Don't take it for granted

One of the things I love to do is ride my bike. I haven't ridden it since before my diagnosis. I finally got it off of the deck today and put it in my car and went down to the bike path, I try not to ride in traffic, I just don't trust the drivers nowdays, texting, cellphones, ipods, there are a lot of distractions, so I just enjoy the path.

The picture above is like the one that I have, it is a Kona Smoke, a commuter bike I bought used 2 summers before my diagnosis, from winnings from the local casino, I don't usually go to the casino, but my friends were in town and they wanted to see it so I went. Casinos are ok, mostly if they are in Vegas, and if they would be smoke free they would be better.

Most people enjoy a good wine or beer to give them a good buzz. I enjoy exercise. There is nothing like being on a bike on a nice summer day to clear your head and relax you, even if, like today, my legs burn from exercising yesterday and it was very windy, and I couldn't go as far as I usually bike but I went a decent distance considering I haven't been on the bike since 2007, before my diagnosis.

I am looking forward to this summer more than other summers. I have my energy back, for the most part. I have a wonderful man who loves me, and we have plans to do things around here, which we couldn't do the past two years just because of my illness, nothing exciting, trips around town, miniature golf, the local ice cream maker has kitchen and tasting tours(not too many of those, then I will definitely need to be on the bike more) but Doug and I keep saying that we need to do this and that and go here and there. This summer we will. After everything I have been through, after everything we have been through together, why wait. Life is too short to wait for the good stuff.

Listen to Mel on The Vic McCarty show10am-Noon weekdays Monday-Friday eastern standard time on Wmktthetalkstation.com

Isn't it ironic, don't you think???

Ok. I am no stranger to side effects. Like most cancer survivors/warriors I have had my fair share, which if you are a follower of this blog you know all about so no need for me to repeat myself. Today I saw the endocrinologist, follow up appointment and checking on the Hashimoto's Thyroiditis that I have, (Yeah I didn't make that up, Daniel-san, that is what it is called) making sure my thyroid levels were all good based upon the medication I am taking.

I asked the doc about my constant fatigue, which was getting better after I started taking Vitamin D.

So here I am almost a month later after I started taking the Vitamin D and I am still tired. Yes I have blogged about this before, but you know what I found out? I am probably doing it to myself, not because I am firing on all cylanders or burning the candle at both ends or insert other cliche' here, but because I am weaning myself off of medication (with the doctor's approval of course, I don't go off any meds without letting one of my docs or ologists know about it)

The nurse promised me it would get better. Easy to say when its not you.

You know that refreshed feeling you get when you wake up from a nap or a good nights sleep? I haven't felt that in a while, I wake up thinking about when can I take my next nap. I don't wake up during the night and I know I dream because I remember bits and pieces.

Pretty ironic, don't you think? Yep like that Alanis Morrisette song, only if it was a black fly in my chardonnay I would call the waiter and ask for another glass, or if it was like rain on your wedding day, well I think that last one would just plain suck.

Thefreedictionary.com defines ironic as - characterized by often poignant difference or incongruity between what is expected and what actually is; "madness, an ironic fate for such a clear thinker"; "it was ironical that the well-planned scheme failed so completely"

Yep the last one feels like me. A well planned scheme (going off meds, the meds are supposed to make me feel better) failing so completely (makes me so tired and frustrated)

The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed and can't get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.- Edgar Watson Howe

Well said Edgar, well said.

The only constant is change

It has been an exciting few weeks. I just started a new job. I am still producing the Vic McCarty Show. I am also producing a new show for a new internet radio network empoweradio.com. The Maria Shaw show is the new show I am producing. I finally feel like I am doing what I am supposed to be doing. I obviously felt that during The Vic McCarty show, but now that I am solely producing radio I am very happy. I am not on air during Maria's show, which is just fine with me, I love being Vic's comic foil on the Vic McCarty show and championing the causes that I believe in.

