Elusive Cancer

My mother was nine when she had her first brush with breast cancer. Her mother had one of her breasts removed. It was 1966 and many, many years before reconstruction would be standard procedure. The sandbag that she wore inside of her bra was heavy and uncomfortable, but she wore it, clinging to the shape that made her feel like a woman. Then, years later, she would have her other breast removed.

On trips to North Carolina as a child, I would sneak into my grandmother’s bedroom and play with (and let’s be real, sometimes eat) her fancy, pale green Clinique lipsticks. And over a chair or on the end of her bed, her giant bra and those smooshy, baby-powder scented faux breasts. They were as big as my head and were wonderful to squish and poke, retaining their shape.

My grandmother’s sister’s life was taken from this cancer. My mother’s sister’s life was never the same after her cancer, the treatments for her cancer wrecked her body and she lost her life a few years ago. As you can imagine, these events had a profound impact on my mother. She was always on the defensive, waiting for the monster to creep into her life and threaten to take it all away. She spent her whole life living in fear of breast cancer.

“If I ever have a scare, I’m going to just get rid of the problem,” she would say. A Prophylactic Mastectomy is not something many people are familiar with, but with my family history, it was my mother’s reality.

I found myself in a waiting room with my mother, women all around us in this tiny room and in little matching robes, waiting for their turn to have their breasts smooshed and tortured. All waiting for their names to be called. The rest of these women, I’m sure, would go home healthy, albeit a little sore. But not us.

After her mammogram, she redressed and we were ushered into another waiting room, this one much larger and empty. We sat in the middle of a row of chairs together in alternating spells of silence and my wise cracking comic relief. If I could make jokes and make her laugh, maybe all of this would be less scary.

They had found “something” and punched a hole in my mother’s breast to determine what it actually was in there, causing this lump her breast. Those same breasts that nursed me for over three years and nursed my brother and sister before me. I recall my mother’s silent tears rolling down her face, but no sound coming from her. She was, and will forever be, so brave.

In the end, they said that the something was actually nothing. Likely calcified breastmilk from twenty years earlier just hanging out in her tissue, like a really sick, long-winded practical joke. But my mother was resolved. She was going through with it.

It wasn’t until 1998 that reconstructive surgery was something covered by health insurance. You grow up thinking something is one way, watching my grandmother in her kitchen cooking with a great, big cavernous space above her round belly. I would sometimes catch her while she was changing and the lumpy, shoddy scars across her chest with no nipples just seemed normal. It was just the way she was. As an adult woman, with full, round breasts now, I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to live the last forty years of her life with no nipples, no breasts, no sensation. As women, we wrap up so much of our worth in our appearance. What would life be like with no breasts?

My mother’s reconstruction was difficult. They did a procedure called DEIP Flap Reconstruction wherein they split my mother across her belly, took out her round, wiggly bits there and used that tissue to rebuild her breasts. The incision was brutal and she had to go back for several revision surgeries. Ultimately, an infection left her with a 6″x8″ section of her abdominal wall removed and replaced with steel mesh. Steel mesh. My mom is like Iron (wo)Man. She has to spend the rest of her life wearing compression garments, holding her together. There is no more yoga in my mom’s future, nothing that could strain her belly.

But there is also no cancer and very little risk of that same genetic mutation creeping  into her life and threatening her again. There was no chemo and no radiation. She faced her fears and this monster head-on and now, she has breasts. Under her clothes, they look very different than mine or yours, but they give her that same full, found, feminine shape. They tried to pucker her tissue to make faux nipples, but that didn’t take. She had a quote tattooed, inked backwards so she could read it in her reflection, “The warrior within me emerged,” across one and, “she knew just what to do,” across the other.

And after her surgery, after this “unnecessary” procedure that many of her friends questioned, in the pathology report, they found cancer. It was there the whole time, elusive to the mammograms and breast MRIs. It was there and, deep down, she knew it all along.

By the magic of science, my mother’s DNA was compared to my grandmother’s DNA, leftover from pathology reports after her death. They were able to pinpoint the location of this monster and, using that information, screen my sister, Julie, and myself for the gene as well. She has it and I do not. It’s called BRCA1 and having this gene increases your risk of breast cancer by 87% and your risk of many other cancers is increased. My brother was tested later and he also has the gene.

So my sister started to develop her plan of action. She was slow to make a plan at first, not yet thirty years old when we all sat in that room at Emory University receiving our results. She had two children and a husband and wanted more children. I was in a really bad place in my life, reverberating from a terrible divorce, a single mother of a young son and desperately trying to find my way. I was angry when the results came for my sister. I’m the tough one. I was the one that had been to hell and back… I was the one was conditioned to deal with monsters, not my sister.

