August 25, 2016 - Life has a way of tweaking itself

I don't even know where to begin. I feel like this has been the craziest morning. Just bizarre with all these little snippets of stories running parallel to each other yet intertwining on beautiful upholstered sofas and then in hallways in passing, then on tables, and under machines. It's a bizarre globe of swirling matter that seems a little surreal in this fog of coughs and sneezes and masks and such. I feel horrible as if this cold is purposely out to contain me. And I am certainly contained. I need some sleep. But despite this swirl of intersections, and weight of snotty noses and barking seal coughs, I feel calm and peace,

I will cut to the chase. You can immediately stop praying for fat. It's not fat, and I don't want that prayer to back fire and me take on fat in areas I don't need it, so let's nix that prayer right now. Don't utter those words again. My hips are counting on that! But thank you for your diligence all the same. So we know it isn't fat, and now we also don't think it is malignancy (more on that below) nor fluid, nor calcium deposits, nor...well to use her words " I have absolutely no idea what this is."

It started with me sitting in a waiting room of 12 women, that number would fluctuate as as I sat, all clad in the same two layers of muddled grey gown. What struck me first about the room was the 3 daisy shaped light fixtures hanging above my head, and then the modern wood paneling draped on the far wall and the sage green paper on the back walls. I felt as though I were in a luxury hotel lobby. I kid you not. This place goes all out to make you forget the sterility of the halls leading to this particular imaging area. After absorbing that awesome scenery, I was left with the utter silence of the room. I mean not a word. Not a spoken voice, not background noise, not a TV or a phone call. Just twelve women clad in gray sitting in silence. The silence would come and go as the morning went on as women exchanged themselves out for another and as technicians called out names thus prompting the exchange. But the silence left in between spoke a novel. There were untold stories in this room. Ongoing stories. And I've never heard such heavy silence.

I went back for my ultrasound and the radiologist poked and prodded. There is was the black blob next to my implant. "Ms. McCollum, I was really hoping I was going to get this up on the screen and immediately say "this is nothing" and send you home. But honestly, I have no idea what we are looking at here."

Me: "is it a mass?"
She: "I don't know. Let's get the mammogram and see what comes up."

So she sent me back out in to the luxurious waiting room where now new faces sat (all staring at the mask I was wearing), but the same silence remained. Then I got called back to mammogram. Shove the boob into the slot - picture. Turn the boob shove back into the slot- picture. Shove the side of the boob back into the slot- picture. "ok, you can go back to the waiting room." Back to the silence and yet more new faces. It's as if they passed out a sheet of paper to everyone who entered asking them to respect the silence. But i knew what it was. It was a room full of worry.

"Ms. McCollum?"

I go up to meet the radiologist who says we need to re-do the mammogram. "I am seeing something and I just can't tell what it is." Ok, at this point she had my attention. I was perked first when she said the ultrasound is non-conclusive and sent me to mammogram. But now TWO mammograms? You have my attention.  Insert boob, squish boob - picture. Insert boob , squish boob- Picture.  Back to the the luxury waiting room.

Now we have found ourselves down to 4 women (myself included). Also in silence. Until....Until the lady next to me turns and looks at me and says, "you look like you feel really bad. I hope you are ok? (me, yeah, I just had a cold that won't let go) I know this sounds crazy but, do you believe in heaven?"

What?!?! No you can't make this stuff up. I sputtered, then clamored to think quick on my feet and said "yes, It's what gets me through these kind of waiting rooms. It's amazing how you can find peace in the knowledge of a heaven". Well, the flood gates opened and the whole waiting room started chiming in. Some told stories about how they got there. Others talked about how heaven played a role in their journey. The women kept asking the touch questions. And I just kept praying God would give the words she needed to hear. Right smack in the middle of that rush of conversation "Ms. McCollum?" I got up and grabbed my stuff and walked over to her and said, "I have to go now, but whether or not you ever believe there is a heaven, you can believe in relationship here on earth and that as a result I will be praying for you and let that give you hope." Mercy, I'm sure I flubbed that up but it is what I had in the 4 second walk out of that room to meet the radiologist! Surely, I could have laid out the saving grace of Christ and all the grace of that, but alas my mind landed where it landed in the split second I had. What a crazy dialogue at such a time as this!!! I'm hoping the conversation continued after I left the room, I'm hoping just the right words were uttered to get her through her day. Something to give her the hope she must have been looking for. Those 4 women will be permanently etched into my brain. Their stories. Their search for hope. Their hunger for more. I was broken by that. On my way out, another women stopped me and said "I'm praying for you, and crossed her heart." Here I was feeling like death warmed over with this awful infection and the mental strain of being anywhere but in my bed and God brought me this little nugget. I know this isn't what you opened this page to read, but it truly is the highlight of the story. Relationship. Trial is a lonely place. And if you don't hear me say anything else today, here me say that. We absolutely have to support people in trial. I've never felt more lonely then in the middle of "stuff" and I know you feel the same. These women proved that to me.

Ok, now I am back with the radiologist in a dark conference room. "Sally, I have no idea what this is. I can say with certainty it is not fat. It is not calcium deposits. And it's not a malignancy, because I have never seen malignancy look like this. I called Lead Plastic Surgeon and spoke with him on the phone about you. I wanted him to look at the scans, but he is out of the country right now, so we decided to have you go see him for an exam and for him to look at the scans with you. He's going to call you to set it up. I'm suspicious it is the sling that is under your implant (to help hold the weight of the implant), but I have no idea what a sling looks like on imaging. I even googled it and there are no pictures out there. So I want him to see it. But for now, rest that we don't think it is malignancy, because if it is, I have never seen one look like this. It looks 'man made' in a lot of ways because it is so dense. Very dense. But it's not the implant itself" (paraphrased slightly off my memory). No malignancy from what we can tell, that's really all I needed to hear.

So, I'm now back in normal clothes, sitting on my bed, very eager to climb under the sheets and take a nap for I feel rough, but I totally feel at peace. This whole day was somehow peaceful, despite 3 sets of imaging, despite knowing they were seeing something, and despite having no idea what it is. God totally orchestrated this day. And I now have 4 women who broke the silence to keep my mind company. That's a score!

I will keep you updated. I imagine my plastic surgery appointment will be next Wednesday. Maybe a biopsy is in my near future, but definitely another exam and lookey loo (there's little dignity in malignancy as you pull out body parts at every turn). I've emailed him and Lead Breast Surgeon who I saw yesterday and am waiting to hear back. He's going to laugh, because I had promised him at my last visit over 6 months ago that I planned on never seeing him again and to not take it personal. Be careful what you promise ladies, Life has a way of tweaking itself as you go.






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August 24, 2016 - "The McCollum"

I've said it many times before. There is something about a cancer center waiting room. You can do the best of interior design, the most brilliant placement of soft lighting, and the perfect combination of artwork and still, your heart skips a beat when you walk in. It's been almost a year since I've been in that waiting room (for a visit, I am often there for work) and it did its thing, changed my mood.Mine was the last appointment of the day so the waiting room was deserted minus one couple also waiting their turn, so the calm of the wait brought me back to center and away from the initial heart gallop. Lead Breast Surgeon was as delightful as usual. She has an almost supernatural ability to put someone at ease. I didn't necessarily need easing, but she certainly maintains status quo. I told her if you are going to have a breast lump, you might as well enjoy the great people along the way. Present company included.

The appointment went exactly as planned. Strip down, bare a boob, touch and feel, get dressed again. She agreed there is something there that shouldn't be there and in her supernatural ability told me she wasn't worried yet. I said "okay then, I won't worry either." To which she responded, "but let's image it." She picked up the phone right then and there and called over to ultrasound and landed me an appointment tomorrow morning. I chuckled at that and made her promise me she still wasn't worried. I pinned her down. "What is on the differential?"  I guess she was expecting that question cause she dove right in with a response. "I'm very hopeful t is one of 2 things: A collection of fat necrosis (dying fat cells),or scar tissue." (Us gals have been laughing that never before have we been so willing to pray for more fat! LOL). I said "and what else?".  She said, "well it could be the negative things: a mass of malignancy or fibroma. If it looks like a mass on ultrasound, we will biopsy it. But let's just assume it won't come to that." See, she is awesome at putting someone at ease. I had to push her to list the last 2 because she wanted to leave on a high note. Despite her super optimistic approach to medicine, I really do think she is leaning toward fat necrosis, or else she has an awesome poker face (and I think she does, but that is besides the point). So we will continue to pray for fat and for a good night sleep and see what comes tomorrow. Oh, and while you are praying, I have the nastiest of respiratory infections going on right now too and could use a pick-me-up from that. It's really pulling me down, and I don't want to be down. I want to be up.

