A smile and gloves

I must be on a roll--or desperate for some adventure!

Spent the whole day inside working on the computer and trying to get the elementary school book fair organized and volunteers on board for all the different tasks that need completed before the first week in November. November sounds far away, but when you think about the details of pulling together all the details....yikes, it's time to get cranking.

Every time I was waiting for a page to load or had a break to look up, or answered the door for the pest guy to spray for spiders, I was tempted by the fall air and the view of the mountains out the window...exercise inside is just not an option today!

But as usual, the day has slipped by and there are only 90 minutes or so until sunset, just enough time to drive 5 minutes up the road, slip my mountain bike off the bike rack and pedal hard to get to the top of Little Cottonwood trail at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon. I haven't ridden my mountain bike up this trail for almost two years. Last year the trail was washed out by flooding and closed for the majority of the summer. This spring we had similar flooding, but I did venture up the trail on a run/walk (mostly walking and gasping) with my oldest when it finally opened in August. While the run wasn't too exhilerating, the scenery was and I realized the trail was in the best shape I have ever seen it in....Time to get on a bike and ride!

But instead I've been riding my road bike or heading to Corner Canyon for some rides with the G-4 network... the Granite Gear- Grinding Gals, and the summer has passed and the chill is setting in. I've even missed the most spectacular part of the fall colors, but still it's on the summer bucket list....so I throw my bike on the bike rack, holler to the kids to come rescue me if I'm not back by dark and drive to the trail head.

The trail is more manageable than I remember it. I'm not saying that I'm flying up the trail with spectacular form and speed...just commenting that the trail is in pretty good condition in spite of MY condition. Trail to the first bridge is wide, with new bumps over culverts for the daredevils to fly over on their way down. The trail looks fresh and as I pass the bridge I am amazed at the places where I can still ride instead of having to get off to maneuver the huge rocks that used to make it difficult for regular biker folk. Several fast, lean bikers cruise past me while I get off to walk a few sections and I can barely keep up with a few of the hikers that have a pretty good pace. Still, I am happy to be riding and gasping for air in the beautiful scenery that surrounds me. If it wasn't so cool, and I wasn't in a protected watershed canyon I might be tempted to get into one of the clear pools of water below the huge boulders in the creek bed.

A family passes me headed down the trail and the kids all look relieved that their parents are having them walk and not pedal a bicycle. Two hikers are ahead of me, then I pass, then they catch up while I stop to check the phone that rings three times in quick succession. Downhill bikers with their full "motorcycle like" helmets blaze past me and I wonder if my little helmet shouldn't be replaced with a full body helmet!

I actually make it to the top of the trail, I stopped to breathe a few times on the way up, answered a few calls from my youngest :"when are you going to be home so I can order my Halloween costume?", "How much longer?", "Are you done yet?" Hint: Mom can get home faster if you quit making her stop to answer your repeated calls. Also answered the reply to my pocket call that I made to my Pocatello friend and when I don't talk and she just hears my heavy breathing, she thinks she should call back and make sure I'm okay. Maybe the calls were all just good excuses to let my heart rate slow enough to prevent that workout headache that has been so common lately.

The view at the top is worth the work. The water is clear and melodic as it pours down the creek bed, the lighting is beautiful just before sunset, and the fall leaves look beautiful. I can't believe how lucky I am to live so close to so much beauty and I'm so excited that I'm healthy enough to be enjoying more of it on a more frequent basis.

Now the race is on to get to the bottom of the trail before pure darkness sets in. I enjoy the downhill, but wonder sometimes if I'm going a little too fast to consider myself in control of my bike and personal safety. My hands are freezing--I looked at my gloves as I headed out the door, but I didn't put them on, getting sidetracked by finding a jacket instead. The jacket is flourescent yellow, light but protects me enough that I'm not a total icecube. My hands can barely squeeze the brakes but I tough it out until I get back to the first bridge, then I decide to run with my bike, hoping my typical overheating while running will help force the blood back into my fingers so that I can get back on and ride.

