My life after chemo

updated pictures

Here's a picture of me and Snowball taken March 10, 2006. Look at my hair! it's growing! I haven't got a trim yet. I need to, it's growing uneven. The back and left side is growing faster than the rest of my hair. There's not much I can do to my hair at this point. At one point I thought it was growing curly... but for some reason, it's just a patch of hair that's kind of curly. It's nice and soft though and pretty thick. My hair was thick to begin with, but I think it's just a bit thicker now. It feels VERY healthy. I haven't had soft healthy black hair since... I was a little girl.

This is what I did on my 30th birthday. I got a tatoo! This is an image that I drew out myself. In the center is an image of a cat (my version of Snowball-yes I love my cat). Surrounding her are 30 flowers. Half way through the flowers I started to wish I was 15! There's several meanings behind the reason why I got this tatoo. (1) I wanted to do something that signified what I had gone through last year -surgery, chemo, recovery. (not that my 4inch scar on my belly doesn't do it already) (2) 30 flowers because i'm 30! (3) I told myself if I were to get another tat, I wanted an image of Snowball on me. (4) a turning point in my life -from cancer to turning 30. I'm not sure what my mom will say after she sees it. =)
To my brothers and sister... don't tell mom and dad! hehehe

That paw print you see on my hip, I got that one on my 25th birthday -my first tatoo. Just a month before my 25th birthday, I ran into a situation where I was stranded in LA for a week. I was fortunate enough to pull my resources and ended up jumping house to house each night, not knowing where I was going to sleep the next night. That was quite an experience but I met some great people along the way. This is actually when me and Gerry got together. Gerry and I met through Asian Avenue (www.asianavenue.com) about a year before this. We used to chat online. At that time, I was living in Sacramento and he was living in the Bay. The weekend I was stuck in LA, I saw him online and mentioned to him about my situation. Gerry was on his way down to Santa Barbara with his brothers for a weekend and offered if I could find my way to Santa Barbara that he'd drive me back to Sacramento. Well, on the way up to the Bay, sparks flew -we hit it off right away. I decided to stay in the Bay for awhile before heading back to Sacramento. 1 week led to a month.. then 6 months, to a year. 5 years went by and I'm still here!

posted by Linda V @ 4:42 PM 2 comments

Cancer-versary

1 year ago today... I was lying on the operating table. The surgeon came downstairs to tell my mom and Gerry... it was cancer. Thinking back on all I went through... it's surreal. I don't remember a whole lot. It seems like I went through the whole thing with my eyes closed -just waiting for it to be all over. I was very blessed that I didn't have any complications through the surgery, chemo, or the recovery from both.

What's been hard for me right now is trying to get back to regular life. It's been so frustrating not being able to do what I used to do, not being comfortable in my new body. I still don't like looking at myself in the mirror. Even though my hair is growing, it's not growing fast enough. My eye lashes are still short. There are times when I feel like life is getting too hard, overwhelming ... I just want to curl up and cry. I hate that I feel this way. Is this a normal post chemo feeling?

Sometimes, I feel like just because I'm done with chemo and I look normal... everyone is expecting me to be normal. And when I tell people how hard life feels overwhelming, they look at me like I'm making it up, like I should be Ok by now.
I have to remind myself every day... that it's going to take time.

Gerry and I spent the day at the Oakland Art Museum, took a walk around Jack London Square and finished the day with dinner at a Thai restaurant. The weather was nice, clear blue sky. Great weekened to be out.

Here's to another year.

posted by Linda V @ 9:21 PM 3 comments