Funny story. During show and tell she says, "I really can't believe how great this all looks (refering to my reconstruction). You've had 6 surgeries and I was expecting to come in and see a railroad of scars. Sally, you should be thrilled. (she went on to remark about my cleavage but I will save face and spare you those details)!" So there you have it, we have a thrilling breast job! I could use that good news. I chuckled a little saying "well he (Lead Plastic Surgeon) told me he was going to do his best work ever! (well I made him promise that)". She said "speaking of him, do you know that we now refer to the procedure we did on you as 'The McCollum? (mastectomy, wait 2 weeks, start reconstruction)". I said "huh?????"  "Yep, that was the first time I had done that (wait to do recon) in prophylactic mastectomy." I don't know if I should be thrilled or not, but it totally got a laugh out of me. So if someone says to you, "do you want the McCollum and all the works?" Know you may be "thrilled" with the results. (Chuckle!) I reminded her I did have 4 more surgeries after that so the jury is still out. She reminded me "The McCollum" was still a huge success.

Oh the joys and ins and outs of mastectomy. It's never boring.

Ultrasound tomorrow. Pray for fat, or scar tissue is fine too if you want to overachieve. and pray for this respiratory infection to resolve too. Might as well shoot big! Hoping to have good news to report back to you in a few days.

Ta-ta for now!





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August 22, 2016 - Wherever we will go

I’m still lying in wait. But I did it “Sally Style” by going to the Caribbean for a week. This trip was planned well in advance, but the timing could not have been more perfect as breast lumps seems almost non-existent while swimming along with seemingly weightless sea turtles in St. John’s. My world was weightless too as I bobbled up and down with the undulating waters around me. I purposely floated alone, away from others. The sea was mine, if only for a few quarters of time, but it was mine as my view held only the waters around me. (I will spare you the intricate details of snorting water up my nose almost sending me into a flopping display of panic, but know that moment was there along with also almost losing my swim bottoms as I dove off the boat). I’m a sucker for creation. And the creation in these incredibly blue waters provide nothing short of mental healing. One rolling tide can sweep away any angst that lie at your back doorstep over to be discarded out over the coral reef that protrudes up from below. It’s therapeutic. And it’s simply glorious to lose yourself in the vastness of magnificence under the water line. But now, well now, I’m back. Back to the ins and outs. Back to THIS side of the water line. Back to the timeline of the ticking clock our society spends so much time trying to tame. There is no clock in the ocean, or rather I found none in my weightless stroll, but now I am back. Back to waiting.

Habakkuk 2:2 has been ringing in my ears non-stop ever since stepping on the plane heading back to my reality. “I will wait to see what the LORD says and how he will answer” (NLT). The verse flooded my thoughts before leaving town and again flood my thoughts now that I’ve returned. Aren’t we particularly horrible at waiting? Do we not conjure up every known horribleness that could possibly be while we wait? Anxiety is real. Worry is real-ER. Fear is real-EST. Somehow, for I know not how by my own merit, I’ve been able to keep these predators at bay. They creep in (mainly in the middle of the night), but then they creep back out. Crystal blue water surely played some role, but I struggled more as the week went on. Flying home was more like flying back to this breast nodule and all it may hold. I’m adoring the statistic of 8 out of 10 (8 out of 10 breast nodules go on to be benign cysts), but I’m finding less comfort around my own statistics for I know not what they are. I did this prophylactic double mastectomy to keep breast cancer at bay. So what does it mean when my risks were so high pre-mastectomy to now find a lump post mastectomy? You can roll that around in your mind until worry is all you know. I’m not there. I am not worrying. But I worry I will START worrying while I wait. See, that is the vicious cycle of worry so easily portrayed by us Type A folks. We truly can worry about worrying. Worry serves no purpose here. Waiting serves all the purpose here.

I’m so gracious in knowing that even through this nodule, and its imposed waiting mode, I am being refined. Ron is being refined. Our “We” is being refined. And for that I give thanks as I lay in wait. In turmoil we get glimpses of our self that we don’t see in the ins and outs of everyday life. There is a camaraderie that can be found in struggle.  There is a depth that can come in turmoil. The lack of guarantee of tomorrow brings a filter which strains out the superficial and brings back a focused lens aligned on the irreplaceable moments of life. I don’t want even a single second of that surreal focus to be muddled with the spoilage of worry. Worry is a predator that lurks behind each corner ready to squeeze out any blessing that lies just underneath. It’s a thief of everything great.  So I very much want to choose to get ahead of that so my lens of perspective remains cleansed by the hope and clarity that comes during refinement.   I want more time in the irreplaceable moments and in the sifter of refinement, and less time flooded by the corrosive nature of fear.

I say all of this out loud on this page as an active process for myself, for if I fall prey to the passive alternate, all will be lost. Sadness may come, pending a specific outcome, but Christ has taken the sting of even that before it makes itself known, so I will choose to see the incredible instead of giving merit to the damning (over and over in my head will I say this until I start to see the fruit! I’m terrible at being purposeful. But I’m getting a lot of practice, and I have as much role in this as anything else does.) My joy will not rely on outcome. For such a time as this, as we lie in wait, his promises are just as true! 

I have the last appointment of the day on Wednesday. The odds lie in getting good news. This “peanut” has just as much right to benign as anything else and I’m claiming that. I’m quite sure the appointment itself will simply be a “touch and feel” session just to get the initial impressions from Lead Breast Surgeon. She is beyond delightful so there is a high probability I will actually show up for the appointment (smile). After that, we will find ourselves back in wait. Then from there, we will go wherever we will go.  




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August 10, 2016 - If it takes a nodule...

I’ve mentioned before that I often struggle with what to keep private (my introverted heart protecting my everything) versus what to share here openly. It’s a constant internal battle of vulnerability versus honoring my commitment to model “doing life together” and letting my Story be His Story. It’s not always easy doing life His way. But I know that when I do, He honors that, and He uses that. Three days after my double mastectomy, I made a commitment to God that if He brought me to mastectomy I would do everything I could to be open to Him using my story. All of my story. So I’m laying my vulnerability on the line, and stepping in to His command for us to do life with other people, not in solidarity. And also because it is related to my mastectomy story that you have been following for 4 years now, and I want to stay committed to my transparency in that for hopes it helps one of you should you find yourself in similar shoes one day.

It was 1:30 in the morning and I was jolted out of a very deep sleep. I sat straight up in bed, eyes wide open, heart racing, and my mind attempting a record speed to orient myself to time and place.  I originally thought I must have heard a noise, but no, that wasn’t it. The house was very quiet. Beyond still. Beyond quiet. Often Oliver (the cat) comes up and hits me on the forehead when he thinks I need to be up and about. He’s brutal about it when he thinks it is time, but not this night, he was tucked in at the end of the bed on Ron’s side heavy in sleep. I laid back down and immediately felt a “twinge of something” in my lower right breast. Earlier in the day, I had done an arm/chest workout and now the muscle was in a cramp, no doubt its way of getting me back for what I had done to it hours before. I reached up to massage the area back into submission as I laid back down to fall back asleep, and there it was.

It’s the perfect text book “lump” I’ve heard described so many times before. Small, round, peanut sized, rubbery, non-tender nodule. It’s location: one inch to the left of midline and ½ inch up from the base of the breast (ok, there, that IS too much information, but location matters). Had it been in any other quadrant of the breast, I would have thought it to be a swollen lymph node, but lymph nodes don’t live in this region of breast tissue. But here it is, all the same, in MY quadrant of MY breast where it had not been invited. Something. Something that shouldn’t be there. Something that wasn’t there before. Immediately, I mean immediately, panic set in. And then a furious investigation of the situation (thankful to have only found this one). Then, the wondering of “what in the world?!”, “I had a double mastectomy”, “there is little to no breast tissue in my breast”, “It’s August! My heavy month! My Celebration Month. My Mastectomy Month. My ARE YOU KIDDING ME month” and then all the other things that run through your mind when you are in panic mode. Then, no sleep for many hours as I watched the room get lighter and lighter as the hours ticked on (I may or may not at one point reached down and tapped Oliver unrelentingly on his forehead until he raised his head. Just because I could. But don’t worry he got a lot of belly love too). 

The following day my rational side returned. It always does. And this time it was in record time. I felt this flooding of peace, aware and anxious, but underlying peace. I could hear in the back of my head that this story was his story, and that he has purpose in even this. He was calling me, even in this private moment, as reminder that he has a purpose. And it just may not be all about me.  

We often think God’s story comes when we have a “known”. Once we know the outcome (a diagnosis, a decision, a plan), we then bring our inner circle into our story for moral support. It’s as if we need to have it all figured out before we allow God to publicly do his work in us. I think it can be a rookie mistake, and a mistake that I make often. I’m learning we can miss some crucial moments that are ripe for the blessing that can come in chaos.  These are the core moments of this “period of wait”. There is huge value in this period! Where prayer may have its biggest outcome. Where friends can rally and remind you that your story is also their story, because they love you and they want to do life beside you. Where anxiety can be repurposed into astounding faith. Instead we sit in silence and in the privacy of self, and often rob ourselves of the beauty and restoration that can come while waiting with others in tow.

