Dusting Off the Blog

Let's play catch-up...

I am fine! I am alive and healthy and enjoying life to it's utmost. Thankful for each new day and trying not to waste it. But this blog has been niggling at me for months now...a year actually! I apologize to anyone who has followed me and has wondered what the heck happened. Like I've said before, disappearing from a cancer blog is not the best thing to do. 


Thanks to those of you have have emailed to check up on me. I always assume only the occasional family or friend reads this, so when I get an email from a stranger, I am a little shocked (and very flattered).

How does one return to a seemingly abandoned blog after being absent for over a year?  In my very first blog post I believe I mentioned being a failed blogger in the past. Is that my lot in life? My modus operandi? Perhaps. But I am still here and, in truth, I never really abandoned this blog. It's stayed in the back of my mind and I have always intended to continue posting. Somehow days turned into weeks, weeks into months...you know the drill. I've just been a little busy.

In truth, I have written countless blogs...all in my head. 

Blogs about...

• Freedom from treatment and "finding a new normal" (aren't you just sick of that phrase?)
• Counting the days as a TNBC survivor. The more the better.
• The power of girlfriends and laughter.
• New friends along the way (like my radiation buddy, Joann. She began breast radiation when I did and was scheduled right after me, so we compared notes about blisters and redness and Sharpie body art and gardening and cooking and life in general. Those daily visits, however brief, made me actually look forward to radiation.)
• The physical and mental therapy of gardening. 
• Cycling and getting fit (with the help of my husband).
• Food, nutrition, and a family that doesn't mind (and actually enjoys) our many meatless (always red meatless) meals.
• Returning to teaching and my 800 amazing students (one of the main reasons this blog lost priority).
• Saying goodbye to my Japanese "daughter", Megumi.
• Procrastination, stress, high expectations, and biting off more than I want to chew.
• Mysterious pains and the unreasonable fear they bring.
• Returning for scans, and the trepidation that accompanies them.
• The angst of dealing with a father with dementia, moving him out of his home of 26 years, the odd variety of hospital visits and 2 months in rehab. (He is finally settled and happy in an assisted living facility, thank God.)
• The angst of dealing with a very sweet dog with congestive heart failure...an ongoing saga.
• Dealing with Cisplatin induced neuropathy and tinnitus...again with the new normal.

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. If I can get back on track with this blog, I am sure I will be touching on some of those topics in the future. 

Anyway, I am going strong and feeling great! If I disappear again, just assume the BEST. Consider no news as good news.