A Day to Celebrate!

At long last, I am done with all cancer treatments! I finished radiation therapy yesterday. Since I started chemo in early October, this means that I've endured and survived eight months of intensive treatment. I am very VERY glad to be done with this part of my journey, but I still have the last part of my reconstructive surgery to get through. So starting in July/August, I will be busy with my regular yearly checkup; a full-body MRI, bonescan, and CT scan; bloodwork (they will look for tumor markers); followups with all three of my cancer-related docs; and the decision as to whether to go ahead with the final reconstruction on August 25. I am very thankful to have survived thus far and so grateful for the support of Kyle and all of you. Though I am relieved to be done with treatment, I will not breathe easily until (or if) I reach the five-year cancer-free mark. As I have said often in this blog, I don't mean to be negative, just honest and realistic.

The second big piece of news is that we sold our house in Michigan! Good lord, what a relief. And right up front, I want to give all the credit to my mother-in-law, Carol, who I hope will be long blessed by whatever god(s), saints, or fates there may be. She and Kyle and my father-in-law did everything regarding this transaction. I decided early on that I could focus on only one extremely stressful thing at a time, and since I was the one with CANCER, it seemed that that should be my focus :). I completely put the sale of the house out of my mind except for the occasional times that Kyle mentioned it to me. Honestly, it was the first time in my life that I really was able to completely NOT think about something that stressful -- well, to be honest, I did think about it at the beginning of each month for the past year when rent and mortgage payments completely ate up my paycheck. But I just tried to breathe deeply and not worry. So last Wednesday, we closed on the sale. The people who bought the house do not have pristine credit and so could not get a traditional mortgage. Carol was able to broker a land-contract (aka owner-financed) deal, which although risky, is certainly better than nothing! In essence, we will continue to pay our mortgage, but the new owners will be paying us each month. Even though we still have the mortgage, we technically no longer own the house, and so they are responsible for any repairs and maintenance that is needed. Carol is a very good judge of character and said that she really trusts that these people will do what they are now contractually obligated to do. Also, they are paying us a higher interest rate than we pay our mortgage company, so we will theoretically -- if all goes as it should -- actually make money on this sale eventually, which we would not have done had the buyers been able to get a traditional mortgage. So we all need to keep our fingers crossed and hope that everything goes well!

On to more mundane news: my skin has continued to do pretty well with the radiation treatments. I have had only mild tenderness and peeling, similar to what one would get after a sunburn, on the upper-left quadrant of my chest. I was quite puzzled by a rectangular-shaped red area on the upper-left quadrant of my back and so asked one of the radiation techs about it yesterday. She said it is the burn from where the radiation has been *exiting* my body. I never thought about the fact that it goes out the back, lol! So I'm a bit itchy on my back as well. My radiation nurse told me yesterday that I can expect the side effects to continue for two weeks and then start to get better. She also said that I have to be extremely careful about sun and wind exposure for the next year -- I'm supposed to wear sunscreen *under* my clothing now since fabric doesn't always block UVA and UVB rays. I also went to the dentist (my cousin Van in Fort Worth) for a checkup and cleaning last week, and he said I didn't need to have any work done, which I was actually surprised by. The chemo and all the anti-side-effect drugs had made my mouth SO dry for SO many months that I thought surely I would have some bad decay. But Van said we just need to keep an eye on one tooth and that was it. So, yay!

Work is going well, as usual. I am now very busy with committee work: I'm on a search committee for a new librarian in our Information Literacy Program Area (these are the folks who work mainly with first-year students), and week after next, we will be starting the interview process with our top four candidates. Each interview lasts about a day and a half with the candidates meeting multiple groups/people in the library, giving a presentation, going out to dinner, as well as meeting with the search committee for 2+ hours. That week, we will have two candidates in, the following week we will have one, and the last week of June, the final candidate will be on campus. I also have several instruction sessions coming up before I go to the ALA conference in DC June 24-28, and I am on another committee that is setting up guidelines for digitizing collections both within the library and across the campus. What did I say in my last post about summer being slower??

We had so much fun last Sunday at the Memorial Day party that Gretchen organized and hosted at her parents house; the photos I put at the start of this post were taken there. Since they have a pool and were agreeable to us all descending on them like locusts, we totally could not resist. It was a hot, sunny day -- perfect for the pool! I stayed in the shade most of the day and wore a short-sleeved turtleneck and swim shorts to keep covered, but I did allow myself to swim in the refreshing water for a short while. Gretchen smoked a huge brisket, baby-back ribs, and home-made sausage -- everything was SO delicious! Gretchen and her mom even invited our dogs, so they had lots of fun running around and playing with everyone. It was a great day :).

On a more somber note, I have several times lately been close to tears regarding the tragedy in the Gulf. I consider myself a Louisianian after having lived there for 20+ years, and to see the lifeblood of that state being ravaged because of corporate greed and malfeasance and idiocy, as well as (at best) neglect and (at worst) active illegal activity within the federal agency that oversees drilling -- it's almost overwhelming. I really do not understand how the U.S. Gulf region and surrounding nations will recover from this disaster in my lifetime, even if I happen to live to a ripe old age. I have heard that some are comparing this event to Chernobyl; it seems much, much worse to me.

That's about it for now. I hope you are happy and well. Peace, Jody.