Last year, we had plans to all volunteer for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day in Atlanta. I broke my ankle days before the event and couldn’t go, but Julie went ahead with my mother and a few other friends. I wasn’t there to provide comic relief and, I wonder, if that was part of the magical course of events that prompted my sister to start her battle with this invisible monster. Maybe because I wasn’t there to crack jokes and make her laugh, she was able to really look into the faces of the women walking sixty miles with buttons on their lanyards, “I walk for my mother,” “I walk for my daughters,” and realize that these women either lost loved ones or were almost lost to this cancer.

Whatever it was, she came home different. She came home determined. She made a plan and now, four months later, she’s packing her bags and headed to Charleston to one of the best breast cancer reconstruction facilities in the country. She’s following in my mother’s footsteps, facing this beast and telling it, “Nope. You’re not going to get me.” She’s taking her life in her hands and making sure that there will BE a life for her to live, for her daughters and her son to have a mother well into their adult years. And to never have to let her body be ravaged by chemotherapy and radiation.

I’m so proud to be a part of this lineage of women, even though this cancer lives inside so many of us. I think about the different sort of life that my sister’s daughter’s will have, growing up with a courageous mother taking the power of modern science and telling this cancer what’s what. My sister’s oldest daughter will be nine year this, the same age that my mother was when breast cancer first came into her life. Statistically, at least one of my sister’s three children will have this gene as well, but the entire course of their lives will be different than my mother’s life was. I’m not a religious person, but I can’t help but thank God for this chance.

A Pair of Pieces

Found these in a little journal today… They were written while we were in Highlands, NC for my best friend’s wedding.

08.26.11

We showered together today because that jacuzzi tub/shower in the monster bathroom was nearly as big as my kitchen. And afterward, as we toweled off and got dressed, we chattered away. I filled in the gaps for you, between all the introductions, “I’m Kyle… This is my wife Heidi,” helping you map together the connections between who knew who and who went to school with who, etc. You interrupted me to tell me to come quick! Outside our room, there was a rabbit in the mossy side yard. He was just sitting there — nothing terribly special about him. He wasn’t an exotic  or unusual creature.

But we stood there together, half-dressed and still dripping and watched him in silence for some time.

08.29.11

You are like water to me.

I told you yesterday, when you told me that I made your life better, I told you, “You soften my edges.”

We had just stopped for an unexpected hike on the way back from Highlands. Down, down, down until we came upon great, big rocks with little rushing fingers of water stretching out across their faces. They edges of the rock, smooth… water-worn.

You  help polish me… Make me softer, smoother, easier to handle.

And, like water, powerful, flexible, able to morph into whatever I need.

You wrap around and channel through all my wandering terrain.

All of my old grooves and cracks are now smooth and marked by you.

Somebody That I Used To Know

It started with this:

Where on EARTH did they get the idea to even try this? So amazing to watch talented musicians really, actually be inventive. There really IS something new under the sun… Or was, until they covered this Gotye song.

And then, I sauntered on over to the original…

And HOLY CRAP.

There is just something about this song that is literally, right now, making me sway my shoulders at my desk. It’s beautiful and haunting and GOD, can I relate to the song.

Here’s the lyrics (in particular, the part I bold really resonates with me): (And then an update on me lately)

Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it’s an ache I still remember

You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end
Always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I’ll admit that I was glad that it was over

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over
But had me believing it was always something that I’d done
And I don’t wanna live that way
Reading into every word you say
You said that you could let it go 
And I wouldn’t catch you hung up on somebody that you used to know…

But you didn’t have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened
And that we were nothing
And I don’t even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger
And that feels so rough
You didn’t have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records
And then change your number
I guess that I don’t need that though
Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

I used to know
That I used to know

Somebody…

Soo… What’s new with me?

I found someone to make my wedding dress. It looks like it’s going to be a little bit cheaper than buying a dress only to totally deconstruct it for the necessary alterations. I went dress shopping with Nancy and Devon on Sunday which ended up being more like, style shopping than dress shopping — looking at hemlines and shapes and fabrics, etc. We went to regular stores and laughed as I put on this corduroy red dress at Anthropologie that made me look like the lower half of my body was stuck inside a hamster ball. Then we went to an ACTUAL bridal shop and the dresses were super beaded and sequined and long and ruffly and not my style at all. Nevermind that they were GREY in the armpits and that bottoms looked like someone had dipped into giant ashtrays.

Are engaged women really THAT dirty?

I am also into my second week of working out. I landed some free/discounted zumba classes at my friend’s local studio and, omg, I love them. I’m converted. It started here and it ended last week in a Zumba class. I also took a “Butt ‘n Gut” class on Tuesday and HOLY CRAP MY STOMACH MUSCLES HURT. It’s a strange thing to complain about it because I’m all, “Colin, my stomach hurts.” And he’s like, “What did you eat?” But it’s not that kind of stomach problem.

Speaking of stomach problems… We’ve gotten down to the bottom of the Case of Colin’s Gut Issue. He’s developed a lactose allergy/sensitivity. At this point, we’ve ruled everything else out and he’s moving into week two of no dairy (AT ALL! Bless his heart!) and also, no issues. It’s been a huge boost for him which is saying something because, initially, learning that he might not be able to have lactose — butter, milk, ice cream, STOUT BEER — it made him really sad. As a chef, there’s not really much worse than that. But he’s on the upswing now which makes my swing also… go… up.

Work is great! I’m using BaseCampHQ to manage my projects. What a life saver. I’m not sure how I was able to get anything done before BaseCamp. That, paired with Toggl, my time-tracking tool, I’m a machine now. Have loads of open projects and speaking engagements out the ying-yang. Happy, happy girl.

(I’m still dancing to Gotye’s song, thanks to InfiniteLooper)

Closing Chapters

Colin and I were talking this week about our plans for moving in together. We have yet to decide on a plan, but we’re debating on staying in my little two bedroom duplex or finding a three bedroom house that would provide all of us with a little bit more room to wiggle (and maybe another bathroom). We talked about how hard it is to find a rental in our school district and Colin felt like we could probably find something kind of cheap to buy and maybe fix it up a bit.

Then, I said something that set forth a conversation that ended with me in girlish sobs.

“I don’t think I want to ever buy a house. I love being able to call the maintenance man. Not having to mow my own grass.”

Colin scoffed, not in a condescending way, just in a pure and genuine, “Really?” kind of way. He told me about how he had dreams about building a life in a home and filling it with memories, much like his childhood. His parents are still in the house that he grew up in… The room that my son sleeps in when we go and visit with them is the room that was Colin’s as a child.

The summer of 1997, I closed the first chapter of my life. The first sixteen years… Prior to that summer, I was a kid and all of my memories were colorful and vivid and so very… late-eighties and early-nineties.

I sat on that stool in Colin’s kitchen and told him about all of these little snippets of memories…

The bush that was next to the back deck stairs, leading down to the brick patio was overgrown. My dad, never a real champion of the landscaping arts, decided to trim this bush. He had some of those cartoonishly large hedge clippers that look like nosehair scissors for giants. And he went at it one Sunday afternoon until there was nothing left but a twisted, leafless stick-bush. I recall actually teasing him, in all my prepubescent comic genius.

We giggled about this, as I wiped away the uncontrollable tears. He stroked my hair as I sat, slumped into his shoulder, totally bewildered as to where this surge of emotion was coming from.

My brother ran away from home once, while we were home being babysat. He packed a bindle with canned food and no can opener, put on a ski mask (it was summer… in Georgia!) and walked up a block into the cul-de-sac and went down the cut-through trail that we used to walk to get to our friend’s neighborhood pool. He came home unharmed but, without fail, we bring it up at every holiday gathering and tease him mercilessly.

And then, the summer of 1997, we moved. I went to church camp for two weeks in one house and when I got home, our house had sold and we were in a new one in one of those manufactured 1990′s neighborhoods where they bulldoze everything and plant little saplings along the sidewalked streets. My dog had been put to sleep after his quality of life went totally downhill. I also got baptized that summer, fully indoctrinated into a flawed religious system.

In my old room, the walls around my posters were smoke-stained from incense and candle burning… I had glow in the dark stars on the popcorn ceiling and a bead curtain hanging in the doorway. Our carpets were worn and brown. In my new house, the walls were white. The ceilings were smooth, the carpets were plush and green. It was a blank slate and it didn’t feel like mine.

I lost my innocence that summer… My childhood ended. I don’t have vivid memories of that neighborhood. My memories in my teenage years circled around high school and varsity sports. It was the end of that chapter.

The next fifteen years would be full of bad choices, mistakes, a failed marriage, a messy divorce, custody battles, mediation in stiffly furnished conference rooms… And then after enough of that garbage, some good things near the end like professional success, finding real love, reconnecting with family and building solid friendships in a community unlike anything I had ever experienced as an adult.

