[vickie h]

I read your journal, walked out to the sun and cried as I sat on the deck staring at the creek below. Your writing touched my heart so deeply. It was interesting, heartfelt and heart breaking all at once. It took me back over three years ago to Feb (like you) when I was diagnosed with stage 3b IBC.

I was greeted by four Drs. while I was in the hospital with pneumonia. It seems that the CAT scan they took of my chest lit up like a christmas tree, and they were somber, looking at the floor, their eyes fleeting, glancing only as long as they had to at me lying there in bed. I was told that my prognosis was very poor and that chemo was my only hope for another year or two of life. My husband was running an errand and I was there by myself. I felt myself wanting to reach out and put my hands on their heavy shoulders. I told them not to be burdened...I felt sorry for them. One was a surgeon, the other an Oncologist, another a plastic surgeon, and the other a Pulmonologist. I told them I would be OK, I smiled, I felt my body melt into the crisp, white hospital sheets, I turned and stared out the door. When they left, the tears fell like acid across my cheeks onto my chest, etching the beginning of a story I was part of, an actress in a movie I never auditioned for, a black comedy perhaps. I fled to Mexico as soon as I left the hospital and would not call back home for the results of my biopsy. I sat by the pool and ate almonds and brown rice and water, while others feasted on enchiladas and washed them down with margaritas. I took long walks and swam and wondered about all things.

I came home to messages on my phone directing me to an Oncologist's office and my diagnosis. They were frantic, they were worried. I called them, haltingly, and assured them I would be OK. I fled then to The Kushi Institute, A macrobiotic compound in Maryland. Again, I stayed there for a week and cancelled appointments for chemo. I ate lots of seaweed, vegies, brown rice, and slept to the sound of the snow outside.

I came home and started chemo, and as they put in that first needle, again the tears spilled all over my shirt. I felt broken, I felt lost, I felt cheated. The women sitting near me nodded in recognition, in sisterhood. They knew. I didn't yet. The nurses hugged me and comforted me that day. My husband and daughters stood by me like boulders fending off the floods. I walked out of there a person changed forever. My hair fell out a week later, followed by all other body hair the next week. I. too. stared in the mirror, but a strange thing happened then. I looked at a reflection of a woman filled with stregnth and courage and hope and I hardly recognized her. It was me. Without any hair, eyelashes, or wigs. I missed the old me, wanting to hang on, but letting go and floating into the next world.

Today, I have hair, and eyelashes and dignity. I love the new me, though I still catch a glimpse of myself all those years ago in the mirror. I've decided I love both of those people and I love you, too, Vickie