I'm running and pushing my bike when a fellow "trying to beat the darkness" rider slows to check on me. " Is your bike okay, are you okay" he asks since he recently saw me riding my bike at the top of the trail.
" I'm fine, just too cold to brake"
He nods and hops on his bike to take off, then reconsiders and asks again, "Is everything okay, is your bike okay?"
"Bike is great, I'm just running because my hands are so cold"
Then he smiles (at least I think he did--hard to tell with those motorcross helmets) and says, "Here, take my gloves, I'm really warm. You can give them back when you get to the bottom"

You would have thought I won the lottery! That was the nicest thing a perfect stranger has done for me in quite some time. I rode to the bottom of the trail with a smile, and a glow--and I'm pretty sure there was more to the glow than warm gloves covering my cold fingers.

It was a simple thing to do--offer me gloves and a smile, but it made my day, and my ride to the bottom so much more enjoyable. Thanks, Stranger, for thinking of offering your gloves to me in my moment of being unprepared for the quick cooling of the canyon that I know I should have been more prepared for. Thanks for not calling me an idiot or looking at me like I should figure out how to dress correctly for the season. Thanks for smiling and sharing--and making my day!

Thanks for reminding me that the little things are the things that can really make a difference, and thanks for taking a minute out of your busy, trying to beat the darkness ride to make my squeezed into the last minutes of the day ride more enjoyable.

E.R (--Embracing Reality, Earnestly Racing--the sunset)

Old Enough

I'm grateful that I'm finally old enough:

I'm finally old enough to laugh when a two year old dumps out an entire container of sticky, maple syrup on himself and the kitchen counter (at least it wasn't on the floor!)

I'm finally old enough to laugh when a two year old drinks sugar out of the sugar pourer.

I'm finally old enough to laugh when a two year old takes my lipstick and covers his mouth, chin, cheek, etc.

I'm finally old enough to laugh when all three things happen in just a short stint of helping my sister-in-law with her kids!!

I'm finally old enough to know that kids aren't perfect, they scream and embarrass you in public, they make messes, they refuse to sleep when you want them to...or for that matter do anything you want them to do when you want them to do it.... and they grow up so fast that you actually miss all those moments that made you want to pull your hair out when you were younger...and so were they.

To everything there is a season and time--today I'm grateful to be in the season where two year olds are cute and mischievous and not mine!

Celebrating 4 years of Aliveness!!

Yep, it's true. I'm still alive--and still crazy on most days! October 2nd is the anniversary date for the day my life got even crazier (is that possible??) with the diagnosis of Invasive Ductal Carcinoma. At the time we thought we were dealing with 3 tumors each 1mm--that's pretty tiny stuff...and we were hoping they would come back from biopsy as cysts or calcium deposits. But that was not to be the case and after getting the invasive diagnosis I spent a few weeks asking lots of questions and trying to decide whether to have a lumpectomy or a mastectomy.

After talking to lots of survivors, I was leaning toward the mastectomy--mostly because I didn't ever again want to tell my kids I had breast cancer (especially if I could have prevented it with a mastectomy) and because I didn't want to have the stress of worrying about recurrence every time I had a mammogram. When I met with my breast surgeon, Leigh Neumayer, and asked her opinion she asked me if I had any specific need for my breasts (meaning more nursing babies???)--when I answered no she said well, a lumpectomy and mastectomy will be about the same considering how little breast tissue you have...gee thanks!...then she mentioned that if it was her facing the decision she would just take both breasts and be done with it. Maybe not in those exact words, but that was the gist of her comments and it sounded like the perfect solution for me.

