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Home from the Hospital

Hi. Quick update — I brought Jen home from the hospital today! She is doing very well, although it will likely take her about a month to recover physically and mentally from the surgery. She is upbeat and also very sore and uncomfortable (hooray for pain killers!) She is likely up for visitors over the coming weeks so feel free to email or call her.  She promises to write as soon as we can find a comfortable way for her to sit up and type on the computer.

– DL

Surgery Update

‘A quick update — Jen had her surgery this morning, and it went well. She is very tired and trying to get some rest. She is calling this surgery the Final Four as she’s hoping it’s the 4th and last surgery.

Thanks for all of your love and support. I’m sure Jen will post more details as she starts to recover.

– DL’

Some Laughter as I Head Towards Surgery

 

My friend Paul is known for writing great Top 10 Lists. What a nice present to receive this hysterical list in my inbox as I head towards surgery.  I have to laugh now because after tomorrow, laughing will hurt a lot!

 

Top 10 Reasons Jen is Fed Up with Cancer!

 10.  She’s tired of explaining to everyone that Sarcoma is a form of cancer, not a type of sarcasm unique to New Jersey natives.

9.  She drops a small fortune on a great looking wig and the paparazzi repeatedly mistake her for Beyonce.

8.  She’s been to chemo so many times she can bake a potato in less than 3 minutes or thaw a frozen turkey in 9 and a half.

7.  Her assistant started a rumor that she’s having a midday romp with some guy named Sloan Kettering.

6.  In the last four years, she’s gone under the knife twice as many times as the entire cast of Housewives of Orange County, Season 4.

5.  She’s been hospitalized so many times, orderlies all over the tri-state area have tagged pictures of her knockers on their MySpace pages.

4.  She’s infuriated Hollywood agents by blowing off meetings with SpongeBob, Dora and Linda Ellerbee to go to “treatment” with “Sloan”.

3.  She drops a small fortune on a great looking wig and — on windy days — senatorial hopefuls mistake her for Governor Blagojevich.

2.  In spite of battling cancer, her gay and single friends still make her organize Cycle for Survival as a way to meet guys in tight bike shorts.

And the Number One Reason Jen is Fed Up with Cancer is:

1.  Her weekly chemo treatments conflict with the exact time she is supposed to be watching 90210!

You know your surgery is close when…

..the “sell by” date on milk and yogurt is after your surgery date

…people at work start to set up meetings and the majority of them are when you will already be out of the office
…you have your last chemo treatment prior to surgery so that you can “rest up”
…you start to eat all of the foods you don’t typically eat because you know in a matter of days you wont’ be eating anything

The Countdown to Surgery Begins

I am so sorry that I haven’t written in a while.  I have been travelling a lot for work and for pleasure. First, I spent a week in Los Angeles for business. I had a ton of meetings and finished the week at the Kid’s Choice Awards. It was an amazing event and I was thrilled that the show received the highest ratings and most kid votes (91MM!)  in the show’s history.  In addition to attending the awards show, highlights of the week for me were going to a live cast reading of SpongeBob SquarePants and sitting at a restaurant near Turtle from Entourage.  You gotta love LA!

 While I was there, I worked at the local Equinox (down the street from my hotel).  I was so excited to see one of the General Managers who I had met earlier in the year.  He wants to bring Cycle for Survival to the West Coast which is very exciting.
Then, I spent a wonderful week in Arizona with Dave’s family. It was absolutely beautiful and so much fun to just relax and hang out with my nieces. We had a great time!  I realized
when I slowed down, that it had been a long time since I was able to focus on me and the upcoming surgery.  Unfortunately I found that when I had some down time, I started to think a lot more about the surgery and got a bit sad.   For me, the hardest part is never the surgery (although it is extremely painful).  The hardest part is not knowing what is to come after.  My guess is that the doctors will tell me to go back to a period of “watchful waiting” where I get CT scans every 3 months and we hope the tumors don’t return. For me, this has always been the hardest part.
But, I refuse to spend a lot of energy thinking about what’s to come and I will chose to focus on “now”.  I just found out that two of my friends who I met through cancer treatments at MSKCC will be having surgery the same week as me (1 the same day and the other the day after).  So, I guess it will be a social surgery!  Since it is so hard to walk after surgery (they cut my stomach down the middle and then sew me back up), I told my friends that my goal will be to get to their side of the hallway by the end of the week 🙂
I will write again soon!

