Author: Julie

When I was a child, growing up in Alaska, my mom was a prolific painter

My mom loved the Eskimo people and became close friends with an older Eskimo woman named Mary who shared her family photo album with my mother. Many of the portraits my mother painted were from Mary’s photo album.

My mother passed away more than 30 years ago. Several years ago I created a page here that is devoted to my mother’s art. Several people who were lucky enough to have one of my mother’s pieces have reached out to me after googling my mother’s name and finding that web page. Many of them have shared photos of their art with me and today I spent quite a lot of time organizing my mother’s artwork into this album on flickr.

Click to view Mom’s Art Gallery.

Click here to view Flickr album of artwork

Rest in Peace

I’m sad to post that Thelma Turley died on June 12th. Click here to read her obituary.

Back when I held the very first NeedleNerds meeting 18 years ago (?!), the first and only person who showed up that night was Thelma. She and I sat and talked late into the night and when I left the restaurant I knew that I had made a dear friend.

Throughout the years, Thelma attended most of our meetings and was always so willing and generous to share her knowledge about all things related to fiber with me and so many others, and she was always so quick to help out the newbies with any knitting or crocheting questions they had.

In our early days, Thelma held a knitting workshop for anyone who wanted to learn how to knit and Thelma can be credited and praised for getting some of us started on our very first knitting projects through that workshop.

I can’t begin to put into words how much I will miss her.

Today I went to see the plastic surgeon who is working on my breast reconstruction

Today I went to see the plastic surgeon who is working on my breast reconstruction. As I sat in the waiting room, I looked at each of the other people who were waiting in the room with me. Most of them were women, some had a friend, child, spouse sitting with them.

A nurse would come to the door and call out a name. Patients who had finished with their appointments walked through the waiting room on their way out the door. I saw a few patients who had drains, a few patients stopped at the front desk to make their next appointment. A few stopped to purchase the small, expensive tube of scar cream that I purchased several weeks ago.

It occurred to me that I had been all of these women during all the stages of my diagnosis, treatment and after care. I am almost at the end of breast reconstruction – the tissue spreader that was placed in my chest during mastectomy in February is filled and I’m ready for a final surgery that will replace the tissue spreader with a permanent boob.

For several minutes a woman was standing in front of me. Her two teenaged daughters were waiting across the room. I could see that the left side of her chest was flat just like mine had been right after mastectomy. She was walking down the same path as I had (I was several steps ahead of her). I thought about the terror I felt in the beginning, right at the time I heard the words, You have breast cancer. I thought about the insurmountable and continuous stress I suffered as I walked into my diagnosis, the MRI, the ultrasounds, the numerous doctor visits that lead to a mastectomy. And I thought about coming home from surgery with drainage tubes hanging out my chest, my left hand and arm useless after sentinel node extraction. Going home to bed where I spent the next couple of weeks propped up with too many pillows as I drifted into sleep, waiting for pathology to tell me what came next.

I was overcome with love, compassion, empathy for the woman who stood before me, I felt connected to all of the women I’d seen in the waiting room. We were all sisters, connected by our diagnoses, walking similar paths – at least in the beginning. I’m lucky. My breast cancer was removed by mastectomy, no cancer in my lymph nodes means no radiation, no chemotherapy. I have climbed to the top of my mountain and am now descending down to a normal, if things go well, life. I know many women’s cancer will take them down paths I hope to never walk, but all these women are my sisters. I have lived their fear, shared their pain, suffered through their stress.

There are other countless unknown women who have walked the path before me, shared the path alongside me, and who will walk the path behind me. The future before me has been reset to a future with many unknowns along the way, but it is comforting to know that I really am not alone in all of this.

Cancer’s Aftermath

As of February 9th, I am cancer free. A few days later I learned that the cancer had not progressed to my lymph nodes. Since I had the whole breast removed, there is no need for radiation therapy or chemotherapy. I will be on hormone therapy – a pill I take each day – for several years. And I will see my breast surgeon every 4 months for the next couple of years. This is the best case scenario for breast cancer.

But recovery & healing from the mastectomy has not been easy. In the last few weeks I’ve had another surgery to remove a hematoma in my chest, then the very next day a trip to the ER, another surgery to remove another hematoma and an overnight stay in observation. My doctors were baffled as to why I was bleeding the way I was bleeding, so now I am seeing a hematologist who has given me a tentative diagnosis of a rare genetic blood disease that I never knew I had. Nothing better than discovering my blood doesn’t clot normally when I am trying to recover from surgery.

So all that bleeding left me anemic and today I had the first of three iron infusions. The infusions involve a needle in my arm for 1-1/2 hours while iron is infused directly into my blood stream. My sister sat beside me the whole time and we had a great time talking about our childhood memories.

Recovery has been harder than the cancer treatment. I am thankful to be cancer free and I think when more time has passed and this thing is really truly in the rearview mirror, I will know in my heart that even though I lost a breast, I got out easy… that I had the best case of breast cancer .. One that was found early, that was very small, and had not spread to my lymph nodes. A lot of women don’t get out so easy.

Courage

I’ve been living in a storm since December.  A storm whose nature twists and turns and changes with every new decision that must be made RIGHT NOW and as new information is learned. That’s what cancer has turned out to be for me.

I have been praying every night since before I received a diagnosis, “God! Please give me peace! Keep my blood pressure down (it has peaked at levels above 200) during all the diagnostic tests  Please let it NOT be cancer.”

But then after diagnosis, my prayer changed to, “God! Please give me peace! Protect my lymph nodes from this cancer.”

With every test, every doctor’s visit my stress grew, my fear became greater. My prayer shifted once again to “God! Please give me peace, protect my lymph nodes and keep them clear of cancer and …. please oh please give me courage to keep stepping forward into this storm.” I’ve wanted more than anything to climb into my bed, pull the covers up over my head and do nothing, pretend that the storm does not exist. I have asked Mark, “Hey I wonder what happens if I stop – just don’t show up for that nother test, exam, doctors visit.” But I know that’s not an option. The storm will not disappear, it will not go away. If I stop stepping forward it will take me over and ultimately kill me. So I keep stepping forward, I keep showing up for the next test, the next consult despite my fear. It is the only option and the quickest way for me to get through this storm. I learned long ago (when my mother died) that the best way through the storm is to turn towards it, yelling, “BRING IT ON”. I may get bruised & battered, even beaten to a pulp, but the storm passes over eventually.

I fall back to a favorite biblical passage that comforts me and brings me hope, “Weeping may endure for the evening, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5). I’m ready for some more joy.

I ‘ve found some great quotes about courage that resonate with me and that resonance helps to keep me stepping forward into the storm:

“All problems become smaller if you don’t dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble.” ~ William Halsey

“Having courage does not mean that we are unafraid. Having courage and showing courage mean we face our fears. We are able to say, ‘I have fallen, but I will get up.'” ~ Maya Angelou

“Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it.” ~ Mark Twain