So on October 22, 2007 I had a skin sparing. nipple sparing, double radical mastectomy--the left side to remove the invasive cancer and the right side for prophylactic purposes. I was serious about only fighting cancer once! And it turns out that was the perfect decision for me--because in doing the mastectomy they discovered a 1.1cm invasive tumor that had not shown up on ultrasound, mamogram, or breast MRI. I got lucky twice--once the day my internist sent me for the original mamogram that showed three suspicious spots and once the day I decided to have a mastectomy. The unlucky part was the fact that my hopes for only having to do radiation after surgery were not to come true and instead I would do 6 rounds of CMF chemotherapy and then 6 weeks of radiation. But all the gory details have already been written in more accuracy and detail as they happened--you can check that out at www.kenjenjohnson.blogspot.com. This blog is about living AC (after cancer) and finding the joy in being a survivor!

So I woke up on Sunday morning October 2, 2011 and decided that I would take the day to enjoy the fact that I was alive.

Two details must be covered before you can appreciate what I did to prove to myself that I was alive.

#1--I flew to Hawaii on a buddy pass on Tuesday, Sept 27th, to watch my niece perform in Phantom of the Opera. It was frivolous and spontaneous, but the plan was to fly out on Tuesday and fly home on a thursday night red-eye flight. I tend to do these sorts of crazy things when I'm around my JJETs sisters but that's a story for another day. Long story short--I got "stuck" in Hawaii until Tuesday night of the following week. Can't ask for a better place to be stuck--especially because I "had to" hang for some extra days with the E of the JJETs!

#2--I have been taking Tamoxifen, an estrogen receptor blocker, since the completion of radiation (summer of 2008). Tamoxifen basically makes you feel like you're in menopause with all the symptoms that accompany that--I'll name just a few: HOT FLASHES, WRINKLES, and WEIGHT GAIN. My oncologist has tried to convince me that clinical trials of tamoxifen have shown no statistical proof that it causes weight gain....but just ask any female who is lacking in estrogen and ask her what her biggest beefs are...and she'll at least mention the hot flashes and weight gain! (okay...maybe the wrinkles popped out during chemo, or just the stress of life...but tamoxifen gets the credit!!) So after getting through chemo and radiation only gaining about 7 pounds I was pretty happy--because my doc predicted I'd gain the typical 15 lbs that breast cancer patients usually gain...must be all the chocolate our friends give us to help us get through the traumatic experience. So inspite of returning to my BC (before cancer) exercise routine, eating habits, and lifestyle of business and forgetting to eat.....I have been steadily gaining weight...2 pounds here, 2 pounds there and trying to adjust to new clothing sizes (at least you get to shop????) and lack of energy and lack of muscle tone.

I'm riding my bike, doing the Firm, getting up in the early am hours and hiking to the waterfall, P90x, walking, elliptical, mountain biking, eating less, avoiding dessert....you know...all the same things that you try when you want to get that pair of jeans to fit comfortably again...or even to fit uncomfortably! Well--after 3 years of working on it (did I mention that I need a nap after every exercise routine...is that the fatigue of radiation hanging around or just my mental issues surfacing?) and seeing no improvement on the scale, and miniscule improvement on how my clothes were fitting I felt pretty discouraged about getting back my BC healthy, fit, vibrant, energetic body.

Okay, now that the background is set--perhaps you can appreciate the monumental feat that I accomplished-- I ran for 4 miles on the beach!!

It probably helped that I live and workout in the high altitude of Utah, and I was running at sea level....and it probably helped that I had the inertia of feeling alive on the 4th anniv of bad news...and it probably helped that I slept for easily 11 1/2 hrs the night before (did I mention that I seem to require WAY MORE sleep AC than BC?).... and it probably helped that the weather was balmy and the sky was blue and I had no obligations to return to or worry about...but still, I RAN 4 MILES!!

To you runners, that is not big deal but to those of us who have been battling knee pain for the last 9 years (yep, since the birth of that beautiful last child) aching bodies (tamoxifen?) and gasping for air (yep, since chemo and radiation and tamoxifen...not sure what to blame that one on) and who could barely stay on the elliptical for 20 minutes without having a pounding headache.....4 miles is like running a marathon. It is all about perspective!