This journey of mastectomy has been all about this for me. Teaching myself to do life with others in the moment that life unfolds, and teaching me that every aspect of my story can be used for something. It may not mean a hill of beans to me, but it may mean something to the young wife who finds herself in tears while standing in front of the mirror the week after her surgery, or the middle-aged friend who doesn’t know why she feels so overwhelmed while emptying her breast drains, or the forty-something mastectomy soul who wakes up in the middle of the night and finds a lump. There is always someone out there who is just like you. And maybe they too need to know they aren’t alone, they aren’t a failure for feeling what they feel, and they aren’t strange for the thoughts that creep in when they don’t expect it. God is re-training me to be the version of me he designed me to be. And maybe 25 years after my lymphoma remission is the perfect time to remind me to stay aligned with faith in His plan. For His way is perfect, even in the waiting, and there is much to be learned (I’m working on this, but boy is it challenging! Be gone, negative thoughts! Be gone, fear!).

Lead Breast Surgeon (who did my mastectomy) is taking me back under her wing. She wants to see me in her office next week for an initial “touch and feel” session, and then I imagine imaging or biopsy or something is likely in my very near future (update: the appointment had to be moved to the following week due to a scheduling conflict on my end). But let’s look at the totally reassuring statistics that we all need to remind ourselves of in these situations. 8 out of 10 breast nodules are benign. 8 out of 10 ladies!!! That's only 2 being breast cancer! That’s for you too! So let’s relish in that truth when we find our lumps and bumps! Not worth worrying about 20% right? And for me, I had a prophylactic double mastectomy. These boobs are man-man, “his best work ever” he promised me, I have little to no breast tissue left (picture and orange, you cut a slice, then chew the fruit off the skin. You get almost all of the fruit, but there are bits and pieces left behind on the skin. Same with the boob after mastectomy, most but not all). So having so little breast tissue there, I am wondering how this nodule even found its way here. I must be very likable for it to choose to do all that work to reside in an area where it will have no friends. But it’s here, and we are going to pray it to benign-ville! The outcome just may lie in our prayer, not because God is our puppet, but because we grow closer to him through our prayer. Hurry is the death of Prayer. There are times we must wait and listen. And if it takes a nodule, it takes a nodule.

I’m a work in progress, and maybe because of His work in my story, you are too. Hello, nodule, welcome (eeek!) home. 

Habakkuk 2:2 says, “I will wait to see what the LORD says and how he will answer” (NLT). 

You guys are my people, for such a time as this.


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August 1, 2016- Deflated Balloons

Tomorrow is August 1. August as a month holds a lot of memories for me. Twenty five years ago my lymphoma when into remission in August. Ten years later, I was labeled as “cured”, also in August. Four years ago, I had my double mastectomy, also in August. Four years ago, I had surgery number 2 in the breast series to start breast reconstruction, also in August. Last year, I had surgery number 6 in the breast series, also in August. August holds a lot. August is a heavy month.

I’ve never been one to celebrate cancer mile stones. I don’t exactly know why I don’t do that. Almost everyone I know does that. I love celebrating your milestone with you. Balloons, cake, dinner, trips, whatever, whenever. It’s all wonderful and something almost everyone does, and does well! But for me, I always held this moment as a memory, not a celebration. I don’t know if this is survivor’s guilt? I don’t know if this is because I am terrible at celebrating (really, I am, I build something up in my head and it turns into deflated balloons and a molded piece of cake that never got eaten)? I don’t know if this is because it feels awkward? Most likely it a combination of all of the above plus a few more for good measure. I have plenty of friends who don’t get to celebrate milestones because they didn’t survive the diagnosis. I’d much rather celebrate their journey and the lives they touched even in their death rather than my “success”. It also always felt a little weird to celebrate an achievement because when it really comes down to it, I didn’t do a single thing to survive. I simply showed up each day when they asked me to and got my treatment. My survival is no great achievement on my part. So it just felt weird flaunting this stepping stone year after year. This year, it was a biggie. Twenty-five years lymphoma-free! That's crazy. So I wanted to try this attempt at celebration …..And I even flubbed that up. I wanted to go simple. Ease my way in. I can pull off simple, or so I thought. I bought two slices of cheesecake (guess Ron should have one too, huh?) on a whim while doing my grocery shopping earlier that day. Dinner rolled along, I pull out the cheesecake, popped the plastic lid open, grabbed a fork, and took a bite….and then…well what am I supposed to do next? Make a speech? Thank Ron and Oliver for attending the celebration? Give Ron a high five? Give a shout out of “I did it! I survived!”? It just simply felt awkward. Really awkward. I took my one bite (I was too full from dinner to finish the slice), close the lid, put it back into the fridge and we headed back out to the garage to finish cleaning.

Maybe I didn’t do it up enough. Maybe I should have planned a dinner out and invited people over. Maybe I should have set aside something other than just opening the fridge and pulling out a piece of cake shoved in a plastic takeout container. Maybe I should have realized that today was July 31 and not August 1^st. Yeah, I remembered that just before sitting down to write this tonight. Maybe my thoughts shouldn’t have been on the people that didn’t make it.

Hours later, it was getting dark outside and I could hear the thunder rolling in so I went outside and laid down in my driveway.  I wanted a few moments to decompress from the day. And while staring up at the lightning show God had given me, it hit me. I’ve had it wrong all along. Just as I was feeling let down and out of sorts, God gave me my favorite thing: A thunder storm. And it was spectacular! And I was reminded that none of this celebration rig-a-ma-roll should have ever been about me. I was missing the boat! I was trying to feel something I didn’t feel: accomplishment. My celebration should have instead been about God’s accomplishment: His provision. He gave me the thunderstorm to remind me he gave me survival. For some, death comes and even in that God has provision, particularly for those left behind who may grow closer to him and to others around them in the process of loss. In death he can bring restoration, forgiveness, longing for something outside of ourselves, a purpose to propel us forward as we grieve. Sometimes we don’t understand what he brings us, but it’s there, just waiting to be discovered. For others, like me, He may give survival.  He gives us provision in and through our stories that follow survival. We have the opportunity to be a conduit of his grace and mercy as our stories unfold. I think had I had THIS be the  focus of my celebration of what he is and has done in my life for the past 25 years of surviving, my celebrations would have been heartfelt and purposeful (for me who struggles to celebrate self). My celebration simply needed to be realigned around his provision to me, my family, and my friends by keeping me around to finish My Story.

So I’m having a do-over (or I am at least going to give it a try!). I am finishing my piece of cheesecake tomorrow actually ON August 1^st. It’s kind of late, so I am not going big for tomorrow. I’m sticking with the store bought cheesecake that is still sitting in my fridge, but then I am going to have little celebrations throughout the month (maybe a dinner out with a close girlfriend, maybe asking for cards or posts here on social media with bible verses of provision to be sent to me by friends - would you do that for me?, maybe set aside a day with Ron to just love on life, find and cherish time spent with family) as a testament of God growing me through the last 25 years. This feels manageable, something I actually could get in to, and better focused by focusing nothing on my achievement and all on Him, because really, all I did was show up.  

Here’s to twenty five years of awesome memories, incredible friends, life changing moments that I hold dear, storied shared, mistakes made, boobs removed, lungs challenged, hearts touched, challenges accepted, Christ-focusing journeys journeyed, lives loved, and even lives lost for in your loss I continue to find myself. He’s not finished with me yet. I am better for knowing each of you, and I hope you are better for knowing me too.

Hear ye, Hear ye! Let the celebration month begin!






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July 22, 2016 - Long live Saul!

Since I was running very short on time, I quickly threw on my swim suit, my flip flops, grabbed a towel and headed out into the garage in record time flat. Normally, I would have been a bit more organized (throw on the swim suit, A COVER-UP, flip flops, a bag stuffed with sunscreen, a towel, a book, a snack, a drink, goggles, headphones) before heading outside, but today I was in a hurry  and needed to get there, get my swim in, and get back to finish out the tasks of the evening. I also usually walk, but since I was in my swimsuit only (I never do this!) and needed to get there fast, I jumped in the car and opened the garage door to drive the few short blocks. It was sweltering outside and the glare of the sun was reflecting off my window making it difficult to navigate the drive way, but soon enough it was all clear with lots of squinting and I was pulling into the street.……..oh no.

There he was right in front of my car, oblivious to me, making his sluggish way across the scorching pavement. “Saul” (because that is what I do), an adorable rather large turtle about the size of a football, had become the perfect target for, if not my tire, the tire of some fast driving teenager who takes the corners on two wheels. And somehow all of this was now unfolding all on my watch. Because I have an almost supernatural ability to find myself in the company of animals in distress (a recent few: Gertrude, the dehydrated sea duck with a bum wing; Stormy, a pond turtle crossing the soun  Id bridge; Franklin, the sea turtle who had been kidnapped by beach goers; Blinco, the belly-up fish attempting to die in the surf; and now Saul), I'm not totally surprised this is my task for the day. 

