At a Loss for Words

I never "finished" this blog.  I created it to chronicle Gina's journey, as well as my involvement with the 3-Day, but when the walk was over, I couldn't bring myself to write about it.

You see, the walk was so many things, such an experience, that I felt like writing about it in this blog would make it somehow be over and forgotten, and I was not ready for it to be over.  I also worried that I would not have the ability to adequately express all that the 3-Day had been to me.  And so, I did nothing.  And not just here:  I also left the windows of my car painted with all of my anti cancer slogans for MONTHS after we got back from the walk.  It took me almost as long to unpack my stuff.  The one thing I did do?  I registered to be a crew member in the  San Francisco and Washington, DC walks and to walk again in San Diego.

Anyway, as I sit here in the dark, still in my uniform, I still feel the same way.  I don't know how to write about it.  I only know that the 3-Day experience still drives me.  Lots of people, including my kids, have asked me why I'm still shaving my head.  Well, I explain, even though Gina is cancer free, thousands of women are still being diagnosed every day, and I still feel the need to keep the conversation going.  And the hair always starts conversations :)

Just tonight, I waited on a table that had 2 survivors at it.  One woman was a cervical cancer survivor, and the other a breast cancer survivor.  Mary, the breast cancer survivor, got diagnosed a while back and ended up becoming a part of a research study.  They did surgery to remove her tumor, and while she was on the table they gave her a dose of radiation at the tumor site.  That's it...no chemo, nothing else.  She said that it almost felt like she never had cancer at all.  As part of the study, though, she continues to go for exams, and in her last one two days ago, her oncologist found a lump in her other breast.  As shitty as those conversations can be, they are also conversations that need to be had, and that make us all feel connected instead of alone.

So why am I writing now, after 5 months of silence?  Well, because breast cancer has reared it's ugly head again:  Gina's older sister Marie got diagnosed this morning.

Marie found a lump a few weeks ago, and we'd all have been foolish not to think it was breast cancer, but I know we all hoped.  We all hoped against hope that maybe it was something else.  Please let it be something else!  But it was not to be.  It's still too early to know much, but I also know all I need to know: the fight continues.

I'm going to cry tonight, I'm going to wonder WHY tonight, but I'm also going to shave my head, put on my boots and continue to do everything I can to kick cancer's ass.  It's not over til it's over, baby, and it ain't over yet!