Adapting to Change

The Hero sometimes has to adapt to change along his journey. The faces around him change, his goal varies or he has to take a new route or adjust his timeline. Take Julia Roberts' character in Pretty Woman. All along her goal is to get back to her life, until she realizes she deserves better and decides to move on and go to school. For his part, Richard Gere's character realizes he doesn't want a life by himself and he needs her. Both characters have to adapt to their new goals.

And so it is with me. My surgery date has been changed. Now instead of August 20th, I will have surgery on August 27th. A week isn't a big deal, except for when you take into account the mental preparation. I also keep looking at the big picture and it will be two months since the end of chemo before I have surgery. My hair is growing back (I had to shave my underarms yesterday for the first time in ages), and I worry about what else might be growing back. What I can't see, what I can't feel. I just want to get this done.

Combined with a couple of other disappointments, this news had me feeling really down yesterday. This whole year, the year I turned 40, was supposed be fun. Rob and I were supposed to go to Newfoundland for our vacation. It wasn't supposed to be a year ripe with fear and buried under doctors' appointments. In some ways I think the wet summer has been a reflection of the year. I try to stay positive, but sometimes the combined weight of everything feels very heavy. Yesterday was one of those days where I felt I could be crushed. Then Rob came up with the idea of cashing in our Air Miles and going to Toronto for a weekend -- the weekend I would have been recovering from my surgery.

So we're going to Toronto on August 20 and back on August 23. So far we have tickets to see the Blue Jays play Boston and LA (we'll be up in the nosebleed seats behind home plate, but we've sat there before and there's a great view of the field); we're also going to see the Sound of Music. Rob booked our hotel through Hotwire and we're staying at the downtown Sheraton for a really reasonable rate. I'm feeling much better and more optimistic today. Between the trip, looking forward to the exhibition next week, and the sunshine, I feel much better. Now if I could only shake the hot flashes, I'd be all set.

As a side-effect to my chemotherapy, my body has adopted many of the symptoms of early menopause, including the dreaded hot flash. I feel for any woman who has to go through this. I don't think I've had an uninterrupted night's sleep since they started. I wake, because I feel as though the blankets around me are going to burst into flame because I'm so hot. Then, before I can get back to sleep, it has passed and I'm freezing again. And so it goes, several times during the night. Blankets off, blankets on. It isn't so bad during the day, I guess because I'm dressed for summer. It might be more of a nuisance if I was wearing sweaters. Scientists should look at cases of spontaneous human combustion and see how many of them were women of a certain age -- it could be hot flashes out of control.