Snow day

So please keep in mind that I am in no way a photographer, but I have adored this snow day and wanted to capture it in some way.

This has been the control center for most of my day (excluding the awesome nap time I had with my bed earlier) and it has been quite fantastic to catch up on some much needed music downloading and hot beverages.



I always forget just how much I love the calm beauty of undisturbed snow until it snows again and I am always blown away by how happy it makes me. This snow day has given some much needed rest and relaxation after a crazy few weeks. I really hope that I can get back to real life after this a new burst of energy and excitement.

Lovelovelove!

Love is a mix tape.

One of my all time favorite things to do for my friends and family and even strangers is make mixes. Whether they be themed like the "Autumn blues" mix I make for my girlfriends every year or just a collection of my current favorites. It is a great feeling to expose others to music and art that they do not yet know about and to be able to give them something else in this world that makes them feel connected to the rest of humanity. I mean don't get me wrong sometimes a mix cd is just that but there have been times in my life when I have received or made the perfect mix to satisfy my emotional needs in that moment and to me there is nothing better.

Knowing this my wonderful college roommate Christy bought me a book for Christmas called "love is a mix tape" and it is turning out to be one of my favorite books of all time (granted I am only 44 pages in). The writer, Rob Sheffield, and his wife shared an amazing connection through music and like me over-indulged in the art of mix making. This story, at least thus far, appears to be his tribute to their brief life together and he uses the mixes made by the two of them to bring him back to that time. "Nothing connects to the moment like music"

I'm not really sure where I intended to take this post except that this book is stirring something in me. I'm not really quite sure what that is yet, but so far I am absolutely in love with it! All I know is that when I am gone I have every intention of leaving behind as many mixes as possible to tell my life story :)

"I have built my entire life around loving music, and I surround myself with it. I'm always racing to catch up on my next favorite song. But I never stop playing my mixes. Every fan makes them. The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with - nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they add up to the story of life."

Lovelovelove!

Makeshift Public Speaker

Last week I was given the wonderful opportunity to speak to freshman at Villanova University about what it’s like to have a chronic illness. They were learning about family history and the importance of knowing your risks and although my story doesn’t necessarily bring those points home (because nothing I have is genetic), I think I was able to help regardless. I knew going into these talks that my story was more about the luck of the draw when it comes to struggling with disease, but this motivated me to find different ways to show them why it is so important take care of their own health.

One of the big points I tried to get across was that no ones knows your body better than you do. This was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn when so many different people were telling me they had no idea what was wrong with my leg. At one point when I was almost 15 I even said to my doctor at the time “is what I have a tumor” and his response was “there is absolutely no way what you have is a tumor.” Well sure enough a few months later I was diagnosed with a desmoid tumor, but I digress. This was not meant to be about the a-hole doctor that I had at that time, but about how if there is something wrong with the way your body is working you should never let anyone make you think you are crazy. If you’re in pain or something is off, you need to peruse the issue until you find an answer that explains your problems or satisfies your soul. I tried to explain to them the idea of being your own advocate and trying to help them understand that it is okay to disagree with your doctor. I explained to them briefly about struggling with the previously mentioned awful doctor and how if you are not satisfied with whom you are seeing, then find someone else. A great support team of both loved ones and doctors is more important than anything else when facing an illness no matter how big or small. If your doctor makes you uncomfortable or doesn’t listen to you then how can they ever help you?

I really hope that I was able to communicate these messages to them and that they were able to see them through the rest of the story. They were very thankful for me coming and sharing my story with them and a few people even told me I was courageous and to be honest that blew me away. I have never seen myself as being courageous, I've always just been trying to live my life the best way that I can. One gentleman asked how I was able to get as far through college as I did with everything that had happened and I was so taken back by the question that I almost couldn't pull it together in enough time to answer. Luckily I did and told him that for me it was just the next step in my life. I told them that if I looked at cancer as being my whole life, that I would not have room for anything else fun or positive and its the normal things in life that keep me pushing trough all the other crap.

It was so refreshing to be able to be so completely honest with strangers and it was a bit therapeutic to go back and remember the roots of my illnesses. All in all I am so glad that I did it and I really hope that each one of them took something positive, no matter how small, from my story.

Blog failure

I've sort of been failing as a blogger lately. It's been exactly a month since my last post and I wish there was something super fancy going on for me to report about but sadly the last month has been a lot of the same old things. There have been some fantastically fun developments in the boy department but I have a tendency to get self conscious about putting such things online. But to satisfy any appetites (if anyone even reads this thing) we have gone out a few times and have had some brilliant conversations which has been quite exciting. But other than that it's really just work, family, friends and as always as much sleep as humanly possible. So with that I will end this pathetically short post with a promise to try super hard to return with fun thoughts and experiences as soon as they occur.
Lovelovelove :)

Forever Audrey.

For some reason recently I have felt like the universe is pushing my grandmother and I together in the weirdest ways. I always had a great relationship with my dad's mother but when it came to my mom's mother I had fewer memories and sadly less to hold on to once she was gone. But recently I have been reminded of her in so many silly little things. It started a few months ago when my mother and I were hanging around looking at old pictures and she brought out some of her mother's old scrap books. I knew that mom mom (as she was affectionately known to us grand kids) had an affinity for making scrap books because for years after she died we had most of them in our house and believe me when I tell you that there were close to 100. They were a great way to feel close to her but with there being so many it was an easy task to miss out on the most important ones. Anyway, my mother randomly pulled one of them out of the closet and it just so happened to be the first one in her series... the one she started when she was just about 16. It was one of the coolest things I had ever seen, not just as her grand daughter but the nerdy woman's history geek inside of me was jumping for a joy a little as well. There was everything from pictures from plays she was in while in high school, to real dance cards from the late 40's, and even the ring on the cigar that was given to my grand father when he bought her engagement ring.

