Mostly, but not always, sunshine & light

I’m an optimist but it ain’t always sunshine and light up in here

Last night I was exhausted after going into work for 5 hours – then taking the dogs to the vet for Sister to have her drains removed and for annual exam for Scooter and boosters for both.   I went to bed super early which may have been a bad idea.  Sister was restless and thus I was too…tonight she’ll be readjusting to sleeping in her old crate.   Hopefully this will help us both to heal.

I kept waking up every couple of hours and remembering I have cancer again.  It reminds me of when someone close has passed away, or for me, when I got separated en route to divorce, how reality seems to float away in your sleep and then revisit a few minutes after you’re awake.  It is hard to describe that feeling but just kind of an “oh yeah, that’s reality now.”

I suppose it’s to be expected as it settles in that I now have breast cancer and that it will always be a part of my life even once I’m healed and hopefully a long term survivor for many years.   My life is split again by something profound, like birth, graduations, marriage, divorce, certain jobs that made an impact on me (like the one I have now and love so much at Duke Law) – there is another divider in the timeline of my life – before cancer and after cancer.

I was thinking the other day about how so many other moments in life don’t stick with us like these big moments…little dividers we don’t even know changed the course of our lives…even deciding to take a different way home from work one day or to stop for a drink of water.   At any rate, this cancer experience really can’t be anything but a big one.   Most of the time if I stop to ponder how it has changed and will continue to change my life I think – wow – this is a transformational life experience.   I have great hope that it will transform my life in beautiful and powerful ways, and that I can come out the other side of it to find myself able to make a positive impact on the world and the people in it.

I’ve already seen so much beauty and kindness from family I don’t see often (and of course those I do), colleagues, Duke Law alumni, friends from my childhood, high school, college and law school; even complete strangers and it has been absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful in many ways.  Particularly when juxtaposed with current events in America and beyond, it strikes me so strongly that humans, despite all the horrible things we do to each other, all have so much to give in terms of love and hope and empathy.   If we could just see each other as having something in common.   That is the door that cancer has opened for me – everyone sees in me someone they’ve known and loved and it’s just beautiful to be on the receiving end of such generous kindness and compassion.   At a later time, I will have to ponder how we can accomplish more of that without giving everyone cancer.

And yet, I can’t lie, when I think about my life before cancer, a little voice inside of me, I think it’s 5 year old me, asks why we can’t go back to life before cancer?

Three year old me: