aLive @ Stage 4!

There's not much to say today.  Routine, routine, routine. I left the house at 8:00am for my 10:00am appointment.  Nobody was available to give me a ride today, so I drove myself.  The downside is that I was not able to take xanax as I'm supposed to before appointments; I won't take it if I have to drive myself.  There's always is the worry, though, that my blood pressure will be too high and they won't okay my treatment.  It's been close before, but today it was fine. I always allow two hours to get to the hospital from home in case there's traffic. Sometimes there is, sometimes there isn't.  Today there was.  210 was fine, but 295 was backed up all the way.  Once I got off of the Freeway onto Maine Avenue, it was a breeze.  I arrived at 9:45. I was called back for my oncology appointment right away.  She did her usual exam, asked if anything was bothering me, and we chatted.  She told me about some advocacy work she was doing in her native Braz

The median life span of a metastatic breast cancer patient is approximately three years.  It's been four for me.  That's cause to celebrate, right?   I've heard in the past of people celebrating their "cancerversary", the anniversary of their cancer diagnosis.  I never understood why.  I think now I'm beginning to.  It's not celebrating the diagnosis, but it's celebrating still being alive!  Here I am, four years later, surviving, sometimes thriving.  I had a woman tell me just yesterday that I was glowing.  Me.  Wow.  I feel as though, since my diagnosis, I am a more calm person, a more patient person, definitely a more scatterbrained person.  😂  It's been quite a rollercoaster ride, these last four years.  I wouldn't trade them for the world. It was four years ago today that my world turned upside down. It was four years ago today that I sat next to Jimmy, in shock, in the nurse navigator's office, while that wonderfully compassiona