A Chance to Reflect

While it is a topic of concern amongst the members of my family, I have chosen to take my kids fall break to go on a trip back east to visit family and friends.  During this trip, I will be doing a lot of driving. I'll get to see family, obviously, and friends, and I will also get a chance to see some things I haven't seen before like Washington DC. I'm really looking forward to the trip and I'm looking forward to the time that I'm going to have with my own head to sort through the things that have to be done now that I am healed. I think I need this. This is a trip I planned to take last fall, but had a feeling the "winds of change" were starting to blow. So I didn't take the trip last year and I'm glad I didn't. Because this is the year that I really think I need it. I'm sorry there are those of you who feel like I don't deserve it, need to take it now or whatever your excuse is. But I'm doing what I need to do for me. And if you look at it from that perspective, I hope you are able to take a step back from your own viewpoint and try to look through a lens that's a little closer to what I am looking through as you pass judgment on me.

Emotions

The interesting thing about the whole past year, is the emotions that you go through not only during the time that youare  fighting so hard for the right to live, but also the emotions that you have to go through once you've won that fight.

This time last year I felt horrible. I couldn't walk from one room to another without feeling like I was going to have a heart attack. But I'm a mom, and female, and I don't pity myself, so I just push. And in part I think that's why I got as sick as I did. But once I won my fight, there were a lot of things that I had to go through emotionally, that I chose not to go through last year when they were happening.

Last year, in the span of about two weeks, I was diagnosed and hospitalized and begun my treatment, I was laid off from my job of 23 years, and my husband filed for divorce. Even though we were already on the divorce track, it was still a lot to take in all at one time on top of everything else. But me being me, chose to deal with the most immediate concern which was being here for my children. So everything dealing with being unemployment, everything dealing with my husband all of those things, had to go on the back burner. I couldn't really think about them, I couldn't deal with them, I just focused on my fight to live. 

Now, however, I do have to deal with those feelings. I have to deal with anger and hurt and the betrayal that I feel towards some of the leadership at my former company. I have to deal with the timing and the conversations and the direction that I have chosen. And I have to deal with the fallout as it affects my children.  All on top of dealing with things like finding a new job, figuring out what I want to do short and long-term, and coming up to speed on the technologies so that I am the best employee my next employer is going to have. The unfortunate part is no matter how much I like my next job, that employer will never have the level of loyalty in me that Apollo had from me for 23 years. But I have a really good feeling about everything that's coming in the future. I have an idea of what I want to do long-term, and I know that IT and the money that I'm going to earn working in the IT field is going to get me where I want to be long-term, and it is going to be the kind of life that I want to live and the quality-of-life I want and I'm so excited.  But dealing with all that emotional crap, that sucks!

Time to Deal, Amongst Other Things

So the past year I have spent not vacationing, not taking it easy, but I've been fighting for the right to live. And that seems to be lost on some people who will go unnamed. Some people who should know better because they've been through something similar. I forgive them for how they chose to share their thoughts with me, wishing that they would have discussed their thoughts with me versus shredding me to bits andthinking  doing so was OK. But I'm not one to sit there and have a pity party. I think those who cast about such terms about others, are the ones who are most likely to sit there and sit in that type of a pool for his long as they want because they like being the center of that type of attention.  But that is not me.

I have a lot of work to do. No bones about it. Even though the doctors will not keep me from looking for work, of course their desire is that I don't work full time until I've reached the one year mark. And while I know I higher much more easily, my anxiety levels I'm not able to control very well yet, I am improving and these are all things that will help me to be better focused on my new job. But at the same time I'm glad that I'm not working yet because on both of those fronts, I would struggle. So I am working on being ready to flood the market branding Dianne 2.0 and see about getting back into IT and starting to turn a good living again.  

Those Are Just Small Bumps!

My recovery since transplant hasn't been flawless, but it's been pretty darn close. I've had some very minor brushes with graft versus host and then each case it has responded very well to treatment and gone away and not come back. The most recent problem that I've been dealing with is a small infection I developed in the skin on my back Surrounding a fatty cyst I've had since at least 2000. So I've been on IV antibiotics for the past week and it has responded very well and is pretty much almost a distant memory.

My rockstar status as a patient stands.

Graft versus host: I have had a rash on my back that responded very quickly to prednisone. Unfortunately the prednisone made me feel like I was going out of my mind because it was a high-dose. Thank God they are on the weaning me off prednisone process now and I definitely feel more like me.  

All's Well

Now that I am five months passed my transplant, things are going very well. I'm back at M.D. Anderson for my maintenance, and have a great doctor.

I've been lucky enough to have the most fantastic support system I think a person could ever possibly have going through this experience. This included family, extended family, friends, coworkers, former coworkers.  There were some people that I thought would be there that were nott, and some unexpected surprises of people who were there that I never in my lifetime would' I have imagined would be there.

For all of you, thank you!