My Day Full of Insecurities

As the wedding date has gotten closer and closer, I have been getting a little anxious about it. No, I am most certainly getting cold feet. I am so excited for the wedding that I am getting a little anxious about it. When I get anxious my insecurities end up getting the best of me. DeAngela, Eden, and Egor all got to see that today. What has been on my mind is “Am I good enough for him?” and “Is he excited to be marrying me?”
I think these are my old insecurities coming back to haunt me back from high school. I have kind of grown into my face since my high school years, but here are some things that I hated about myself back then: my lack of boobs, my flat butt, my very toned stomach, my all-over acne (this included my face, back, and chest), my larger nose, and most importantly that I had a very red tone to my face. I was embarrassed to try to flirt with guys because in the back of my mind I would be focusing on all of my flaws when I should have been thinking about all of the good things about myself such as my bright, blue eyes, infectious laugh, and my bright white smile.
It is kind of weird for me to think of myself being stuck-up on the comments said about me during the past, but it still hurts. I always will remember the words an ex told me, “You look like a pink monkey.” Yeah, I was totally embarrassed.
But what I should be thinking about all that I have to offer now: intelligence, my ability to handle sarcasm and give it right back, my ability to cook, that I get along with a lot of people, that I am a genuinely nice person, that I have not made any major life mistakes, my hair is finally growing back, my cute freckles, the fact that I finally got the boobs and butt that I had always wanted. In fact, I have a bigger rack than most of the swimmers (considering that swimmers are not supposed to have any drag in the front, aka swimmers boobs) but I have smaller hips than most do, I have little baby hips that I never noticed until Katie and Shaila noticed when we were trying on our fastskin suits. Then it finally made sense to them why I was able to fit into a size 26 suit rather than a 32.
I am lucky that my friends put up with my insecurities during this time- and most of the time I am a very confident person, I think it is just that the wedding is coming quickly and I always have to make sure everyone is happy, so on top of that list I have to make sure that my fiance is number one on that list. I want to make sure that he is fine (well more than fine, happy) to be marrying me and all that comes with me, although I am a low maintenance girl. I always feel like I am responsible for the feelings of others, and Egor is no different. I want to make sure that he is truly content with marrying me. He has, of course, reassured me that he is excited for the wedding and for marrying me. I also don’t think that the whole me being terminal has quite gotten to him because he does not really like it when I say things like “I will leave behind a legacy” and stuff about my timeline. I totally get it, I am probably still in denial of my imminent death, and so are a lot of people. And I think that is ok, because I feel that ignorance is sweet, sweet, bliss.
Ok, so more about my day! Well last night my brother, mom, and I got the pleasure to see Kyle, one of the nurses assistants and hang out with him for like an hour talking about creepy guys, code words, and other things all while watching The Bachelorette. Kyle is a nice and innocent guy who is fun to talk to because he and I share the same sort of humor.
So my radiation trip was very normal and non-stressful considering how bad the last day had been. The weather was humid but raining, however I am not a fan of rain but I loved the humidity because the temperature is perfect! When I got back from radiation I was pleased with meeting a new chemo buddy named Ashleigh. She had just graduated high school and has/had osteosarcoma, which is one hell of a scary disease. Anything with the base “osteo” is never a good diagnosis (as you can probably tell with my “luck” of Ewings sarcoma visiting me twice. Anyways, Ashleigh is a very nice girl who happened to look very good bald, so she was one of the lucky few who does not have a misshapen head. Plus her head was not full of tons of big moles, unlike myself when I was a little baldy. Then my buddy from kindergarten all the way through middle school (he moved to a rival school our sophomore year) Drake came by for a visit. It was so nice seeing him, and it felt like no time had passed between all of the years that we had not spoken. Eden later came to visit me and brought along the movie “Perks of Being a Wallflower”. And oh my goodness, that was such a good movie! I was impressed, and most of all it had a great ending, which is all that I can handle at this point without breaking down and sobbing other than horror films. But I truly recommend this movie to anyone, and I have no clue how I went so long without watching it!
After everyone left, my dad came with Squeeze In burgers for dinner, as I had never tried them before. I was not impressed because it had a lack of seasoning. But it was a nice and juicy burger so that pretty much made up for the taste (not that it was bad at all or anything!) So my dad and I watched one of my favorite fat people show, (other than The Biggest Loser) Extreme Makeover: Weightloss Edition. Now Chopped is on while I am writing this blog. I also accomplished to buy the bridesmaids their gifts: a necklace (which will remain undisclosed until the wedding) that will go perfectly with their dresses, so naturally I am proud of my online shopping skills. I also managed to get some gifts for my kitty Panda- a brush and two toys, and for my dogs Jocelin and Buffy, I got each of them a really cool chew toy that they hopefully won’t tear apart within minutes of me giving them to the dogs.
Also, I forgot to post this earlier, Eden approached me when everyone else was gone and asked me what was on my bucket list. So I had to scroll through my blog to find it, and Eden, bless her heart, said that whatever I was not going to be able to mark off of my list, that she would do it for me at one point. She truly is a great friend to have- we both support each other through our hard times.
I will leave on that good note and write again tomorrow!