So here I was with a choice:

1. Drive by slowly so that I don’t clip him and head on toward the pool
2. Get out as fast as lightening (cause I am in my swim suit!) and run like the wind to pick him up and take him to the other side of the road.
3. Sit and wait in the car acting as a crossing guard in hopes that no other cars come around the corner, but for now the coast is clear.

Number 1 was the obvious choice for any sane adult, because did I mention I was driving my car in my swim suit? Yet Number 3 was a totally plausible option were I not Sally, who absolutely can’t let an animal be in distress or risk of distress, and I, not knowing if Saul was out for his fast paced stroll across the road or a gingerly lackadaisical wobble that would be hours on end to reach the curb (and could he even climb the curb?) forced me into risky decision number 2.

Ok, so it’s Number 2. Come on, Sally, you can do this! I slide into the very middle of the road (to prevent another car from coming through) and put the car in park, though leaving it running so I could make my fast get away when the rescue was complete. I check the windows, the mirrors, the windows again, the mirrors again, while craning my neck as far as I can to ensure no one was out walking or driving by (I’m in my swim suit!) and determine the coast is clear. I open the door, jump out of the car, run fast as I can to the front of the car and pick up football sized Saul in both hands to which he promptly responded with hissing and aggression of “oh no you didn’t!” while I ignore the hiss and purposely whisper sweet sentiments of “you’re so precious”, “what a lovely turtle you are”, “smooch, smooch, smooch” into what I thought may be his little Turtle Ear. We make it to the curb quick like lightening and then I realize, I have carried him back in the direction he had just come so that was  surely a slap in his face for all of his efforts for the last however minutes it had been since he stepped into the road. Then I also remember, glancing in the direction he was heading, that there is a pond in the woods right around the corner, and I imagine this is where his turtle family surely was out camping for the holiday weekend. I simply had to get Saul to the pond! I glance around again, coast is still clear, and pick up poor hissing Saul once again and carry him (arms straight out in front of me) back across the road and now down the street a little in the direction of the corner next to the pond.

(Chatting, laughing, conversations off to my right)

Holy guacamole!!!!! The front door of my neighbor’s house has just opened and out pours what surely was the census of Texas right into their front yard. And there I stand, IN MY SWIMSUIT, holding Saul, BOTH of us now hissing at the outcome of this moment.

Promptly and prideful with head held high I continue my 20 foot jaunt to the grass at the corner and place Saul down facing the pond, walk back to the car, climb in and close the door, then lower my head back down in embarrassment, pull back into the driveway, drive into the garage and close the garage door.

The moral of my oh-so-very-true story is five-fold:

1. Take the time to grab the cover-up. While I am working so hard not to allow self-shaming, embracing my body flaws does not mean I have to parade myself (carrying a football sized turtle mind you!) in the middle of the street while wearing a swim suit.
2. Maybe Saul has his own plans and who am I to thwart them? (Ok no, the turtle needed saving and I was just the person to do it. Save the turtle every time!)
3. Every animal deserves a name as it makes endearment absolute and therefore follow-through a lot more likely when the situation changes.
4. It’s ok to change your original plans after embarrassment. Nothing shameful about re-prioritizing vacuuming over swimming.
5. Sometimes we simply need to learn to look for reasons to laugh. The world brings us so many reasons for heart ache so we need to celebrate with laughter when we can.

Long Live Saul! Long Live the Swimsuit Cover-up!





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July 8, 2016 - I know it's not that simple, but really it is.

To say the last few days, weeks, months have been full of heartbreak would be the understatement for sure. Black lives, police lives, Turkish lives, homosexual lives, American lives, Christian lives, refugee lives, children lives killed by parents, parent lives killed by spouses…the list goes on and on. Then there are the individual lives we hear nothing about on the ever scrolling news reels. And then there are the day to day heartbreaks over every day lives. It’s too much! My heart nor my mind know how and what to process with this ongoing onslaught of “one more death” day in and day out with no reprieve. I don’t want to get into the cause of it all because mine would be an uneducated dialogue in a pool of many, but my summary thought is we have not a gun problem, but rather we have a devastating heart problem. We’ve lost our focus, and we have yet to find our way back. 

So while I am leaving the cause there in that one sentence, I find myself in need of exploring my role, which I dare not say would be trivial. We are all to blame. We are stupid to think we are not. I have racism. I have anger. I have “elitism” thinking I am better than the next. I have jealousy. I have pride. I have education gaps. I have financial gaps. I have stupid thoughts and even more stupid reactions. I have a heart that is tender…for certain things. I have things that make me the cause, and I have things that make me the target.  I am not immune to being a contributing cause to the problems of this world. We are just as fallen as the next person, but maybe we have better resources, better coping mechanisms, better…whatever. Encompassing it all, I am stupid to not at least acknowledge that I am not immune to making bad decisions, to saying I am one thing when I am really the next, to being part of the problem and not the solution. Our pride keeps us from acknowledging it. But it’s there.  We need to quit diagnosing the person next to us and instead start diagnosing ourselves. We need an intervention and we need Divine intervention.

It’s time for purposeful action. I don’t have measurable effects on legislation. I don’t have measurable effects on our response as a society. But I do have widely significant effects on my response as self. And I need to be held accountable to looking inward. I need to sum up the passion I know lies underneath the muck and make tangible impacts in my immediately surrounding 100 square feet. I have a choice to make. And it’s knocking at my front door. So I’m looking for people next to me that I can love on. I’m looking for that friend that needs an extra “pick me up” today as they navigate their life. I’m paying kindness forward to my waitress. I’m seeking out opportunities to offer praise and moments to provide a compliment to that coworker. I am healing from the inside out and not waiting for you to change. I am squashing my poor actions and taking responsibility for where I failed you. I am working to focus on your strengths, for you already know your weaknesses and need not for me to point those out.  I am reaching out to the friend I haven’t spoken with in quite some time. I am contacting the person I need to ask forgiveness of. I am offering forgiveness without waiting to be asked.  I am reminding myself you are driving slow because you have a broken rib. I am bringing to light that your rude response was sprouted from your domestic violence.  I am saying the words to you I left unspoken. I am going out of my way to put your needs above my own. I am seeking to be more grateful and to offer more grace. Even mal-intent can be met with the kindness of humanity. I can hold you accountable in love, and not in spite. I can dig deep to find my racism and pray it into extinction. I can be open that I am not perfection, but rather a fallen soul covered in God’s grace, which should propel me into a more suitable response.  I need to consistently choose to go out of my way to exude kindness. I can root out my failure and replace it with warmth and hope and joy, for those will win out every single time when chosen! I am starting this very moment with realistic steps that positively impact my circle of being.

We think the answer lies in the government or the ___lives around us (insert your own solution), but I absolutely would be a fool to not find my role in the destruction of this humanity. That should keep me busy for many moons to come. As Christ grows my heart, he reveals my responsibility. Our fingers should first point inward and work outward from there. And we should hold each other accountable, but only after we start with self. I have a long road ahead. I know it's not that simple, but really it is. 

#prayersforhumanity

#mayheartbreakbehealedwithselfaction
#prayersforSally  




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June 28, 2016- For lying in wait simply leaves us….Lonely

It’s so easy in this life to find yourself on any given day feeling rugged. It’s a ruggedness of being worn out, emotionally drained, emotionally conflicted, physically challenged, and on the verge of being out of time for the monstrosity of the never ending to-do list.  All while attempting to raise little ones with any chance of them being contributing members to society. All while wondering where our time goes when we are single and working hours on end. All while being married and trying to pull together 2 schedules into one. All while approaching mid-life, or passing mid-life, and looking back and wondering what we have to show for it all. There is nothing like navigating mid-life to get our attention around the value of life’s accumulations.

I’ll venture a guess to say that on top of this incredibly chaotic life we spend so much time building for ourselves surrounded with a calendar so overflowing that that no one would envy, a work ethic over shadowing our home ethic, and such a sense of imbalance that we don’t even know what comes next, that most, if not all of us, would describe ourselves as lonely. I ask myself how in the world we could ever be lonely with a calendar overflowing with tasks. How could we be lonely when we are surrounded by person after person in this place of work? How could we be lonely with the constant bombardment of events, and sound, and cohabitation? How could we be lonely with a spouse and 2.5 kids? Yet it is exactly what we are, isn’t it? Lonely. And burned out. And run-down. 

