Salty Zebra

   Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  After my first radiation treatment, I was excited to come home and write this post and tell you about all the wonderful and crazy things that had taken place, but there's so much more life going on right now than I have bandwidth for, and writing a post fell to the bottom of the list. That worked out well, though, because each day added on a little more insight as well as intrigue, and I think this post will have benefitted from waiting until the end of the week to be written. Come along with me and find out about what I learned in my first five days of radiation therapy!  As expected, my husband had us up before the crack of dawn on the first day of treatment. He actually set his ala...

  Bring us back to yourself, O LORD, so that we may return to you; renew our life as in days before. Lamentations 5:21  Do you ever think back to the “Good Old Days?” Times when things were easier, happier? When your children lived at home, or when they were little? Before some major health or job crisis? Do you ever long for that joy to be restored? Jeremiah did. This book I’ve read through over the last week, Lamentations, catalogs the hurt and degradation of his people. This was all well-deserved, as he often mentions, because of how the people had turned away from God, but that doesn’t make it good. Jeremiah knew what life could be like, and he wanted it back.   The title of this book, Lamentations, means, “Expression of sorrow; cries of grief; the act of bewailing.”* This is not sadness. It is not a mild depression or feeling down. This is a desperate, gut-wrenching expression of distress. Jeremiah’s whole world had been turned upside-down, as indeed it had for h...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  Today I head into the City for my first radiation treatment. I'll write a post for next Monday to tell you all about it, but I don't know yet what that's going to look like, so today I'm going to write to you about Zora. I would super  appreciate your prayers as I head into treatment though!  When you're going through something hard, it's nice to have a buddy, a friend, someone who will be with you through thick and thin, someone who can even come into the room with you during a radiation treatment, in other words, a stuffy. My husband first suggested it shortly after we found out that my treatment was being moved up . We've taken a small stuffed animal with us on ...

Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  I don't know why, but with me, there's always a catch. Before my brain surgery, I ended up with a horrifically painful sinus infection that blew out the back wall of my sinus, leaving tiny pieces of bone floating in my head, and preventing me from getting the surgery that was critical to my survival. Turns out, it's not a good idea to perform brain surgery on someone with an active head infection 😬. That delayed my brain surgery for a full month, and it weighed heavily on my mind as I approached radiation therapy and, yet another, bizarre, unexplained complication arose.  I've struggled with scalp issues for months, I don't know why. Perhaps it came from reverting to comme...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  From the time I was given my setup appointment for June 2nd, my husband and I felt like a clock was ticking. On the one hand, we felt like we would get more information at the appointment, including a promised schedule. On the other hand, this appointment would start to make it all real, and it certainly did! I think I came out of it feeling a little shell-shocked. For those interested, and perhaps those who might come after me and want to know for themselves, I'll walk you through our day.  As per usual, we arrived for my appointment about an hour beforehand. My husband is a big proponent of being early! I factored this in, though, and packed us a lunch to eat since my appointment time w...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .    When I learned that I had about four and a half months before I started radiation therapy, I wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to both do the things that were important to me, like my trip with my son, and prepare for the road ahead. They tell you a little about what to expect, but treatment hits every person a little differently so they can't say much for sure. My primary symptoms associated with my tumor (I have lots associated with other illnesses but we're hoping they won't be affected) are nausea and vertigo. My doctor has warned me that these will likely increase as treatment progresses because radiation causes inflammation to the area of the tumor, effectively...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .  There's lots to do before I start radiation in 35 days, and I have to prioritize. When looking at my list, one of the hardest things was cutting my hair. Three years ago, I had three brain surgeries which resulted in a shaved head at the end. That was a tough decision at first, but when I found that I would have several strange, shaved patches, and I had spent two weeks in the neuro ICU not being able to wash or care for my hair properly, it got a little easier. After surgery, I very much wanted to grow my hair back out. There's something about my body and brain that tell me I need to put my hair in a ponytail. If I can't, I just don't feel right. One year later (exactly one y...

  Over the next few weeks, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor,  check out these posts . So... Crazy week. I wrote my first post in this series last week under the impression that I had four and a half months until I would be starting radiation and I had a lot of things I wanted to do to get ready. I already have ten other posts in this series started in my drafts folder - so much to do. So much I want to take care of. And this week, well that timeline shrunk significantly. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's what happened.  Last weekend I had an amazing time with my family. We talked a lot about radiation, and I thought more and more about it. To say I started questioning myself would be an understatement. You see, the determination to begin treatment was made based...

Over the next few months, I'll be sharing regular posts about how I'm preparing for radiation in the fall. I'm hoping these can help someone else, as I struggled to find a conversational source like this that dealt with the subject. For more information on my brain tumor, check out these posts .    Last weekend, my family came together to celebrate my husband's 50th birthday. The timing of this was pretty special as I'd just received confirmation from my medical team that my brain tumor had officially entered progression (at least 20% growth) just a couple of days before, which I explained in my post last week . One of the hardest parts of this process has been having to communicate, at each step, what's going on to my family, especially my children. Don't get me wrong, they've been amazing about it! But I hate seeing the burden of knowledge weighing heavily on them.  Each of my kids have reacted differently to news of my tumor at different stages in thi...