A little anxious

Although I can communicate the agony of going through cancer, I can still laugh. I've learned to live with a dark cloud over my head but the way I do it is to live in the moment and to make myself stay in the moment when I begin to wonder if and when the other shoe will drop.

Everyone thinks that breast cancer is in my past, and I should be thankful that I've beaten it. I smile and say 'so far so good' ... I want to tell them the facts, but let it go.

I went for a walk. After two days of rain, it was nice to be outside in the sun.

I'm feeling a little anxious about going back to work. Not about the work itself, but how my coworkers will approach me. People tend to ask, 'how are you feeling?' and then they wait to see how you will respond. It is hard trying to explain to others how hard the journey is. I do not want people to feel sorry for me when I probably could use more kindness and compassion. I have continued to have significant fluid build up under my arm but I'm dealing with it. The scars that I have from my mastectomy are horrendous but with the help of my therapist, Julie, we will stretch and break down my scar tissue. For now we can only work on the outside scars, the center is still healing. Every once in a while I get stabbing pains in that area.

I am a very positive person, but it does cross my mind some days that I may have a recurrence.

Today in one of the chat rooms on Breastcancer.org I found out that a survivor who had a recurrence of her breast cancer passed away. Lizzy was missing from one of the boards the past two weeks. Today her husband logged in with her name with the news. I recall many of her comments and she sounded positive. Had she just accepted that her journey was coming to an end? She even replied to a 'newbie' with an encouraging message.

Very sad.

How do you explain cancer to people when they ask?

Breast cancer cells start out as normal body cells that begin to grow out of control because of mutation or other damage. Occasionally, cells change from normal to abnormal without any changes to their surface markers. These changing cells grow and multiply into abnormal cells. Eventually, the resulting tumor becomes abnormal on the outside and can no longer hide its malignancy character. The immune system launches its attack - the attack may succeed or it may be too late.

It's easier just to tell people my cells went out of whack.

I'm watching the Royals and the Giants. The Royals are up 2 - 0 and it's the top of the 6th. The 3rd baseman from Kansas City is Greek, Mike Moustakas. I would like to see the Royals win it all.