It’s evident as we navigate challenges, and we long to dialogue the experience with women that we trust. It’s evident when we are confronted with heartbreak, and we long for the phone to ring with someone calling to check in on us. It’s evident when we see fellow friends showered with attention during loss, and we long for attention ourselves as we mourn in silence. We don’t want more tasks or things. We don’t want more calendar commitments.  We don’t even want another acquaintance. Rather, we crave to our core people that bring value and who are willing to do the tough road with us. Doesn’t it really simply come down to the fact that we crave authentic relationship? And as we search this out we ebb and flow in this rat race of the American Dream in hopes of finding a reasonable substitute that will give us a sense of value, a value which we didn't realize was intended to come through relationship. But with that missing, we fill the void with a to-do list, one more vacation, another night on the town , just one more accolade for our children, or one more promotion while spending our days away in the cinder block lined hallways. We are shoving our lives so full with substitutes that instead of coming out on the other side purposeful and recharged as genuine relationship can bring, we come out in a perpetually starved substituted version of our selves. And there is no wonder we suddenly find ourselves worn out, emotionally drained, emotionally conflicted, physically challenged, and out of time.

So having pondered this for days/months/years on end, and as midlife has not only knocked on my door, but somehow been invited in, I find myself still floundering in finding the fix. Having accumulated all that this life can offer, how do I better focus myself on what life was intended to be and encompassing more of  relationship and less of things? It’s not as if we can snap our fingers and “poof!” genuine relationships are on your front porch. Yet we live our lives as if they do, sitting in wait for our best of friends to gather at our doorstep. And it’s not as if what genuine relationships we do have will meet every need of every circumstance, though we wait in anticipation of unsubstantiated proof that they do. After much churning of thought and reflection, I think the culprit lies in that fact that we have become passive in an active process. We sit in constant wait for something to happen TO us. We wait for people around us to prove their self-worth. We lie in the shadows of life and anticipate someone else coming to our rescue in our hour of need. And THIS is where I find that I have been fully in the wrong. And THIS is where Christ is growing my heart. It’s not a revelation of any sorts. You’ve heard me type similar words on similar pages. It’s my awareness that deepens as I continue to ponder and thus hopefully propelling me into action: I want/need/should/must model what it is that I think I want from other people. Instead of unrealistically setting a list of expectation of what I expect from people around me, I imagine I am much better served to place those expectations on myself in proof of their worth. It removes the focus off of what others are or are not doing for me, and instead pushing me to focus on what I am or am not doing for other people. For do genuine relationships come not from waiting for them to happen, but rather in my active pursuit and nourishment of those around me.

Loneliness is not a place I one day am surprised to find myself, but rather a place I most likely cultivated for myself by my lack of action and investment in others. This statement isn’t absolute, I know, but I would say it is a huge contributing factor at the very least. I know this that God will provide my every need, even in loneliness. His is a Hope that will anchor the soul (Hebrews 6:18). But God also created the value of earthly relationship that doesn’t replace His, but instead embellishes this life on this side of heaven. So while I can sit back in the Hope He offers, I can also nourish this life with the joys that genuine relationship here on earth can bring as well. And it deserves to be actively cultivated, sought out, and nourished (not to be replaced by an enticing substitute) for lying in wait simply leaves us….Lonely.

I’m asking myself how can I expect less of others around me and more of myself instead. How can I accumulate less tasks, things, accolades, and instead better cultivate myself for genuine relationship? How do I leave time in my life so it can be spent with people in a sense of community, and not running the rat race we set up for ourselves? It’s a long process of ups and downs, but it is certainly worth the pursuit. There’s proof in the pudding. I’m stirring my pot. 





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June 22, 2016 - It could change your everything

I was running late. The meeting would be starting in no time, so I really needed to hurry.  I grabbed up my stuff and out into the hall I went and soon after realized I had way too much stuff to carry having left my book bag back at my desk. I shuffled it all around in my arms over and over again and quickly realized the tiny stuff (the credit card, the note) simply had to go elsewhere. Up until now I’ve not been one to repurpose the bra for a pocket but when you find yourself in a bind and in clothes with no pockets… I reluctantly decided on my bra.

I stopped in route to grab a drink, a snack, and some napkins/utensils, and after paying for the items, I returned the card and now two more items (receipts and napkins) back to my bra for safe keeping and off I went to the meeting. Now mind you, this was mid-day and after the meeting I attended two more, finished out my day seeing patients, and then gathered all my belongings and made my way to the car and back home. I got home, fed the cat, made dinner, did odds and ends and then several hours later was ready for bed. I went to the bedroom and took off my clothes, took off my bra….and literally about scared myself to death when the now long forgotten items started tumbling out of my bra and noisily onto the bedroom floor.  Who walks around for 5+ hours having no memory or sensation of several items shoved into your bra during a moment of haste? See, I told you I couldn’t feel anything.  Four years later and I still have large portions of boob 1 and 2.2 that can’t feel a thing. It’s comical if you let it be. Lesson learned: Choose taking your bag, no matter how cumbersome, every single time.  

Today was simply a mastectomy kind of day. The forgotten items in the “bra stuffing”. Earlier in the day I ran into my surgeon who I haven’t seen around the office since my last surgery 9 months ago. After my meeting, a lady in the elevator asked me if I could point her in the direction of the breast clinic as she was running late for her follow-up mammogram.  Thing after thing today. Some days it’s nothing. Other days it’s like the whole world is there to remind you. I’ve decided both days serve their purpose.

A little nugget from today? My coworker brought a little nugget right to my doorstep for the taking: “I’ve decided I am going to start being selective about what I let in my home.” We had been talking about downsizing our lives. Purging our closets, uncluttering our drawers. I was thinking very literally about the discussion. Having just moved earlier this year, I was acutely in tune with the tasks, both emotional and physical, of unloading stuff from our closets. I simply didn’t want all the stuff I had collected over the years packed up in another box only to be stored once again in another attic. I wanted less. She had recently gone through a similar task of pulling things out of the closet and setting them aside for donation. We discussed a little while longer about duplicated items our cabinets held and the freedom found in tossing them in the donation box. The day got busy and then the conversation was abandoned.

Or so I thought. As the day went wound its way forward, her words hung close. “I’ve decided I am going to start being selective about what I let in my home.” Hum. Those were simple words uttered in benign declaration of a literal thought. You know, I need less sweaters. Who needs more books? A statement of the typical clutter of excess found in the American home.  But on my way home as I was navigating traffic (with credit cards shoved in my bra!) those words dug deeper. They started to eat at me in that maybe each syllable carried not only literal implications of this shoe or that kitchen ware tucked in the nook of that cupboard, but what if there was a deeper implication of that statement. And I found myself wondering if literal is what she meant. Was there a deeper meaning in her words? What if I truly did carefully dissect and evaluate each item (literally or figuratively) that came through the doors of my home. What if I carefully thought through in a way of saying “by bringing this item (or thought, or whatnot) into my home, what would the ramifications be”?  Do I care enough about my home and marriage that I assign this degree of thought to the things I introduce for each?  I know someone who took internet out of their home because the husband didn’t want the temptation of pornography in his life . If he has an email to send, he waits until he get into the office to send it. He needs to look something up online? His wife offers to look it up for him on her smart phone. To my knowledge, he doesn’t have a pornography addiction, but he loves his marriage so much that he doesn’t want to risk it. He cares more about protecting his vows than he does the convenience of life online in their home. Powerful, huh? I know plenty of other people who have a rule of not riding in a car alone with someone of the opposite sex. While there would be no mal-intent on their part, they value the appearance of their marriage more than they do the convenience of getting a lift to the meeting. They don’t want to risk someone else seeing them and starting the rumor of “I saw Johnny with Lucy….” We all know how the appearance of things can destroy a reality when placed in the wrong hands. So while you sit there reading saying to yourself “Sally, these are pretty drastic examples!”,  I find myself now wanting to reply with “are they?”

What are we bringing or allowing  into our homes (our lives, our minds, our hearts) that we shouldn’t be? What are we allowing to come in that is now an unintended risk to the things we hold dear? Got kids? Oh that list probably just tripled. What are we addicted to that are destroying our finances? One more pair of shoes? What words are we allowing to be said in the confines of our home that are destroying the self confidence of our pre-teen? What words are going unsaid that portray to our children that we must bottle up our emotions? Got teenage sons? I’d say we need to take heavy inventory. Do you really need cable TV? Got teenage gals? Yep, choose wisely! Are you single? How do you need to structure your home to preserve yourself?  I imagine each “risk” is going to be different for each of us, but I would say the “call for action” lies within us all and most often remains untaken.

