Le sigh

 Chemo.

 Robin is on the upswing now from her first dose. It looks like that whole first week after the chemo is like being hit by a truck. But now she is closer to being herself. She is still rather tired.

 Then again, I guess having your body pumped full of cell destroying poisons would take it out of you.

 I mean really, the basic idea behind chemo, as I understand it; is that the tumor is weaker than you as a whole. It will die before the rest of you. It is kind of barbaric, really, but what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

 I guess that is what we are learning through this.

 It is possible to survive just about anything as long as we don't just curse God and die, to cite the book of Job.

 Some days it is harder than others.

 Some days I just wonder why we keep having do go through all of this.

That really isn't the point though. Here we are, and we just have to. This isn't one of these things we can just avoid, and it will go away.

I have to get back to running and working out. It is my Zen. Better than drinking all the time. Then I will have the strength to give when Robin doesn't have hers.

We're lucky we happen to be where our family is. We have a great support group and a lot of love up here.
Above everything we have each other and faith. So, I think we can make it.

We'll just have to remember that at the low points too.

On another note, next year I will be on the ball with Mustaches vs. Cancer. I missed the beginning and only had two weeks to grow. I also want to his up a lot of the runs that benefit the cancer groups. That is the other reason I need to get back to running.

Happy Thanksgiving!

  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
 Today I was originally going to spend putting up some background about what got us to here, but I decided to focus on the holiday instead. Thinking about Thanksgiving, spending time with friends and family, eating together, doing whatever it is that your family does; it made me realize something.

 The world didn't stop turning, the kids didn't stop making messes, holidays didn't stop coming by.

 I think that is the thing about stuff like this, after that initial shock, you realize that like anything else, you pick up and keep going. And I think part of the healing is in that.

Our life is still happening, this is one more obstacle in the way.

So we decided to enjoy Thanksgiving instead of letting the holidays get us down.

A friend of mine at work, who lost his first wife to cancer told me: "You have to enjoy each day, because If you don't, you'll wake up and find you don't have too many left."

I took that to heart.

Thanksgiving is good therapy.                                                                                                                                      

Therapy? I think so

                                                                                                    

Breast Cancer at 29

29 years old.

29 is too young for breast cancer.

Not that there is a good age for cancer, but 29 is too young. It is supposed to be something that, God forbid, hits later in life. It catches you when your kids are older, and you are closer to retirement.

They wouldn't suggest mammograms starting at 40 if it got you when you were younger...

So imagine our surprise when the doctor told Robin that the biopsy came back positive. "It is breast cancer," he told us.

Amazing how a few words can change the world in a moment.

That was back on November 11th. Veterans Day.
We had figured it was another scare, since women get lumps from time to time, and it was the site of a duct she had had removed the year before. It must be scar tissue, we reassured ourselves, or a cyst of some type.

Not this time.

Cancer.

So where do we go from here? What do we do now? We don't want this, but it looks like you don't get that choice. My wife doesn't want to be that person that when people talk about her, they say, "it's so sad, she's so young and she has three little kids."

We never got to make that choice.

She started her Chemo on Monday, and it is starting to sink in now. Now where do we go from here? What can I do to help her out? What can we do to help others?

I decided I could start running again, I could grow a mustache, I could do all sorts of things which I will detail later, but the thing I can do right now, is to write.

So that's what I'll do.