I am slowly feeling like myself again. The vitamin D deficiency put a dent in my plans to get back to the "new normal." I am still having problems with what is referred to as "Chemo brain." This is very hard for me. Before cancer I was always on top of my game, I could remember peoples names and faces, and now sometimes I still struggle to get words out. I know that when I get tired it aggrivates my lack of focus, and I was pretty tired today. I was ready for a nap at 11:30 in the morning, and of course since I work full time I don't think my employer would appreciate me taking a snooze in the middle of a radio show, it wouldn't make for a good program that is for sure.

It gets frustrating to take 3 steps forward and 2 steps back. Sometimes I feel like I am playing some game of monopoly. Some days I own all the hotels and I am winning the game, some days I do not pass go, do not collect $200.00.

Listen to me on The Vic McCarty Show weekdays 10am-noon eastern time on wmktthetalkstation.com

Listen to the show I produce The Maria Shaw Shows weekdays noon-three eastern time on empoweradio.com

This is my first published article from 2008

THE ULTIMATE FACE OFF
Reprinted by permission from the Grand Traverse Womans Magazine Oct 08 issue

I have always had a wicked sense of humor. I get that from my dad. On Sept 18, 2007, when I was told, "It's cancer," I didn't know how my sense of humor and my favorite game, hockey, would get me through perhaps the greatest challenge of my life. Immediately I saw the irony in my breast cancer. I had just participated in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life a couple of months before and now I was a cancer survivor. My primary care physician broke the news and, since I had basically just met her, it was dubious at best. I remember she told me and then her voice sounded like the adults in the Peanuts cartoon. After that she made an appointment for me to see a surgeon, Dr. Brown. I immediately pictured Doc Brown from Back to the Future. If he starts talking flux capacitors and screams 1.21 jigawatts I am so out of there, I thought. Fortunately he is nothing like that. We discussed my options and decided I would get a lumpectomy. "You could get a mastectomy so you can be sure the cancer doesn't go into the other breast" he said. Well I am all for preventative medicine but let's not get carried away. To quote one of my favorite TV shows, Seinfeld: "They are real and they are spectacular." I decided to keep both of them. Dr. Brown did two surgeries, one to remove the lump and one for the port. He told me the surgery would only take about a half hour. I got to the hospital around 10 a.m. Surgery was scheduled for around noon. I couldn't have anything to eat or to drink after midnight. I was waiting in a private room, watching the video about my port. The time ticked by and soon it was 2 o'clock and I was still waiting. I happened to spy the doc walking by my room and yelled out, "So what did you do, forget about me?" He had some kind of cardiac emergency to take care of and told me I was next in line. He said "You must be pretty hungry, huh?" I was and said, "Yeah you owe me a pizza." He said OK. As I was being wheeled into the OR the surgical nurse said, "OK now the doctor will be right in. He is just ordering your pizza." "Haha," I thought, "Funny joke to play on someone who is just about to be put under." Sure enough when I woke up from surgery a Jet's pizza was waiting for me. Having cancer is not easy, and telling people is just as difficult. Some people I could tell right away, while others would have to wait. It is exhausting enough just having the disease, let alone rewinding and replaying the story for my friends and family. So how do you tell people? "Hey!! Haven't seen you in a while, how ya doin'? I have cancer. How are the kids?" I never thought I wouldn't be OK, even after I lost weight. People who didn't know that I had cancer said, "Wow, you look great!!" "Yeah," I said. "That cancer is the best diet ever!" Even after my first chemo treatment made me so dizzy and nauseous for three hours, I still knew I was going to be OK. No wonder I don't drink. Chemo gave me the worst hangover I ever had. Even after I had my stylist shave my head because the chemo was making my hair fall out I had to laugh. My mom wanted a current picture of me and, as it turned out, I got my head shaved on her birthday. Happy Birthday Mom!! My hair is growing back, and she is still waiting for that picture. I really didn't have the side-effects that many people do, with the exception of the first chemo hangover bedspins. I am convinced that working out to get ready to hit the ice really helped me battle this disease. All this was going on around the beginning of hockey season, something I look forward to. I am the captain of the Petoskey women's hockey team and I always work out my hardest to get ready for that, and, because of my job at WMKT, I was able to go to the Red Wings Training Camp. I was diagnosed on the last day of training camp. The Wings save their best game for the last day. Unfortunately I did not make it to that game. Since I am a huge hockey fan, it really meant something special to me when the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. The Wings will hoist the Stanley Cup banner on Oct. 9. One year to the day of my lumpectomy surgery.