It was like a portal into not only her life at that age, but parts of her personality that I had never known before. Like the picture of her in a 2 piece bathing suit in 1947 when that was pretty taboo. I realized maybe for the first time that she was so much more than the butt of my uncles jokes, or the woman who had 10 kids, or even the slightly cold German woman who was still there to give advice when it was needed most. It took these memories, both mine alone and other shared with me, to bring her to life as a real person instead of the ghost of a woman who died in my house when I was 10.

With these new thoughts and feelings I started a new day and decided to spend part of that day running some errands. On my journeys that particular Saturday I ended up finding a fantastic pair of cigarette pants, styled like the 40's/50's skinny jeans intended to show off those lovely mary janes. Like usual I was skeptical of them, because thanks to my mothers jeans (biological, not denim) I struggle with pants due to the big butt that she so graciously handed down to me :) But I was drawn to these pants because the style was called the "Audrey". It was clearly a sign that I was meant to have these pants and my sassy grandmother was calling for me to try them on. I know its all outlandish but they ended up fitting beautifully which is a miracle in and of itself. So I took the hint from mom mom and bought the pants.

And then again a few days ago I was out with my mother, again running some errands and we came upon a fantastic black and gray plaid jacket with big buttons. For those of you who know me, you know about my affinity for both plaid and especially big buttons. It was like a match made in heaven, and as I un-buttoned the jacket to try it on I saw a huge tag hanging inside that read "Forever Audrey". It was like another wonderful cosmic slap in the face, a way for me to remember that this woman who I lost so long ago is still around somewhere sending me these wonderful gifts.

I know this has been an extraordinarily sentimental and cheesy post, but hey when the universe calls out to you like that you just have to answer in any way you know how. I love you mom mom... thanks for everything!

Lovelovelove!

My own advocate

Lately I have been trying to take positive steps forward in almost every aspect of my life. I'm slowly realizing that I can no longer rely on others to figure out the solutions anymore. I think that its one of the parts of "growing up" that I have struggled with most. When your sick as a kid your parents are your life line, but at some point you have to allow yourself to step up to the plate be your own advocate. I've spent a lot of time over the last few months trying to regain things that I had to sacrifice to my disease because it was to hard, to painful or I was afraid of getting hurt. And as great as it was to feel in control of those little joys, they were really a momentary distraction from reality. For months I have felt as though I am losing control of so many aspects of my health and I have continued to justify my avoidance of them. Money, or lack of it, has been my main source of denial by telling myself that I just can't afford it right now. Which, in part, is true, but that hasn't stopped me from buying that pair of boots to cheer me up when I'm having an especially crappy day. If I could only learn to stop myself from getting the boots, and put that money towards a co-pay, I could actually go and see the many doctors I have been avoiding.

Tuesday was a bit of a turning point because I had some time one on one with my amazing friend Christy.

I've mentioned her on here before but regardless lets re-cap the wonderfulness that is Christy: she was my room mate in college, her parents own a dairy farm, she loves kittens and ice cream (not necessarily together), she works at Penn as a nurse in a mostly oncology ward, and on more than one occasion I have referred to her as one of the loves of my life!

Anyway on Tuesday we went to the Phillies game (they won 7-4 yay!!) and we talked about pretty much everything I have been feeling. My worries about how my health and how more and more things are bothering me physically and emotionally. We talked about how I feel like slowly I am loosing control over ever aspect of my life and how terrified I am of the out come. I know that paranoia and control issues are two very common things that cancer patients suffer from after the initial fight, and lately I really been feeling all of those things weighing down on me. She asked me if I had thought about going to see a counselor of some kind. To be honest I have thought about it but I have a hard time finding someone I can connect with. I feel like I need someone who understands the struggles of the never ending patient and can help me get past these problems that are really beginning to swallow me whole. We talked about resources for cancer patients and I expressed that I would feel as though I would be taking a spot away from someone who had a more extreme case and could really use the help.
It was at this point that she pretty much verbally bitch slapped me and reminded me that although cancer has the stigma of a death sentence, that it's really not the case anymore. She reminded me that those resources are there for not only patients and survivors but for their loved ones and caregivers as well. It was like a light bulb went off in my head and I realized that this guilt of taking someones place was really another way for me to avoid what was really going on.

I took some time and thought it over for the rest of the night and into the next morning and while I was at work I received this e-mail "Hey Love, After everything we talked about tonight I thought it was strange that I would look on the New York Times website and find this article..." Attached was an article all about depression after cancer and reading it was like reading everything I had been trying to get out for months!


At this point I decided that I needed to do something and that I had to get over my childish side and take care of the most important part of me... my health. So this morning before work I woke up and called the livestrong cancer support and asked about counselors and other support resources in my area. Immediately I felt parts to me coming back. I know that I have a long road ahead of me, but I am proud of the steps I have made so far.

The crafters itch...

When I got home from work last night I felt like something was missing and when I reached down to grab a scarf that I am knitting I realized just what it was. Usually at least some small part of my weekend is spent crafting and because of my sisters visit this past weekend I didn't get to fulfill my craft quota for the week. So since Tuesday is an early day at work and I get done at 2, I have decided to spend the rest of the day listening to music, drinking coffee and doing as many craft as humanly possible! God I can't wait... one hour to go.