First... A Public Service Announcement of sorts. ;)
Today I had my quarterly appt with my Oncologist, Dr. Hurley. I love the hospital I go to. I always feel like I'm treated well there. It's a very reassuring place for me. I feel like I'm in good hands... but I always like to go there armed with info. I like to do my homework so to speak.
So as I was sitting in "the chair" in the hallway of the exam rooms getting my blood pressure and temperature taken, out walks Dr. Hurley. He greeted me and said he'd been wanting to talk to me. He mentioned something about the symposium back in April and
Breast MRI's being the new standard of care for high risk women. My reply was oh good... I had wanted to talk to you about that, too! :)
In 2005, when I was diagnosed, mammograms and ultrasounds were the most common diagnostic tool used most everywhere I think. Shortly after that I began reading about more and more women having Breast MRI's as well. Breast MRI's don't replace mammograms but are particularly helpful in diagnosing cancer in women with dense breast tissue. I had been wanting to ask if that was an option for me and was SO PLEASED that we were on the same page.
I am scheduled for Sept. 5. Now, I'm not excited about the contrast dye injection or the 45 min or so stay in the claustrophobic type chamber of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine while it whirls and clunks away like a jackhammer... but I am very excited to be able to manage my health better. Cancer if caught early is a very good thing! Cancer that has spread to other areas of the body, metastatic cancer, well... that's a bit trickier to deal with. I'll have none of that, thank you. ;)
So anyway, for all my "sisters" out there, find out about Breast MRI's if it isn't already in your diagnostic toolbox. For women with high risk factors or a mother or sister with Breast Cancer, a Breast MRI may be a great tool for you as well. Check into it. :)
Now, some really neat thoughts on perspective:
Commencement Speech
made by Pulitzer Prize winning author Anna Quindlen
at Villanova University
I'm a novelist. My work is human nature. Real life is all I know. Don't ever confuse the two, your life and your work. You will walk out of here this afternoon with only one thing that no one else has. There will be hundreds of people out there with your same degree; there will be thousands of people doing what you want to do for a living. But you will be the only person alive who has sole custody of your life.
Your particular life. Your entire life. Not just your life at a desk, or your life on a bus, or in a car, or at the computer. Not just the life of your mind, but the life of your heart. Not just your bank account but your soul.
People don't talk about the soul very much anymore. It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit. But a resume is a cold comfort on a winter night, or when you're sad, or broke, or lonely, or when you've gotten back the test results and they're not so good.
Here is my resume: I am a good mother to three children. I have tried never to let my profession stand in the way of being a good parent. I no longer consider myself the center of the universe. I show up. I listen. I try to laugh. I am a good friend to my husband. I have tried to make marriage vows mean what they say.
I am a good friend to my friends, and they to me. Without them, there would be nothing to say to you today, because I would be a cardboard cutout. But I call them on the phone, and I meet them for lunch. I would be rotten, or at best mediocre at my job, if those other things were not true. You cannot be really first rate at your work if your work is all you are.
So here's what I wanted to tell you today: Get a life. A real life, not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.
Do you think you'd care so very much about those things if you blew an aneurysm one afternoon, or found a lump in your breast? Get a life in which you notice the smell of salt water pushing itself on a breeze over Seaside Heights, a life in which you stop and watch how a red tailed hawk circles over the water or the way a baby scowls with concentration when she tries to pick up a Cheerio with her thumb and first finger. Get a life in which you are not alone. Find people you love, and who love you. And remember that love is not leisure, it is work. Pick up the phone. Send an e-mail. Write a letter.
Get a life in which you are generous. And realize that life is the best thing ever, and that you have no business taking it for granted. Care so deeply about its goodness that you want to spread it around. Take money you would have spent on beers and give it to charity. Work in a soup kitchen. Be a big brother or sister.
All of you want to do well. But if you do not do good too, then doing well will never be enough.
It is so easy to waste our lives, our days, our hours, our minutes. It is so easy to take for granted the color of our kids' eyes, the way the melody in a symphony rises and falls and disappears and rises again.
It is so easy to exist instead of to live. I learned to live many years ago. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get.
I learned to look at all the good in the world and try to give some of it back because I believed in it, completely and utterly. And I tried to do that, in part, by telling others what I had learned.
By telling them this:
Consider the lilies of the field. Look at the fuzz on a babys ear.
Read in the backyard with the sun on your face. Learn to be happy. And think of life as a terminal illness, because if you do, you will live it with joy and passion as it ought to be lived.
No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time at the office. I found one of my best teachers on the boardwalk at Coney Island maybe 15 years ago. It was December, and I was doing a story about how the homeless survive in the winter months.
He and I sat on the edge of the wooden supports, dangling our feet over the side, and he told me about his schedule; panhandling the boulevard when the summer crowds were gone, sleeping in a church when the temperature went below freezing, hiding from the police amidst the Tilt a Whirl and the Cyclone and some of the other seasonal rides. But he told me that most of the time he stayed on the boardwalk, facing the water, just the way we were sitting now even when it got cold and he had to wear his newspapers after he read them.
And I asked him why. Why didn't he go to one of the shelters? Why didn't he check himself into the hospital for detox? And he just stared out at the ocean and said, "Look at the view, young lady. Look at the view."
And every day, in some little way, I try to do what he said. I try to look at the view. And that's the last thing I have to tell you today, words of wisdom from a man with not a dime in his pocket, no place to go, nowhere to be. Look at the view. You'll never be disappointed.
-- Anna Quindlen
Hugs,
Dana
...so fast.
Here's a really neat photo Scotty took of the recent Full Moon. I just love this one. I think I need to frame it... but I have to find a place for it first!