Surgery and Chemo Aftermath- 3 weeks

Well, I guess that I should continue writing here on a more regular basis in order to keep my thoughts in line and let people know how I am doing, whether they are strangers or friends, I will keep this as real as I can- however I can tell you that while I am a very optimistic person, I do have some dark and cynical thoughts towards the whole subject of me getting cancer for a second time. I will be posting all of my thoughts here, the good and the bad. I only post optimistic and happy statuses on my Facebook account because I refuse to let people worry about me or think of me as just being the sick girl who complains constantly (which I really don’t by the way).

So to get this started, I had six incisions given to me in the surgery ward. Two were designated for my port. One was for the line of the port to connect it to a main vein to my heart and the other was a pocket for the actual port itself. Since this time I will not be hospitalized for my chemo they gave me a single port instead of a double one (which I had last time and it really stood out as something that was not normal, while my new port looks like maybe a big mosquito bite, so not bad at all). Two of my other cuts were for a microscope to look around for my tumors along my ribs and in the areas around the left lung- and then they stuck in a chest tube in the same area that they had biopsied in order to suck out the fluid surrounding my lungs, as my lung was collapsed and they were trying to make it easier to reflate. The last two incisions were made on my hip bones, where I had my bone marrow aspirations and also biopsies, where I am told that they took a tiny chip of the bone itself as well as the marrow. (which completely explains why that hurt the most out of all of my operations.

Now, after almost three weeks after the surgeries and my first round of chemo I am feeling incredibly good. Like so good, that I got impatient and went swimming while my scars were still healing, so it hurt a little bit but I pulled through and got my workouts in while I could.

On Thursday the 23rd I went to my swim team banquet and got to see all of my swim team friends and discovered just how good of a support system they are. They presented me with a quilt that was hand-made and had patches where each person on the team got to write and draw their own square with what they wanted to say to me. They were all so cute, some of them funny, and made me realize that the team loves me as much as I love them. Another great part of that night (aside from seeing everyone) is that I discovered that I had made an All American time- even though I was unable to swim at state. My conference time was good enough to stay in the top 16 times in the state, so I was elated at this unexpected event.

Then on Saturday the 25th I went clubbing in San Francisco with some of my buddies from swim team (who all happened to be All Americans too) and my best friend DeAngela and her wrestling teammate from Kentucky. Needless to say we had a fantastic time. I danced so much that my hair looked like I had gotten straight out of the pool. Crazy. What I did like about it was the amount of attention that I was receiving. I have never had so many guys after me as I did that night. It was flattering, and sometimes a little annoying at how persistent some guys can be when it comes to wanting to dance with you no matter what. But the attention made me feel pretty and wanted, which is more than I can say how I feel like I have been received as in college.

And now that I am on the subject of feeling wanted and whatnot, I feel pretty unwanted when it comes to dating. Now more than ever. I was talking to this guy from my team and thought that maybe I could like this guy, but he got what he wanted and hardly even talks to me anymore, which I think is super rude considering that we are still friends and above that teammates. But whatever, I am unsure of whether I liked him or not or was a fan of the attention, either way I still want an explanation of what happened, except I am a little too afraid to ask about that.

And another thought, it is kind of sad that I think about this, but I feel like people who I have talked to but never ended up getting in a relationship with for one reason or another, I feel like they are relieved that nothing ever blossomed between us. I mean, it is very hard to ask someone to be your boyfriend when you are going through chemo. Trust me, I’ve tried, and it did not work out too well, but that was my fault for putting too much pressure on the poor guy.

Now more than ever I figure that it will be harder for me to find a good guy because of my health problems. It will be more difficult to meet new people if I am not going to be in school for at least one semester and possibly a whole year. I am going to stay active through all of this and try to get out and meet as many new people as I can. I mean, I will be swimming every single day that I feel good once chemo is over for the week. I will be able to work out almost 2 weeks out of 3… So I guess that isn’t too bad at all. Just because I have cancer doesn’t mean that I have to look or act the part. I will not be a victim of this disease and will fight it and defeat it just as I have done two years ago.

Tomorrow marks my next round of chemo and Ill be very honest, I am scared, mad, anxious, anticipating on how I will be feeling after it. Luckily for anti nausea drugs I will hopefully not be puking my guts out. So far I have been lucky and have saved myself every time that I have almost thrown up. I want that to continue so that this chemo can be as comfortable as chemo can be for a 20 year old girl.