If I were to search my heart and search the atmosphere in my home I know without a doubt that I could be more selective. More protective! It’s not always our intent that matters. It’s the outcome. The perception. The onlookers that can roll right over your reality, and I find that without being proactive to protect our home, we just may find ourselves in a place we never intended to be. You don’t usually see disaster coming your way. You just one day find yourself there. You also don’t always consciously choose with disaster in mind.  It’s a subtle temptation that one day plops itself from un-tempted to tempted in no second flat. I think we now live in a society and a cultural environment where we just may have to, at times, choose the drastic choice in order to protect our home and all we hold dear.  In what ways should I choose inconvenience in an effort to put my marriage to my spouse first? In what ways do I need to change thoughts and behaviors to uphold the sanctity of family? How should I better model what comes in and goes out of my home. We need to be proactive, not reactive, and we just may need to be drastic because everything could be hanging in the balance and we don’t even know it yet. And if you don’t know where to start, start where I am: Douse your home in prayer. Pray that you choose to be selective. Pray that you aren’t afraid to make the drastic choice, if need be. Pray that you are able to see the risks by looking through the eyes of your spouse and children. Pray that you don’t consider yourself immune to the risks. Pray, pray, pray! And then start evaluating your front door and what you are going to allow to come through it. Just because something knocks doesn’t mean you have to answer, and just maybe closing a door on it could change your everything.

“I’ve decided I am going to start being selective about what I let in my home.”

Psalm 51:10: Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.









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June 7, 2016- Dodged the bullet

I used to jokingly say “I need a lung transplant” anytime I got a nasty cold. The hacking fits that would double you over, you’ve been there yourself. Well tonight as I am sitting here feeling like crud and hacking up a lung, I say that no more.  Isn’t it interesting how something so benign and trivial said in jest totally takes a drastic turn to not so funny when faced with the real possibility? I dodged the bullet back in December (and “dodged the bullet” certainly wouldn’t be funny in someone else’s circumstances) and it left an impact. I no longer joke about my lungs. It’s too close to home. 

Interesting how we can go from being carefree/comical in tossing around colloquialisms about certain scenarios, and then drastically in 24 hours time with one brush of fear we can transition over instead to an advocate.  “I need a lung transplant”, “He rides the short bus”, “ we certainly dogged that bullet”, “it made me want to blow my brains out”, “I’d rather jump off a bridge”. Carefree, right?... until you have to face one of them for real.  You would never use these latter words so carelessly with someone who lost a daughter to suicide. Words carry a different meaning once you've been there. 

And take the advocate into play. Isn’t there always a story there? Who actually advocates for something they know nothing about? Chances are, I mean super high chances, if someone is speaking out for or against something, they’ve had a brush with it themselves.  I have a friend who is highly visible in the world of human trafficking. She’s had a brush with it herself. I work with parents who devote their lives to raising awareness for genetic diseases. They lost a child to its horrible grasp. I have another friend who lost a spouse in battle. They now serve on a foundation for helping widows of war. Think about the things you are passionate about. Are they not fueled by experience? We want women to be more open about infertility and miscarriage. If you advocate for that, I bet you’ve been there.  I advocate for women in mastectomy. Yep, I’ve been there. It’s so easy to care about issues we have traversed, either first hand or second hand), and in contrast it’s simply so hard to have lasting care for things we have not. Experience carries forward a motivation and a little tug at the heart strings. However, it’s very difficult to maintain a stance on something we know very little about. For example, it’s easy for me to feel care and concern for your battle with heart failure while you are there in the moment digging your way through the trenches, but that care and concern rarely morphs into a passion as we move further away from your event. A month or two later and I’m back to feeling something less than advocacy for your struggle.  My concern for your experience over time is replaced by the urging demands of my own life. This is why there is often loneliness in our plight after initial diagnosis. It’s just a reality of doing life with other people. By design, we simply care a whole lot about other people as they face the giant, but as the giant becomes familiar and yesterday’s news, the giant takes a back seat for the rest of us as we watch from the side lines. But give me a personal scare with pulmonary fibrosis and I quickly become an expert in everything fibrosis and that expertise will last for years to come.

I think God was brilliant in this design. We can’t all be advocates for everything. The pool would be watered down. Unbelievable. Un-motivating. If we all ganged up on raising awareness of absolutely everything, we would put less than 1% of our efforts and wisdom into each issue. Instead, don’t we become more relate-able, believable, trustworthy, impacting by advocating for issues having been there ourselves? For example, I truly do not think you want me to advocate for women on divorce. I simply know very little about it.  I’ve never been divorced, no one in my family had been divorced, I have very few friends that have been divorced. My knowledge is third hand, from books, from movies, from conversations. So what merit do I bring to the divorce table? In fact, instead of merit, if we all are going to be honest here, I more likely bring a little bit of judgement to that table. I am happy to support you, cry with you, pray for reconciliation with you, but I seriously doubt I would have any impact as the advocacy-face of women going through divorce, and because I haven’t been there myself, I risk coming to the table full of preconceived ideas and judgement that simply doesn’t pan out. And as someone looking for someone to advocate on my behalf for any topic I’m facing do I not want someone who truly knows ( not from books but from experience) my stance? I want to tell my deepest struggles to someone who has been there, someone who gets it and brings no judgement to the table, someone who I believe truly knows what I am fighting through and for. We are creatures of relationship, and we naturally navigate toward what we know, and we also want to be known by other people who have been there too. Our advocacy is a testament of our experiences.  And 24 hours, 6 months, 1 year from now, we have no idea what we might find ourselves suddenly an advocate for.

Full transparency? I used to get really frustrated with the Susan G. Komen platform. There, I said it, it’s out there on paper. If I had to guess, breast cancer (BC) gets the most research, financial backing, commercial propaganda, of anything else out there in the malignancy world (maybe even of any disease state). Make something pink and sell it in October and it will be bought. It wasn’t that I didn’t think BC was a worthy cause, it most certainly was, but working in oncology and seeing all the malignancies not advocated for…well, it frustrated me.  Take pancreatic cancer where the 5 year survival rate is a miserable 8%. Where is a month devoted to it (it does exist but I bet most of us don’t know when it is)? Where are all the football uniforms colored purple during pancreatic awareness month? I simply wanted the attention/finances/research to be spread evenly across the causes.  Breast cancer is worthy, but it totally overshadows other killers out there. Then….I got my mastectomy news. I can’t say my position on everything has changed, but it changed enough because now I wasn’t an onlooker looking in from outside but rather a women staring statistics in the face.  We simply care about what we have experienced, and that can change at a moment’s notice. I now realize it isn’t the Susan G. Komen Foundation that is at fault for the imbalance, she totally did her part to get the news out there and sets the bar very high. It’s the under representation of advocates for other areas of life. Liver cancer awareness exists, but it’s not so in your face. Same with depression, Alzheimer’s, Krabbe disease. ALS got a huge publicity projection with the recent Ice Bucket Challenges. It all came down to someone fighting the fight and then someone picking up the reigns and being creative in their advocacy. 

I need that creativity. I need that passion. I need to shout out for the scars of mastectomy and so many other things in life. I need to be empowered to fight for what I experience. I would have never even considered giving pulmonary fibrosis a single funding dollar before last December. I would have given breast cancer some funding because it’s so highly visible thanks to advocates that are hard core. So I ask myself, what should I be advocating for that I am not? What is going to happen in the next year of your life or my life that will suddenly change my awareness? What has already happened in your life that you now need to be a voice for? We won’t have the same passions. We aren’t designed to do so. We should all be passionate about some things at baseline (injustice, persecution, abuse, neglect, etc) and then we should individually become advocates for other things because God allowed events in our lives to change us, or change someone around us (malignancy, abuse, infertility, oh how the list goes on and on and on). In the former we carry commonality (it’s a mandate of being a moral and ethical humanity). The latter we sort of find ourselves in after we experience life unfolding. We very simply need to be an advocate…for something. Otherwise, what’s the point? Does it not instead become an experience and then an opportunity lost?  Do I not owe the next victim my voice and experience? I certainly can’t save the world from everything, but I certainly can use my individual experiences to do my best trying, in whatever way I can no matter how big or how small. I’d say I get a failing grade on this most days, but I’m hoping to one day be Most Improved.

Thank you, cleft lip, lymphoma, mastectomy, fibrosis, personal failure, insecurity, and everything else that is still to be determined. I hope to not let you down.


(As an update on my friend from my last post, her cancer has returned. Hers is not my story to tell, but I do ask that you pray for her as she navigates this again. We have been talking behind the scenes over the last 10 days and what a motivation her story is and will be to those she tells. God does great things, even in pain.)



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June 1, 2016 - The loss of We

Relapse. It’s a word that carries a lot of weight. Diagnosis carries some punch, but the gut kick of relapse carries something altogether different. It’s the knowledge that comes with Relapse that weighs it down. Been there. Faced that. Grueling memories of what comes back around.  The known is the shadow underneath the cheery day of normalcy. I have the badge of having kicked diagnosis in the butt, but that shadow, it’s always there. In contrary, with diagnosis, there is an unknown. It’s unchartered territories yet to be traversed. You are limited to trying to recall the story of a friend’s experience. “Wasn’t she nauseated all the time?” “Remember the time she threw up at the mall?” “Didn’t she have to quit her job?”  “How long did she get treatment?” Or you are left to conjure up the lines out of a celebrity newscast. “Stage 3 liver cancer”…”surgery scheduled for next week”…”she will fight the good fight determined to overcome”…”so brave so strong”…”Hollywood rallies around her”. It’s other people’s stories that give you a glimpse into what you may face with the same diagnosis. But with Relapse, it’s a whole different ballgame.

