Just a note to let you know the latest news. The first news is that my hair is growing back. I can’t tell you how happy I am and how much fun I’m having with that. It’s baby soft, a color I don’t entirely recognize and is about 1/2 inch long. I’m also getting my eyebrows and eyelashes back. It’s really weird to watch my face reappear on a daily basis. I’m still filling in my eyebrows with the pencil but I’d bet in about a week I won’t have to do that any more. I actually had to pluck some eyebrow hairs that weren’t contributing in a positive way to my face the other day. My last long eyelash finally fell out and is now replaced with little stubby ones. They aren’t long enough to put mascara on but I do it anyway. And lastly, I had to shave my legs the other day. Yup, I did not miss that hair or activity but it decided to come back any way.
On Mother’s Day J.R., Nicky, Steph and I walked in the Race for the Cure. Jessica couldn’t attend because
it’s a much farther walk than 5K for her from France. Our friends The Carter’s, The Busby’s, JoAnne and 47,000 others however, did joined us for the event. A few observations to share with you. First off, the walk is much longer than 5K, I’ll bet we put in 1 ½ miles before the event even started. I could not believe all of the people who were walking to raise money for breast cancer, it was really amazing. It was a little chilly in the morning so there were many people wearing jackets so it was harder to pick out all of the survivors, but there were plenty of them. Many people wear pink signs on their backs with names “In Memory Of” or “In Celebration Of”. When you read all of the people who are winning or have lost their battle with breast cancer it’s pretty emotional. Fortunately they have people cheering, waving, playing music or passing out flowers along the walk.Go figure, we were running late leaving the house before the event and I didn’t get to grab breakfast and forgot to take some Advil. So I was hungry, my back was killing me and I was sad reading all of the names on the pink cards. J.R. asked me if I wanted to stop and stretch my back for a while and I said “No, I’ve survived chemo, I can do this, and this is nothing in comparison”. So we pushed on. There was lots of cheering when we crossed the Finish line and we headed into the Mall to get some food and find the Survivor ceremony. In the Rotunda area of the mall was a sea of pink survivor shirts and pink hats, so they shuffled me in there and I found a seat. I was pretty happy to be sitting down even though the chair was hard as a rock. I don’t know what I was expecting from the ceremony, but what I was hoping for I didn’t find it here.
KARE 11’s Mike Pomerantz and Julie Nelson MC’d the event and did a nice job; they were all cheery and upbeat. However, the music was really crummy. It was really depressing. I was hoping for something more upbeat since I just survived the worst experience of my life. Next thing I know they bring out these huge boxes with entries for prizes on stage, they started giving out prizes to the survivors. Now these were really nice gifts but I have no idea what they have to do with a survivor ceremony. After the gifts were all given away they called out to the survivors to see how many years we were cancer free. There was one lady who was a 40 year survivor, several at 30, 20 and 10. Quite a few 5 years and about 25% of the room was 1 year or newly diagnosed. It broke my heart to see so many newly diagnosed and battling women. There were lots of women there with the same haircut as me.
After the ceremony we all went to lunch and talked about the event. I’ll be the first to admit that I may have participated in an event like this too close to my diagnosis and treatment. Based on my experience with this one I probably wouldn’t participate in the survivor ceremony again, it just wasn’t uplifting enough for me. I will give it another chance just to make sure though. I think the Susan G Komen for the Cure Foundation does really wonderful things for breast cancer and this event raises millions of dollars a year. I know that medications and procedures that saved my life would never have been available if the monies for research weren’t raised by this event. I just wish the survivor ceremony was better, more uplifting and a real celebration of surviving breast cancer. I don’t claim to know anything about event planning but I do know plenty about having fun. This ceremony could have been real fun too.
Lastly, I have my implant surgery today. It’s an outpatient procedure if you can believe that. I met with my surgeon two weeks ago and have decided on silicone implants over saline implants. Reading the pamphlet with all the pros and cons about silicone scared the crap out of me. These tissue expanders were looking pretty good to me as a permanent solution. Oh sure they are square, high and hard but I think I could learn to live with that. The biggest concern is a rupture and I was afraid that my skydiving career would come to an end. Dr. Luong assured me that I had plenty of skydiving years ahead of me and showed me an implant which she dug her nails into. Apparently this same implant was jumped on by a 3 year old the day before to show his mom how durable they are. So I feel better about my decision to go silicone. We are unsure about the size of the implants, those will be determined at the time of surgery. It will all depend on how my chest muscles react and how far they will stretch. At this point I don’t care what size I am, I just want them to look good and not kill me. I think those are both pretty good goals for the new boobs.
So that’s it for now. Thank you again for all of your support during this time, I really appreciate it. I am so lucky to have you all in my life and feel very blessed. I hope this note finds you all well and that you are having a really great day!
Love to you all,
Jen
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