Happy Birthday to Me

I am having such a nice, relaxing birthday!  My blood counts were low last week when I got my chemo which brought on a nasty bacterial infection.  Bad news is that I had a bad stomach bug this week as a result and am now on antibiotics.  Good news is NO CHEMO yesterday 🙂  I thought that meant I would have more energy than ever but the bacterial bug hit me hard and I have been sleeping a lot.

You know you’re getting older when your idea of a great birthday is reading in bed and getting a massage rather than bar hopping!  My parents are visiting tomorrow and my brother and sister-in law and nephews visited last week.
It is March Madness so Dave and I do nothing but watch basketball all day!  We are neck and neck in the family pool.  Tonight we will be having a few friends over to watch the Duke game (fingers crossed that they pull it out!).
Thanks for all of the calls and emails wishing me a happy birthday. Facebook is amazing! I think over 100 people have emaled me birthday wishes.

And the Surgery Date has been Set…

Dave and I got the great news last week that my tumor has shrunk by about 1/3 and that the chemo is definitely working.  We were optimistic that this would be the case given that this same form of chemotherapy worked for me last time.  Even better than the fact that tumors are shrinking is the fact that because they are shrinking and moving, the surgeon feels much more confident performing surgery (some of you might remember that when I first relapsed in December of this past year, the surgeon was concerned that the tumor was in a “morbid” place and he wouldn’t be able to perform surgery).

My surgeon (Dr. Singer), said that although he could perform surgery immediately, he seemed to find no harm in my having a few more cycles of chemotherapy to see if we could shrink the tumors even further.  You have to love a surgeon who says “This surgery will be much easier for me than I had originally thought…I mean I will probably need to take out a few organs and detach and reconnect your rectum but it won’t be too bad…”.  I turned to him and said, “EASIER FOR WHOM?”  He laughed and said, “I am talking from a surgical perspective. You should be prepared for a long recovery…but you’ve been there before and you’ll be fine. It will just take time.  Be prepared to be out of the office for 4-6 weeks”.

I was hoping to push the surgery out as far as possible so that I could take advantage of the warm weather (the best way to heal is to walk a lot and it is hard to walk outside when it is freezing in March).  So, we agreed that unless the chemo becomes too hard for me, my surgery date is set for Tuesday, April 28th.  Not only will the weather be nice in May to go for a lot of walk in Central Park but I will be super skinny in time for bathing suit season 🙂

I’ve never had two months to prepare for surgery before.  My first 3 surgeries, I was given anywhere from 3 days to two weeks to prepare for them. It is both good and bad to have the privilege of time.

  • In some ways, it is great.  I can get everything organized at work before I take medical leave.  I can arrange my travel and any fun things that Dave and I were doing to happen before or after this time period.
  • In some ways, it is terrifying.  The surgery will be major. The good news is that I have had surgeries like this before so there isn’t a large element of surprise. However, because I am familiar with the surgery, I am well aware of how debilitating (and painful) it can be.  I find my mind drifting to thinking about what it will be like to be stuck in the hospital for at least a week and at home for a month recuperating.  Although I realize it’s not productive to focus on the future, it’s hard not to.

I also find myself being a bit of a schizophrenic.  I constantly waver back and forth from the mindset that “I am going to get myself in great shape prior to the surgery” and the mindset of “it’s OK to eat 8 cookies because I won’t be able to eat for a month come May”.  I think I will wind up doing a bit of both.  Working out a lot and savoring the ice-cream!”

I will write a bit more soon.  I must share with you about the reflexologist at my nail salon who continues to diagnose the specific area of my cancer before anyone else can!

‘

Motivating Others

Many of you have asked to see the speech that I delivered at the Equinox Annual Sales Forum in January of this past year. It is about 15 minutes long so grab a drink and settle in 🙂  In order to get such a big file uploaded to the blog, I had to dramatically reduce the quality so it is not as sharp as you might like but you can clearly hear the speech.  

I say “amazing” way too much and use amateur words like “major” when describing my surgery but given that I had two days to prepare, I am happy with it..  Please note the standing ovation 🙂

http://www.youtube.com/get_player