You have walked the lines yourself before. You vividly recall the gut wrenching heartbreak of hearing the devastating words heavily falling from his mouth, his lips moving in slow motion. And as the words tumbled off his lips they began to absorb every ounce of air around you making it harder and harder to breath as he detailed this scan and that.  Likewise, you can easily conjure up the pains of toxicity like the back of your hand. You can feel the nauseating bile creep up higher into your throat as your thoughts flow back to then. You are in constant notice of the single strand of hair sitting on your shoulder as in premonition of what could lie right around the corner without any warning at all. You can pull into focus that moment when your spouse got the news and the watery eyes that followed. You see, it’s all always there able to be pulled back from the periphery into center view at any moment. You already know most of what lies ahead. And therefore Relapse is weighted a little differently. It’s heavier. It’s the sorrow and fear of “what if” that can come with knowledge.  But if I were to be honest I need to dig a little deeper and ask myself what is that we are really afraid of?

I’ve never been plagued by the worries of a lymphoma relapse. I don’t know if that was my naivety of “lightening never strikes twice” (we totally know relapse is a daily occurrence in this now cancer-stricken world) or my simple perspective of been invincible. You would understand the absurdity of that statement had you truly known my track in life thus far. But it’s still there, this cape of invincible carefully placed across my shoulder and covering me with, well quite honestly, it covers me with stupidity. Whatever we want to call it I simply lived in this world where lymphoma would be a once in a lifetime moment never to be seen again. However, as I matured out of my teenage years and started traversing the knowledgeable days of adulthood and then accumulated the knowledge that comes with my career path, the worry that began to skim its way across my pond of stupidity was compiled not with fear of relapse, but fear of a secondary malignancy or unmanageable toxicity. I guess this was why I was so decisive and so seamless in my decision for mastectomy and so lacking in surprise at the development  fibrosis. I simply expected…something…to come. And I still do.

So while most sit mentally teetering on proverbial edge of the Relapse “what if”, I rather thumb-my-nose  in disregard to relapse as even an option. My alternative “what if” is of second malignancy or life-reducing toxicity, but let's face it. It floats in the very same pond as Relapse. They are joint in their outlook. Dismal some might say. A constant undulating wave of “right around the corner” pooling in the stomach of its owner, who is never quite at ease in the peacefulness in which we try to sit. “Too good to be true”. “It’s only a matter of time”. “I might be the one.” Once you successfully traverse diagnosis, you never fully find yourself back into the peaceful mindset of the un-diagnosed. “What is coming next?” is always there underneath. We constantly carry around in our pockets the reality of statistics. The odds are always greater than zero.  1% is not zero. That reality changes your decision making.  It blurs the edges of your clarity. It makes even the smallest of odds a subtle player in your everyday and can put a noticeable dent in your level of carefree. You find yourself a little more guarded. A little less confident in tomorrow. A nail biter when waiting for routine results. A single tinge of unexpected pain can propel you to a comprehensive and immediate mental regurgitation of your past experience. It’s there. “What if?” 

I’ve recently been pondering what is it that drives that apprehension of what if after a diagnosis? I don’t think it’s the inconvenience (rearranging our schedules for appointments, avoiding this or that with our lost immunity) that a diagnosis can bring that we loathe, nor do I think we fear the pains of financial burden that will come. They most certainly come, but they don’t hold us captive. Nor do we loathe the frustration of feeling our absolute worst, weak, at risk, less than.  That carries a ton of merit, but neither is that the source of worry.  Let’s face it, we know all the nooks and crannies that come with the diagnosis, and it’s not those that make us swell up with fear. These things make diagnosis complicated, a nuisance, a hardship, and something most certainly worthy of creating anger. But our fear is sprouted not of these worthy sources, but rather I more recently find myself discerning that this underlying root of fear is cultivated by the awareness of potential loss. The fear of not winning this time and losing everything we hold precious is the source of our fear and what keeps the “what ifs” of relapse or related complications in the forefront of our minds…for the rest of time.

We are created to love and to be loved. It all comes down to relationship. And in the diagnosis or the relapse we become acutely aware that we have great risk in losing what we have so carefully cultivated. Our children, our spouse, our family and friends. Not loss in that they will turn away from us, but rather loss in that we could potentially leave them behind. We are driven by our fear of outcome. There are other fears interwoven in the strand of worry as supporting actors, each not to be stripped of their own value, but at the core of the strand sits the knowledge that the next outcome might not be “remission”. This time our luck may have run out. This time we may get a different hand. This time…

I'm not afraid of relapse. I'm afraid of what relapse can bring….loss. And honestly, I don’t think there is a single thing we can do to circumvent that fear. It’s a normal response to a rational inherent risk. And it is not something you fully understand until you have been there staring diagnosis in the face, and then again, if you are selected, when you find yourself on the other side now dodging relapse and the other sister follies. But I am working diligently to instead focus on the comfort in what all of that means. I simply value what we were intended to value: We.  For in “we” lies our relationships with the people around us, and we want to be around forever to relish in what all those cumulative relationships bring us: joy, purpose, contentment, pursuit, love, value, focus…and oh so many other things. We is the core of our everything. 

As a friend of mine is facing potential relapse of breast cancer this week and as so many of us as survivors sit in the shadows of a constant awareness of “what if”, I wanted to mentally take a deep dive in to discern the heart of it all. Underneath it all, I don’t fear relapse or related mishap (fibrosis, secondary malignancy heart failure, or whatnot) in and of itself. I simply and very honestly down to the core of everything that I am fear the loss of “We”. And it motivates everything I am and do from the day after diagnosis, and after remission, and now I'm finally realizing it's also in the prospects of "what if". 



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May 23, 2016 - Ghost Boob

This week, we are back to mastectomy updates. At certain time points, I want to revisit the boob "status" so you have a concept of what to expect and when if you are in the middle of mastectomy. For this update, it’s been 9 months since surgery #6 and 3 years and 9 months since the mastectomy itself. Visually, Boob 1 and Boob 2.2 are pretty spot on. They do in fact mirror the former tenants, with the exception of a few scars. All and all, we have two boobs and therefore goal achieved. While visually, they pass inspection, there are other aspects that remain a wee bit (or a lot of bit) wonky.  I will start with sensation. We’ve touched on this topic before, but I wanted to update you on the timing in case this information is helpful to you in the future.

Let me introduce you to Ghost Boob. As a refresher, the breast is comprised of glandular tissue, ducts, fat tissue, connective tissue, nerves, blood vessels and lymphatic vessels. Those contents sit on top of the chest wall muscles. During the mastectomy procedure, the entire contents of the breast (+/- the skin itself and the nipple) are removed all the way down to the chest wall muscle. During reconstruction (as I had; there are several ways to reconstruct a breast) a pocket is created within the chest wall muscle and the implant is slipped into the pocket. This serves as a holster per se for the weight of the implant to be supported. While the implant is used to provide the breast structure, during reconstruction the nerves, blood supply, adipose, and ducts are not returned to the breast. As a result, women have a change in sensation, a sort of numbness due to the lack of nerve endings, in the new breast. I’ve mentioned before what a strange feeling this is to run your hand down your neck over the breast and onto the stomach. Feeling, no feeling, feeling. It’s identical to what you (don’t) feel when you touch your hand after it has fallen asleep. Ghost Boob! Overtime, some women regain some (though usually not all) of the ability to feel pain or the sensation of touch on the breast as nerve endings start to regrow in the area. So now, 3 years and 9 months later, I can feel about half (the upper half) of my breasts. The bottom half of the breasts are still Ghost Boobs. What I love about this is when I go swimming I don’t have to worry about that awful moment of slinking your chest down in to freezing cold water. I simply can’t feel it. What I loathe about this, well, is that it is just plain weird. I’m not going to go into great detail here, but there also is the impact on intimacy. You simply need to know that if you are headed toward mastectomy. It is just something you don’t realize going in. The good news is a year ago I truly could feel nothing, so we have some progress as times goes on. It took about 3 years to regain half of my feeling back.

Enter stage left - Frost Boob. The other wonky thing is also around the touch sensation. Imagine you just ran 3 miles (or for some of us 0.0 miles). Your body temperature is soaring as you attempt to dissipate heat. Touch your stomach and it feels very warm to the touch. There may be a cool sensation on top of the warmth as you sweat out fluid, leaving a clammy sensation overall.  So while your body is in temperature overload, if you touch your breast at the same time, it is cool as a cucumber. Frost Boob. This is a result of having a lessened blood supply to that area. Remember, the blood vessels were also removed during the mastectomy. Blood flow is what brings warmth to an area. Limited blood flow, cool to the touch. Over time, like nerves, blood vessels too start to regrow, but the numbers are less. At 3 years 9 months Frost Boob still prevails. It’s simply awkward, and quirky, and a good party trick??? Ok, no, but you get the idea. It’s just something, like Ghost Boob, that you don’t know about going in unless someone tells you. Now you know. This aspect of cold to the touch, unlike ghost boob, has not improved over time as of yet.

