Life is about change and how you adapt.  Humans are creatures of habit by nature, or I know I am.  I will tell you what, one thing you learn about life after having breast cancer is to go outside your comfort zone. You have to. It’s how we survive.

First we’ll start with how I am feeling.  Two words: kid sick.  The good news is I don’t have strep.  The bad news is I definitely have a bug.  But I am doing the fluid and healthy food thing and as I begin this post I have a small chicken stuffed with lemon, rosemary, and ginger is roasting away. (I will break for dinner and return to this later.)

So now it’s later….I find that the Tamoxifen is still screwing with my sleep, which is one reason why I think that normally healthy moi keeps picking up naggly little kid viruses.   Truthfully, prior to the big C I had the constitution of an ox.

Tamoxifen is also causing skin break outs.  And then there are hot flashes and some night sweats.

However, I keep reminding myself this IS better than the alternative.  Still no period since October.  I do see my gynecologist at the end of the month for a check  – uterine lining, pelvic look see and all that good stuff involving cold gel and stirrups.

So I have been doing a “Clean House” on myself as my sweet man and I move to the combining households stage.  No, I am not a hoarder. Far from it.  Truthfully, I am a bit of a neat freak…but still, I hang onto things.

Yesterday in the back of the closet the 1980’s called and they wanted their headbands back.  I never had big hair, but I sure had big hair bands.

I also cleaned out the black tie archives and donated my favorite old dresses and gowns from years gone by to a church thrift shop. Sigh….that was hard.  I had not kept all of my dresses (I went to a lot of formal affairs back in the day), but I had kept my favorites.   But a lot don’t fit me and others that do I am no longer comfortable in – my style has evolved, I am older, and in some cases I am self conscious in some clothes post-surgery.

I have figured out that cleaning out the old is best done in small steps.  We surround ourselves with the familiar to keep us emotionally comfortable.  So when change comes, even when it’s a good knd of change, it still needs to be eased into, I think.   So ridding myself of clothes I loved but no longer wear is not the most difficult task, but it is like bidding adieu to old friends because each dress I had saved represented a really enjoyable evening in my life throughout the years.  I allowed myself to save one of the dresses from the archives.  Next I move onto the rest of my clothes.  I pared down my shoes to a respectable Imelda number a while ago.

Change.  It’s not just a word much over-used in political campaigns.

2011 was  change in the context of trials and tribulations of breast cancer from diagnosis through surgery and treatment.

Onward and upward. 

2012 is change, as in the time for sun.  Even if it’s raining this evening.

God never gives us more than we can handle, and I would like to believe he rewards you for handling difficult things well.   As humans, sometimes consciously, sometimes subconsciously change can make us a little tenuous.   I have my life, I have my friends and family, and I am loved.  It doesn’t get much better than that, does it?  So I will work with my change.

It’s all about putting the period on the end of your own sentances, people.

“I am not afraid of tomorrow, for I have seen yesterday and I love today.”

~William Allen White