This summer, when Colin and I move in together and later, this fall, when we get married, it’ll be the start of a new chapter… Another fifteen years or so of a life that is incredibly different than the last decade and a half. Fifteen years full of our new family, maybe a couple of babies… Memories of Fourth of July Block Parties and catching fireflies in the dusky summer nights…

And maybe, I’ll be able to wrap my brain around buying a house one day… Maybe the idea won’t seem so foreign once I have someone that I want to make those memories with…

A Rant From A Strangely Saturated Industry

Sometimes I don’t give myself enough credit… I know that may come as a surprise seeing as how often I carry on like I am God’s gift to YOU… Like, his personal gift, just for you. “Hey, guy… Here you go. Here’s a little Jami in your life. YOU’RE WELCOME!” But I have my insecurities just like everyone else. When I moved to a college town, all baby-faced, lots of people would ask me, “What are you studying?” assuming I was in college… Other folks would ask, “Where did you go to school?” And I struggled trying to find a concise way to say, “Well, I went to Kennesaw State for a year, but hated it… So I dropped out. Shortly after that, I went a little wild and crazy with the partying and ended up pregnant. Insert half a decade of crazy in-court-and-out-of-court bullshit with my exhusband and then I went back to school at Georgia Perimeter, but after a year, I just couldn’t afford it anymore, so I dropped out.” IN ONE BREATH.

College isn’t for everyone. I’m a firm believer in that. I wish I had trusted my gut on this one a long time ago, before I racked up student loan debt. Life is really what teaches you the most, not college. Shit, I don’t really know many people who are ACTUALLY doing what they went to school (the first time) to learn. My brother in law studied microbiology. He owns a very successful IT firm now. My sister? She was a high school french teacher for several years until they had children. Now she’s a professional organizer and a photographer. My mom? She was going to be a special education teacher. Now she’s a doula. My best friend? She was an interior designer and, although she worked in the industry for some time, now she’s the owner of a kick-ass letterpress printing company.

There are exceptions, of course. My brother in an architect. He has wanted to be an architect since he was a child building with Legos. That doesn’t change that when he first started college, he majored in business.

Anyway, where am I going with this in relation to my job as a social media and wordpress trainer? It’s coming, I promise.

I got started in this industry quite by accident… I relate it to enjoying my time floating down a river on an inner tube in the summer time and then looking up and finding myself dumped out in the ocean. I didn’t INTEND to do this for a living, but because of the way that events played out in my life and, thankfully, because of a little nudging by an amazing mentor, I’m here and I love my job more and more every day.

It has taken me some time though, to get comfortable in my expertise. I still don’t like it when my clients or friends refer to me as a “social media guru” because, to me, that implies that I’ve reached the pinnacle of my industry and there is nothing else I can learn. That will never happen. And, given the nature of this industry, there isn’t a lot to “measure up to” in terms of education.

Social Media, as an industry, has a mix of three kinds of people:

1. Marketing professionals with decades of experience in traditional marketing who have gotten wise and moved over to the digital space.
2. Professional bloggers, web designers, graphics designers and/or writers who have naturally gotten accustomed to the industry because they’re so closely related.
3. Opportunists that think, “I like Facebook/Twitter/YouTube, so I should be able to do this for a living.

That last one really chaps my ass and I need to vent about it, okay? This doesn’t make me a horrible person. I’ve just recognized something in this industry, globally and locally, that really frustrates me.

If you’re going to make the leap into this industry, please know what the holy hell you’re doing. If you’re learning along the way, that’s okay. We don’t know everything when we’re just starting, but making digs at established professionals either by price comparisons or just your general attitude stinks. It’s competitive, but not in that good way that helps nurture each other into stronger business people. In that bad way where you have to knock someone else down to feel better about yourself.

If you’re going to present yourself as an expert, let’s see some evidence. Not to toot my own horn, but I took a daily diary blog from nothing to 250,000 page loads a DAY in less than a year. I maintained that audience for more than a year before I had to move on to something else. I’ve built websites and Facebook Page for folks and taught hundreds of people how to do this same stuff for themselves. I taught myself everything I know and I take GREAT pride in doing things the right way, not only just because I’m following TOS and best practices, but also because I’m doing it in an ethical and moral process.

There are so many pages out there that exist for the sole purpose of padding your likes on Facebook. And I know DOZENS of social media “professionals” that not only participate in this exercise in unethical bra-padding, but are also encouraging their CLIENTS to participate in this crap. Example. The idea: you go and like this page as a PERSON (adding to their fan count which lends them some credibility as a page) then, when you’re told to do so, you post a link to your business page (as yourself, the person) and everyone else on the page does the same thing. Then, you’re supposed to go to all of these other pages that other people link to and like this page. Wah-lah* you get more fans!

