Cancer Faux Real

[ Click! Please remain seated and keep all arms and legs inside the vehicle .]  One down. But not without more than a few twists and turns. So I'll tell my tale, but you may want to buckle up.  6:30am - I wake up as the sun begins pouring in my room. It feels like the first day of the rest of my life. 7:00am - After a decaf and a quick breakfast I jump in the shower ( aka "ground zero" where I first discovered my lump ) and decide this is a morning for dancing. Beyonce sings straight to my heart with "Countdown" and I imagine I'm one of her sexy backup dancers trying desperately to remember all the moves I'd seen so many times in her video - Damn, I think,  I still got it.  8:00am - I ditch my original plan for overblown 80's throwback eye makeup ( an idea for cheering myself up ) because I've run out of time amidst ensuring I've packed everything for my big day and there's no WAY I'm not taking my girls to the bus stop. Not TODAY,

Control the controllables. Hell, count the cards.  [ Can’t read my, can’t read my, no he can’t read my poker face ...] I’m DONE being hit sideways. I’m nobody’s fool.  I’ve always said that the best thing anyone can ever do is underestimate me. So go ahead, Cancer. You forgot I have the equivalent of a pilot light constantly burning inside me. All it needs is a little kickstart, then WOOSH, and the roof's on fire. [I recoil, realizing it’s just my defense system firing up] Ugh. Who am I kidding? Here I am, the pacifist. Looking Cancer clean in the eyes, begging “ Can we not just talk this OUT instead?! Why did it have to COME to this ?” As if I’m praying for an unhealthy marriage to simply push on.  But no. Today it feels like I’ve just been drafted. And I go to war tomorrow. So, I gear up. I hit my warrior pose in the hopes that the science that says it will bring me strength is all still right and true.  ...holding my breath that my next hand will take down the house. 

Well today I'm somewhere that feels like the end of my 7 stages of grief. Sure, I could Google them. But I won't. That's not my story. Mine seems today is something like peace .  Today I've run out of tears to cry and I'm grateful for it. Today the sun hits my face just right. My playlist fills the front porch with sounds that convince my brain I'm a little bit French and I don't mind my coffee black. I hear the distant muffled sounds of mothers kissing their children farewell for school, a crooked old man watering his gardens, and a fuzzy dog just out of reach trying, to no avail, to chomp up a dying bug with wings. I see a tree so beautifully flowered with purple-sprung buds and my Pippa's nose can't sniff fast enough to get it all in. So I try, too.  Today my therapy comes in silence and solitude. It is precious.   

Happy, sad. Strong, weak. Faux, real. I'm an open book. So I decided to tell my story through video today. 

Dear breast cancer marketing leaders and related product/web/experience designers,  BOY are you missing out on properly targeting a stylish gal like me. You do know that 1) Raquel Welch is not within even the first 1,000 of my personal style icons, 2) I willingly spend hundreds of dollars every other month on hair coloring and styling to stay on-trend and 3) I've avoided dumpy bucket hats like the plague even WHEN they were popular!   So... What. Are. You. Doing? I've decided, just this once free-of-charge 😈, I will provide you with some invaluable guidance on new *design principles* you might consider employing if you'd like to capture more wallet share from the depressingly growing market called women diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 40.  Think: wigs, hair scarves and head wraps, loungewear, mastectomy bras, all packaged and consumable goods within self care and healthy food categories... I could go ON. 1. COLOR IS THERAPY Chemotherapy robs women of enjoyi

✅ Underarm lymph node biopsy AND genetic testing for mutations BOTH came back NEGATIVE! 🧪 ✅ Haircut numero uno turned out HAWTTT! 🔥 ✅ Haul of dope hair wraps and head scarves EN ROUTE! 🚚 🎆 BOOM goes the dynamite!! 🧨 [insert dance party here while taking the win]

I'm a child of the eighties. So, yes, I ADORE a good movie montage. I love Kevin gearing up for the bad guys in Home Alone, Kevin Bacon back-flipping around the barn with a cig in his mouth in Footloose , the team of hotties in Ocean's Eleven mapping out the ultimate casino heist... This probably explains why all day today I've been mentally playing my imaginary montage soundtrack - Eye of the Tiger  mixed with a little American Woman  by Lenny Kravitz... but what, pre-tel, might I be doing during this all-important story transition?  Well, bwa-hahahaaa... allow me to share. 🦸 Today I began strategizing, so yeah, watch OUT. My strategy, in fact, even comes with a name:  BOOMERANG . Certainly not because I want cancer to [ever] come back, but instead to ensure the experience safely returns me right back to my starting position: living blissfully content without a care in the world and unaware of anything about which to complain. It seems Cancer is trying its damnedest to fl

This morning I woke up a near perfect 24 hours after being told I was being booked on an irreversible 2-week train trip headed straight toward chemo station (p.s. don't bother with the Google reviews, the place SUCKS). I did all the usual things you might imagine... a few seconds of realization that it wasn't all just a bad dream, a short processing of the pulsing pain from yesterday's unexpected lymph node biopsy, a micro moment of gratitude that this could all be so much worse...  when I was interrupted by the sound of my 8 year-old blondie Gisele entering the room.  I heard her footsteps and peeled open my eyes. This was when I was greeted by that little goofball gyrating around and kicking like an over-served combination of Miley Cyrus at an awards show and Elaine Benes "bad dancing" on Seinfeld .  I smiled and, per usual, asked her what the heck she was up to anticipating imminent silliness she would most definitely lob back my way.  "I'm a ninja, ma

Expletives. Big, fat, jarring, throw-you-back-in-your-seat kinda expletives. This is what I want to yell. And let me assure you that it’s only the not knowing who will read this that is holding me back right now from selecting many of them as my verbs, adjectives, and adverbs of choice.  Cancer can have this effect on people.  Roughly one month ago I discovered a lump in my breast. And in one instant every misconception I’d so ignorantly believed throughout my adult life was debunked. Apparently , a thin, flat-chested, otherwise healthy 40 year-old who’d breastfed 2 beautiful children for over a year each CAN get breast cancer. Well… f#!k.  What has ensued since that moment has been only slightly comparable to the time I was peer-pressured into riding the most vomit-inducing roller coaster Cedar Point ever had to offer, only then at least I had somewhat consented to participating in the madness. This time it just feels like a cruel test to decide whether  I’m the “hard candy shell” or