Ghost Boob and Frost Boob - the sensation twins. One aspect has improved, one has remained constant. Both were unexpected outcomes no one had fully prepared me for. They are trivial in many ways, but worthy of discussion so you know what to expect as I've learned challenges are usually a little better absorbed/embraced with a little warning.

Unrelated to sensation, enter stage right:  Boob Brain. Early on in this ongoing process of breast reconstruction, there wasn’t a single day (hour?) I didn’t think about the new boobs. I simply always had these boobs on my brain. Part of the all-consuming thought process was simply related to being in the middle of it. Day in and Day out. Early only your entire day is related to the boobs. Change the bandage, empty the drains, log the output, take your meds, keep your arms at your side, avoid looking at them, look at them, don't do this, do do that. It was 24 hours of boob brain! But as the weeks went on, the tasks became less, and then the thoughts would lessen too. But at any moment something would happen and Boob Brain would kick right back into gear. For me, every 6 months or so it was another surgery, so just when I would get out of the thought process and back to normal life, I would find myself right back where I started again. Even on a “normal month” early on you still have at least a daily thought of these boobs being what they are (or are not). Well now, with this being the first time that I have gone 9 months without a surgery, it is awesome to see that there are some days when they don’t even cross my mind at all. And to say that is progress would be an understatement, it’s triumphant really! I truly didn't understand going in how 2 little sacks of gel could carry so much punch...or thought. But they do. And maybe I can soon say "they did". I am getting there, past this. 

I guess the most recent months of having less boob on the brain is a testament that life does in fact eventually return back to normal. You can't rush it. You just have to wait until it suddenly arrives. You will get to the point where the breasts move out of your foreground and in to your background, only to be thought of when you slip down into the freezing cold water…and feel nothing. Or at other random moments when anyone would be thinking about their breast (Changing clothes? Or trying on new bras? Or what not). There is a time point when the reconstructed breast no longer defines you. Instead of defining you, it now merely designs you in that you are a changed being by its presence. Not so much the breast itself, but the journey of getting there. You hear stories of people who have a brush with death and how life simply looks different, more precious, altered on the other side. Mastectomy, when prophylactic/chosen, doesn’t necessarily carry the same weight as my brush with lymphoma did, but it did change me in ways I might not have expected. While an implanted boob is most certainly a boob,  it carries a different weight. Both literally and figuratively. More insight provoking.  More impressionable. More focusing. I see life with newly tweaked lenses which brings certain things into better focus with a better alignment of perspective. While the feeling of touch, the sensation of cold, and even the thoughts of the breast may transition over time, I hope my more finely focused perspective of mastectomy remains with me always. I simply appreciate Post-Mastectomy Sally and all she brings to my “after” life. I may be a little “off” at certain stages along the way, but I certainly carry a new depth. And with that comes an advocacy I didn’t carry before. Advocacy for empowering women with knowledge. Advocacy for loving your body where it is. Advocacy for the spouses of mastectomy. Maybe even a little advocacy for just doing life in general and doing it well with people in tow – mastectomy or not. But when there is mastectomy, just know it isn’t the end all, be all. But rather it is a starting point for what comes next in life. There is an “after mastectomy”. Three years, 9 months. I’m getting there with Ghost Boob and Frost Boob as my side kicks.


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May 17, 2016 - Horizontal stripes

I’m tired of these comparison games. I’m over women not measuring up. I’m seriously over women making other women feel as though they don’t measure up. It happens in the work place. It happens at home. It happens in our minds. It happens in our words. And I for one am simply over it!

Who set the rule and standard that we have to make sure the person next to us feels less? Who set the example that we have to use everything in our arsenal to appear to be more? Certain people come to mind, trying to make waves for other women co-breathing their air and carefully planting a jab in the most vulnerable of soil to ensure the feeling of inadequacy grows. Often, the attack sits unsaid to the intended target and instead flutters across the proverbial acquaintance pool of whoever else happens to be in the room. I absolutely detest this gossip mill that circulates the misfortune of being a target. Are you a participator? Are you a propagator?....More importantly, am I?

I’d say at first response “I am not.” But immediately, I feel that lie down in the pit of my stomach, and I can do nothing less but accept my role in this perversion. While I desperately try to find the good in any person that crosses my path and truly do want to foster a safe environment lacking in judgement or gossip, I can at times fall prey to the bad behavior that may plague my day. It’s so easy to get caught up in the rip current of shaming. If she is a little less, and I make it known, doesn’t this in turn make me a little more? Mercy! It is a lie of eternal consequence! There are a hundred kind words said to me in a given year, yet it is that one unkind rumor said out loud that forever comes back to mind 20 years later. One single sentence can result in huge consequences. And one missed moment to provide kindness instead of judgment can set the tone for that relationship for years to come. Nothing hurts the heart more than making someone feel inadequate or indifferent and it is a dangerous seed to plant. But if we want to falsely assume that we play no role in the routine detriment and shaming of another person, I most certainly am to blame for the shaming of myself where the ramifications are equally eternal.

There’s rarely a week (day?) that goes by that I don’t find myself in a liturgical play-out of inadequacy. I walk into a room of women and immediately notice what I have or have not in comparison. I can count out loud the number of potential “moments” I miss because I am too embarrassed to partake. A hike with friends where I am afraid my performance won’t compete. A cool dip in the pool where I am all too aware of this thigh or that. A dinner skipped out on because of nothing to wear or a result of my pudginess being too pudgy that week.  How many spectacular moments never came about because we falsely believe the lie that we are less? Or better yet, what are we instilling into the people around us (or our children!) when we make these subtle statements of inadequacy. I distinctly remember a dinner invitation I missed out on with a group of friends because I was standing in my closet trying to make something work. Instead of throwing on the jeans and t-shirt and letting reality be reality, I chose to miss the dinner. This was years ago, but the impact remains. My thoughts of “not being enough” cultivated a lie and resulted in missed laughter, missed fellowship, missed everything (they had the absolute best time at dinner that night!). My choice spoke that my perceived appearance mattered more than their time and friendship. And spoke the subtle words to them that they need to have it all together in perfection too.

Are we teaching our children to choose the lies of self-inadequacy over the joys of simply living life and all it brings? But you say, Sally, my legs really are too skinny. To which I need to reply, too skinny to have joy? Are the size of your legs more important than every single other aspect of life? There are some things to which we can reply “God made me this way” and therefore we need to embrace and get on with living life. Then there are other things I need to say “Sally, I made myself made me this way”, and I either need to take action to change, or embrace as being what it is and getting on with enjoying life. But either way, there is a crucial and urgent moment for conscious choice to choose which it will be. Will I perpetuate this self-deprecation, or will I pick up my flubber, or skinny, or scars, or bra size and choose the path of joy? The best example I can be to myself, my friends, and my daughter (if I were to have one) would be to take everything I have and call it precious. For that is exactly what it is: Precious, the bumps, bruises, lumps and all. Every single day, our chosen spirit of being gracious and kind will over shadow any perception of physical or emotional inadequacy. Alternately, we choose to be remembered for our spirit of shaming of self or others.

Give yourself permission to not be perfect. Allow yourself the occasional mistake. Embrace the less than and focus on the fact that we are already enough. For we truly are that! Enough! Enough to be the daughter, wife, mother, sister, coworker, friend, disciple, patient, introverted extrovert that anyone else can be. Enough to throw on the pudgy dress in the closet and go to the dinner! Enough to bring a kind word to the person next to you letting them know they are enough as well. But it takes a purposeful approach to lose the thoughts of being less. Remove ourselves from the unkind words of others. Surround ourselves with women who not only get this, but live it. And if you don’t have any of those. You start the trend! We have to go above and beyond to actively praise the women around us. They aren’t perfect either, but there is no reason on this planet that we can’t make them feel like that are. We have to consciously drown out (and correct!) the negative words being said around us. We have to lead the way by purposely speaking out loud the complimentary thoughts that come to mind. We have to quit fertilizing our disastrous need to feel like more by making her feel like less. And then we need to soak our minds in reading the truth that we are enough. It takes a permanent reset! We may not be able to change our self-perceived “less than”, but gosh darn it, we need to take our dimply thighs to the beach and make some incredible memories! Show the women around us that we value friendship and uplifting sisterhood over inadequacy at every single turn. We need to stop losing out to our inadequacies and to quit perpetuating the lies. Our role is two-fold: It is our choice to love others, and equally our choice to love ourselves. And I need to start at ground zero. This week, I am putting on the dress with horizontal stripes. I'm starting with me.







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