I use hockey as an analogy to fighting cancer. If you are on the ice and someone knocks you down, you don't stay down. You get up and keep skating. That is what I will do. I will keep skating.

Red Wings Training camp photo copyright 2007 by Melinda Majoros taken during the 2007 training camp, that's right, a few days before my diagnosis.

Mel is the producer of The Vic McCarty show. Listen live Monday-Friday 10am-Noon eastern time on wmktthetalkstation.com.

Mel also produces The Maria Shaw show on Empoweradio.com. Listen Live Monday-Friday Noon-3pm.

Happy Birthday Dad

Today is my Dad's birthday. He would have been 76 today.

I am a your typical Daddy's girl. Most girls played with Barbie Dolls. I was a tomboy, big surprise if you know me. I played with Tonka Trucks and watched football with my Dad. He is a big part of who I am today. He passed away on June 12, 2003, after a brief battle with diabetes. He also had a couple of heart attacks and a stroke. I remember one of the last times I saw him he was overweight, still smoking (even after his first heart attack he still picked up the cigarettes) and probably not checking his blood sugar. He was eating a HUGE piece of chocolate cake and when I asked him about eating that he said he wanted to live life the way he wanted to. In some ways I agree, but living the way he wanted actually shortened his life, in my opinion.

Most people don't like to go to the doctor, and especially in these times, with no health insurance that is still true, but what are the two most important things in your life? Your health and your family. I can't tell you how much you take your health for granted until you have a disease like cancer invade your body. Cancer is an overproduction of cells, I always knew I was an over achiever, but seriously do I have to be that much of one??!!

Now that I am in remission I don't take my health for granted at all. I try to eat right, although in the last week I haven't been as good as I should be. I should not be eating at fast food restaurants, but it is a quick and cheap way to get your meal, especially if you are hungry. I should be at the gym more, but I just started this cool new job and I have been busy helping get a studio set up and getting audio clips ready, in addition to all the other stuff I do in my life. I REALLY should be back on the Metagenics First Line Therapy plan. Writing down the food that I eat and really really watching what I eat (but those Buffalo Wild Wing deliveries to the station are so hard to resist.) and going to the gym at least 3 times a week should be what I am doing, but I am not. I realize that it is difficult for everyone to do the important things like these, eat right, exercise and live healthy, but if you don't what are your options? You could be like my Dad, who only got to see his first grandchild one time.

I think about my Dad almost every day. He is the most important man in my life, even before Doug, my fiance. Family, that is what is important. Family doesn't have to be someone you are related to, it can be a close friend or co workers. I have my family, my brother and his wife, their son, and my mom, they are my relatives, but I do have an extended family. People that I work with, or have worked with, or just have become a really good friend that I consider family.

Now I picture my life without any single one of those people, and I go back to the question: What are the 2 most important things in your life, your health, and if you tell me you can't afford to go to the doctor, I am going to tell you that you can't afford not to. I have great insurance, and I have substantial medical bills, and I would rather be broke than dead. And your family, now imagine you are Jimmy Stewart in one of my favorite movies of all time "It's A Wonderful Life" what would their life be like if you were gone, or if you didn't exist at all. Pretty sad if you ask me.

So on my Dad's birthday I would like to thank him, for making me the person I am today. I started a new job on a new internet radio station, and I am pretty sure that he had a hand in steering me towards that. I am hoping that he is looking down upon me and smiling, seeing what kind of person his daughter has become, and I hope he is proud.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Mel is the producer of The Vic McCarty show on wmktthetalkstation.com. Listen to her live Monday thru Friday 10am-Noon.

Mel also produces The Maria Shaw Show on empoweradio.com Monday thru Friday 12noon-3pm

Waking up Tired

I feel like I have been tired since Nov 12, 2007.

