Why?

I would prefer to blog about the way my granny and my mom taught me to eat grits and bacon or how to make creamed corn.  But unfortunately for you and I, they have been hanging out in heaven for many years playing cards with Mother Teresa and Princess Di. (My mom passed away the same week as them. I think it was my brother who observed that heaven gained more than one saint that week in September 1997.)

I have never been a blogger but I am quickly realizing I could use a central location for providing updates. I have very very dear friends and family scattered around the globe and I don’t type fast enough on my phone to individually update everyone. Much to my private husband’s chagrin, I do not feel the need to keep things to myself, to mince words or be cryptic. Rather, I hope it serves to answer your questions. And maybe it will be helpful to someone out there for me to share my experience.

One of the reasons I try to be open about this and the other crappy stuff in life is because of an experience about 8 years ago. I had a miscarriage (the first of two before my crazy and healthy boys were born). I was broken. I cried more than I thought was humanly possible. Given my husband’s preference for privacy and my inability to speak about it without breaking down, I shared what had happened to a relatively small circle.  However, as I told others, nearly everyone shared a story about how they, or their mother, or sister, or someone close had miscarriage(s). I know this was part of my mourning, but I was furious. I was fuming with anger. Although I had seen statistics on the frequency of miscarriages, with everyone around me keeping them private, it wasn’t real until it happened to me.

I am not so naive that I believe telling a crappy depressing story about my cancer will take away someone else’s pain or fear. But I hope it will keep our expectations in life slightly more realistic.

And of course I don’t want to describe every doctor’s appointment 20 times!  So, here we go.