Pizza and Tears

On Friday last week I went to the hospital to get my port incisions checked. I had 2 incisions and they are healing well. They took off the bandages and the steri strips and gave me the go ahead for a full on real shower (without saran wrap!). You know that felt good. Now the incisions are healing nicely. The smallest one is quite tiny, the larger one is shrinking, and the bruising is beginning to disappear. However, it really feels weird to the touch.  Though the skin is completely closed the port itself protrudes and I can also feel the tubing. A little creepy, but it will be quite functional. 

Over the weekend most of our people were out of town. Betty, Mike and Gillian were camping at Mt. Rainier. Michael was working in Portland and Maggie was leaving Barcelona and traveling to Venice! I also realized that it may indeed be my last weekend with hair (doctor said it may start coming out 2 1/2 weeks after my first infusion which is sometime this week). So…date night! We used up one of my gift cards from my Salmon Clan families (thanks Jenni and Joe) and headed to Serious Pie on Virginia.

Ok…really, my favorite food has to be pizza, thin crust, wood stove fired yummy sauced pizza. And, Serious Pie filled the bill. We ordered the sweet fennel sausage pizza and damn…I have to say, and Mike agreed, that may have been the best pizza we’ve ever tasted! It had a sprinkling of extra yummy salt on the edges of the crust, just the right amount of cheese (not too much), chunks of house made fennel sausage and the sauce…the sauce sealed the deal!  Perfection! We make great pizza on the grill at this house and I now have a new standard!

After dinner we went up to the Harvard Exit on Capitol Hill to see Boyhood. It is the new movie that was filmed over a 12 year period, focused on a boy from the age of 6 to 18 and his family. We really enjoyed the film and it is quite an accomplishment to have these same actors return to the work every year for 12 years to complete this unique movie. The time span was very close to the time we were raising Michael and Maggie so many of their experiences were shared (Harry Potter, for example). The movie hit close to home in that way.

Everything these days since I was diagnosed feels a little different. I have a new lens through which I am experiencing the world; the cancer lens. Dinner was fine, I still have my hair, I even drank nearly an entire glass of wine. But the movie, that just brought up too much for me, too many emotions. You all know that I have a short fuse on my emotions; that I cry a little easier than many. It took me a while to recover at the end of the movie. I told Mike this must be why we just don’t see that many bald women out in public. The cancer lens adds too many more emotions. It’s really not about the hair or no hair…it’s about the cancer lens. I don’t know if that’s true and I still have my hair. But I do feel pretty emotional these days and some things just feel so emotional; too much.

But, Michael is coming and going from Seattle quite frequently these days. We don’t see him for long but we have been getting more frequent short visits. Maggie will be home in just 3 more sleeps. Betty is back from camping. I’m getting nearly daily visits with Baby June (cutest baby neighbor ever). I’m feeling stronger everyday; even sweating during my workouts!! And I continue to get so much support from so many. So, really I’m not going to complain, I may cry, but I’m not going to complain!

But, I do have one question…who put that letter at the Elwha??? Still a mystery!

Love to you all!

Janet