So from my AC perspective I treated myself to one of the greatest things...a 4 mile run down the beach in Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii and a cool off swim in the blue-green ocean. Salt water in the eyes and up the nose....floating and moving and feeling healthy and alive after 4 years as a BREAST CANCER SURVIVOR. The race for the cure is awesome and motivating....but this was just me--celebrating just me! For a crazy, busy girl that is an amazing place to be. Just me, the beach and the water....just being alive. And so GRATEFUL to BE

E.R. (embracing reality... ever remembering....evoking reverence!)
Hint of the day: The American Cancer Society recommends a"baseline" mammogram at age 35 - 40 with an "every other year" mammogram from ages 40 to 50. After age 50, women should get a mammogram every year.

Feeling Left Out

Okay, so it takes me a while to catch up on what is new and exciting in life...but I did try my hand at blogging a few years ago...then got busy living my life instead of blogging about breast cancer. So now that life is back to normal "Crazy Busy" I think I'll add overachiever to my list of things to try in life and jump back into the bloggosphere.

All my friends blog, my sister reads blogs like crazy and I just get overwhelmed whenever I get on and look at all the amazing things everyone in the world is posting! I can barely vacuum the house occasionally, keep pink stuff from growing in the toilet, make sure a few healthy meals get fixed and keep the family in relatively fitting and clean clothing. I always say that the biggest disservice my mom did for me was make Motherhood look easy and fun...I always thought I would spend the day reading books to my kids and working in the flower gardens....turns out that is my little sister's life (whom I love and admire tons) and I have had a CRAZY BUSY life--chronically overbooked and trying to juggle it all...and having everyone tell me that I just need to simplify. So for 20 years I have spent time and energy trying to be calm and cool and collected, preparing for birthdays months in advance and always looking like I have it together and failing miserably at simplifying!! Something about having breast cancer makes you find your authentic self....and looking deep inside myself I must say that I lOVE myself as a CRAZY BUSY human being!!! I love people, things, places, adventures, new opportunities, the outdoors, the indoors, I love it all and want to have a little bit of it all in my life.

So after 20 years of being told that the simple life is the best life I am un-apologetically proclaiming myself to be "LOVIN' THE CRAZY". I adore all the people I have met in the several moves that we've made, the organizations I've belonged to, being a sports mom, volunteering in various capacities and running our family hotel. I love all my hobbies--all of which I love, but don't proclaim to be an expert of any--reading, singing, playing the piano, gardening, quilting with a glue stick, collecting and creating with Stampin' Up products, riding my mountain and road bikes, writing in my journals, traveling, spending time with family and friends, adventuring, rocking' out to Bon Jovi or whatever my kids have playing on the stereo, crocheting, scrapbooking, being an over-the-top Auntie, walking,......yep the list goes on and on....and I'm always willing to add something else to the list if I can squeeze it in.

I'm hopelessly in love with experiencing life--not that I wouldn't like to avoid certain painful parts of living, but I could only live simply if I was willing to to be less interested in local politics, national politics, things that affect me, my family and my friends....I could only live more simply if I cared less about the people and things arounds me.

So sue me, or tell my I'm overbooked, spread too thin, overcommitted, or crazy....you can describe me in whatever way makes you feel better about how you live your life...but from here on out I refuse to apologize for who I am...Crazy Busy and Lovin' It...except for those few times in life when I fall apart, but I'm not apologizing for that either....just listening to myself and allowing myself a down day or complete breakdown when I need it. I'm living with Passion and that means the UP days make the DOWN days awful, and the DOWN days make the UP days that much more of an UPPER!!

So join me in celebrating life in all its reality, rawness and rapidity--here's to the THREE R's and lovin' the good the bad and the ugly!! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em....and enjoy the ride the best you can.

Hope your CRAZY BUSY life is as all that it's cracked up to be!

E.R. (Embracing Reality)