Isn’t that cool?

No. It’s not cool. It’s unethical. You are not at all cultivating a community with those likes, you’re just padding your stats and, much like the teenage boy that puts his hand up a girl’s sweater only to find her bra is totally padded, IT PISSES ME OFF.

What happened to organic growth? What happened to getting fans because you CREATE content that is useful and engaging? Reposting blogs from ACTUAL industry experts is not the same as being an expert. 

Maybe I can see through this kind of charade because I am so steeped in this social media culture. It’s not sincere. It’s not authentic. If you’ve got more than 10 applications running on your page and more than half of them are filled with redundant information and/or not filled out at all — you’re a crock. You just are. You don’t understand marketing. You don’t have a clear message. You’re like a person who knows nothing about fashion and is wearing stripes and plaids and polka dots because YOU SAW IT IN A MAGAZINE.

I don’t know everything about my industry. I hope I never do, really. I have a thirst for knowledge and learning and so, I think, if I ever reach a point where there is little more for me to learn about an industry, I want to reinvent it… Or myself. Or something.

And let this be a wake up call for all of you “social media professionals.” Clean your shit up, guys! When is the last time you looked at your professional Facebook Page and cleaned up all the old pages, out-dated content, broken pages (THERE ARE SO MANY PEOPLE RUNNING APPLICATIONS THAT NO LONGER WORK ON FACEBOOK, GUYS!), or just empty shit? The way you present yourself not only gives credibility to yourselves but to the entire industry and, as someone who takes pride in my work, you’re making the industry look bad.

Quit putting time and energy into creating promotions or bullshit campaigns that are designed to get more fans an a non-organic way. Commit to generating content, either offline or online, and sharing YOUR insight into this industry with the world. Quit affiliating yourselves with other professionals in “the spirit of networking” when you know, for a fact, that these folks don’t know shit about shit. Take the time and energy to LEARN more about your industry, digest it and THEN you can share your own ideas and reflections with the world.

/rant

Sorry but this shit is just really driving me crazy. I carried it around with me all through 2011 and I can’t go through 2012 with this burden.

Dipping My Toes In Familiar Water

I got an email about a week ago and, when I read it on my phone, I chuckled to Colin, “Get this… Somebody wants a blog and they want it up in two weeks.” He joked, while sauntering over to me to wrap me up in his arms, “Get the bacon, baby!”

So I waited until I had a moment to call this person back and what do you know, it was a project I could really wrap my brain around. A woman, fifty years old, widowed for five years from the love of her life… And she’s going to start dating online and writing about it. As we chat and she gets me up to speed on her project, I’m furrowing my brow and, “oh honey”-ing her because god… Do I remember dating online.

The endless emails. The deceitful pictures. The pendulous genitals. The deep, hidden issues. The bed wetting.

And as she’s talking to me, it dawns on me, I should tell her about Date Wrecks.

“Have you ever read Date Wrecks?”

“Oh god, yes!” she said, quite enthusiastically.

“That’s my blog.”

Radio silence.

“That’s how I got started in this whole business, learning it myself.”

“OMG,” she said. Repeatedly.

We shared a chuckle over it because, for me, it’s still kind of hilarious and amazing when these little tiny morsels of INTERNET FAMOUS spring up. Heh.

So, I’m building her blog. And I’m quite excited about it. Quick and easy job. I’m really looking forward to watching her progress.

So I got to thinking… I really do miss blogging, for fun. For humor. To make people laugh. This place, Freak Bacon, this is a beautiful space for me to work out things in my head and keep track of events in my life. But this isn’t like a funny, ha-ha kind of space. This is more like one of those bars that sometimes has open mic nights and how, most of the time, the stuff you hear is terrible but every now and then, something really beautiful spills out.

So I’m considering making a blog like Date Wrecks, but about the wedding industry.

Because seriously… There is some kind of really fucked up disconnection between what brides want and what compels us to buy things and … this:

Like… Seriously? I can’t even SEE the dresses what with the no-neck, twisted broad, the maxi-pad/shoulder-pad wearing cross-dressing ginger and the unusually tall girl practicing a very elegant remake of Thriller. What the fuck are you guys thinking, wedding industry standard-setters?

So… As with any project… All I  need to come up with is a title… The material is there… And will write itself, for sure.

Glad to be back, flexing, writing, making fun of people. All the things I do best. :)