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