That was my first day of chemo, it seems like a lifetime ago. Since then I have been diagnosed with Hashimotos thryroiditis which is defined by wikipedia as "an autoimmune disease where the body's own T-cells attack the cells of the thyroid." That was last summer, in June or July, so I missed all of last summer's activities, in addition to not being able to play soccer, because of the port, I couldn't ride my bike, because I was too tired and was worried that I would be just stuck where I biked to and wouldn't be able to get back home, so my bike sat, sadly on my patio deck, unused on nice cool summer nights when a ride on the bike path would be just the thing to clear my head.

Now I am still tired. I just had a blood test because I am still freaking tired, its not the same kind of tired. I know its not from the thyroid, because that is a different kind of tired. I find it fascinating that different things can make you tired in different ways. Fascinated, but wish it was something that I would be reading about on the web or happening to someone else, but not to me, actually scratch that I wouldn't want anything that happened to me to happen to someone else.

So I got a blood test. I think I have given so much blood for tests since I have been diagnosed I could have saved quite a few lives if it was donated to the Red Cross (of course I wouldn't donate blood since I have been diagnosed with cancer, let me make that quite clear) besides the fact that I hate needles. Let me change that I really hate needles, I will give you an example, I was talking to my doctor about something and she was doing something across the room with some syringes, loading them with meds, who knows, there were four or six of them on a tray and I really have no idea what my doc said but all I saw were the needles. Did I mention they were all the way across the room? I had to leave the office quickly, I almost started hyperventilating. So the point of that? I guess I hate needles.

Back to the blood test. Got the results today. I need more vitamin D. They said because Ilive in Northern Michigan I don't get enough sunlight or drink enough milk or eat enough broccoli to get vitamin d, yes I need cruciferous veggies, one of the things I need to eat to combat cancer, but I would have to eat a lot of broccoli for that to happen. So lets see we will add that to the list of pills I take, right now the pill count is at 15, more or less, depending upon side effects like neuropathy or anxiety. So I guess the pill count will be up to 16. Once that kicks in I hope I wont be waking up tired.

Mel is the producer of The Vic McCarty Show. Listen to me Monday through Friday 10am to noon on wmktthetalkstation.com.

The wind in my hair

A year ago I still had very little hair. July of 2008 is when my hair finally started to grow in. It started growing in gray and slowly started turning black, my natural hair color. As the weather is getting warmer I have been thinking about the little things that people may take for granted. Like the wind in your hair. I have the only SUV in northern Michigan without 4 wheel drive (I bought it when I lived in California, who needs 4 wheel drive when you are stuck in rush hour traffic on the 101?) but I do have my sunroof. I would take a car with a sunroof over a car with 4 wheel drive any day of the week. Why is that you ask? The wind in my hair.

When you get diagnosed with a disease like cancer, it makes you think about things you take for granted, certain things like, well hair. I am not a vain person, if you know me you know I am a jeans and tshirt kind of gal, but when you have nice shoulder length hair for most of your life and then for 8 months you don't have it, it really makes you think.

I think one of the hardest part of my cancer journey, like most women, was losing my hair. Only a select few people besides my medical team saw me without my bandanna or hat. Everytime you look in the mirror you are reminded you are sick. It makes you appreciate little things, like a kind word from a coworker, a hug from a loved one, walking in fresh snow right after a snowstorm, and the wind in your hair.

What made me think of this you ask? It is spring now in Michigan and I opened my sunroof for the first time and it reminded me of last August, when it was almost the end of summer. It was a gorgeous day out and something happened and I was surprised, I didn't even realize how much I missed it. You guessed it, my sunroof was open and I felt the wind in my hair for the first time in months. The best part about it was it felt like I was feeling the wind in my hair for the first time ever. I think of that and it makes me smile. Yes, something that was a result of cancer made me smile. I was getting better, I was done with chemo and I felt the wind in my hair.

Listen to me on the Vic McCarty Show from 10am-Noon Eastern Standard Time Monday-Friday on wmktthetalkstation.com