) it wasn’t button down and b) it needed my bright pink tank underneath. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to pull either over my head. But with Thug’s help, I did. (And it didn’t even hurt!)

When I looked in the mirror, though, first from the front, then from the side, a small wave of something familiar rolled over me.

For the past two weeks I’d only been wearing the comfy post-surgery shirts my mom and sister picked out for me. So I hadn’t seen my new body in an old outfit – one that looks much different on me now.

Gonna take a little getting used to.

As losses – big and small – do.

 

I got my drains out today!!! But I had NO IDEA there was so much tube inside of me!!! Omg.

Kelley, my NP at Dr. King’s office, pulled ALL of that out of my chest. Twice! Once on each side. I was dying laughing. Couldn’t believe it.

My mom and Catherine (a dear childhood friend who came from Colorado for a few days) say I screamed, “Holy shit!” Of course I did. I thought the tubes were like an inch long, not 18!

Now I’ve got two holes in my stomach that’ll heal up soon.

Big day today. I’m feeling a little more normal again.

Can’t wait to NOT sleep on my back anymore.

 

I haven’t left my oncologist’s office yet. Still soaking up the news I just received from Dr. Patt – I’m cancer free!!! Nothing in my lymph nodes.

She said “you need no more (treatment), but you needed no less.”

Turns out there was a lot of cancer in my right breast and if I’d waited even 6 months more to get my mammogram, I’d be in big trouble.

Can’t wait to call my gynecologist and thank her for reminding me to get my first annual exam in November. I don’t think it would have occurred to me otherwise.

Going forward, I’ll be meeting with Dr. Patt and Dr. King every 6 months for the next 5 years to make sure everything is still fine.

Told you I was in good hands.

Theirs.

And yours.

(Peach’s friend Zac here. I’m in Austin this week to add another set of hands to Peach’s team. And to eat tacos. And take Peach to a bench at Town Lake, then Book People. Then eat more tacos.)

Nobody plans to have cancer. Especially within a week of leaving a job. To call this remarkable is an understatement.

But we know this isn’t the first time the word remarkable has applied to Peach.

It was remarkable that her hometown named a day after her when she was a high school student. It was remarkable how she uprooted her life to try and elect a little-known senator from Illinois with a funny name and no chance to win.

And the best word for her follow up appointment with her surgeon, Dr King, today is remarkable.

The pathology report wasn’t back yet, so that hoped-for data (do her lymph nodes have cancer that needs to come out?) isn’t what made it remarkable. It’s the fact that a world class surgeon who started her morning in the OR and maintains a full case load took time to care for Peach in some of the very same ways you and I do. She asked questions and really listened. (I didn’t hear her interrupt once, even when she had key information to deliver.) She looked Peach in the eyes. She made her laugh and even laughed at Peachy’s own jokes.

And then the most remarkable part — she stayed.

I didn’t clock it, but I’m pretty sure the chatting (after all the medical questions were asked and answered) ran at least 30 minutes. We were in her office for close to an hour, and she only looked at the time once. Conversation ran from ‘fospicing’ a 17 year old Cockapoo to deodorant to acupuncture to the State of the Union to getting women into office to the power of GoFundMe and briefly back to Peach’s breasts. (“They were a lot of work,” said Dr King.)

As a hospital chaplain, I’ve seen a lot of patient-doctor interactions. The camaraderie these two have developed blew me away.

Peachy’s Mom and I also made sure they thoroughly covered how soon Peach could be back swimming at Deep Eddy. (“A couple of days after the drains come out” was the answer — and not a moment sooner.)

“I love her,” said Peach when we made our way through 2 elevators, 2 errands, tacos and queso and finally back to the quiet little house you’ve all helped make a place of healing.

More to come when we hear back about the pathology labs (Friday?) or when her dreaded drains get to come out (Monday?). But know that on our team is a small but fierce surgeon whose level of care is beyond remarkable.

PS: For those of you who know I’m a bit of a hydration fascist, Peach has needed absolutely no chiding to drink lots of water. How’s that for remarkable?

On my 40th birthday, back in October, I listened to an All Souls sermon called “A Clearing Season.” At the time, I was struggling with a bout of depression and it resonated in a deep way with me.

There are seasons in our lives when we need to clear away, start over, make room for something new. To step into the unknown and await the possibilities.

I was turning the extra bedroom in my house into a nursery – assembling a crib and glider, collecting children’s books, hoping for my baby to come to me.

I was getting ready to leave the job I’d loved for six and a half years.

I was transitioning out of my alumni leadership role at Vanderbilt, just as the scholarship program that shaped me was poised to change in significant ways.

It was a clearing season, to be sure.

And soon enough, as we all know, I’d be navigating another clearing, this time on a cellular level – a new tender place where, as Jenn W said to me today, I’ve been excavated.

As I woke from a long afternoon nap on Friday, I heard rain falling lightly and the distant voices of my mom and sister outside. It was music to my ears. I stayed in bed awhile, hoping the moment wouldn’t end.

When I got up and looked out the window, I found them clearing away all the leaves and weeds from my front yard and planting me a garden.

A garden!

Sister said she’d invited Dad to join in. He was an award-winning gardener in Rolla. 🌺

The next day, as she finished filling up 12 lawn bags, a man appeared in my driveway and asked if she needed some help. After a bit of back and forth, it became clear to her that he wasn’t exactly a neighbor, but he was familiar with my neighborhood. Turns out he’s one of the homeless men who lives nearby and many of my neighbors have hired him as a day laborer. (I’d seen him around.) She accepted his offer and stuck out her hand. He said, “My name’s Don.”

I’m not making this up.

They spent several more hours together – laying down tarp, planting succulents, pouring pea gravel.

Around 9pm Sister said there was still one more thing she had to do. So she drove away. When she returned over an hour later, she had me come outside to see my surprise. Turns out she’d gone to Target. (Side note: Sister hates driving. She especially hated driving on I-35 squeezed between 18 wheelers at night.)

But she had to get me a pair of outdoor chairs so I can sit in my garden and be quiet and still and read to my heart’s content while I’m healing.

So ta da!

I’m now eagerly and patiently waiting to see what grows in my new garden.

And elsewhere in my life.

 

There are so many. Just to name a recent few:

1. Charlie calling me from his banana phone. Watch his video message here.

2. Getting my hair did.

3. Daily visits from loved ones, including Sonal from DC.

My list is endless. Laughter, baby pics and colorful kid art, Deep Eddy water, nourishing homemade food, the unbelievably generous funds (!) raised from SO MANY to pay for my medical expenses and joyful healing process.

Thank you / fuck you cancer. I’m grateful for you / I’m glad you’re gone.