Stayin' Alive On White Street

Miguel on drums. Notice the tip jar is a shiny and hopeful soup pot. Somehow I can relate.

Lately it feels as if there aren’t enough hours in the day to feed my hungry brain with all the entertainment available at my fingertips: music, literature, Internet, and The Real Housewives. I want it all. I'm also trying to do more socializing outside of my house, which, considering the coziness of our little nest, is a big challenge. This past week we decided to take the Walk on White. The Walk is designed to showcase the galleries on White Street. It happens on the full moon, and the moon was remarkably big and bright on Thursday night.

Miguel's pretty girlfriend Sally. Even the Key West Krud cannot dim her bright light! 

    We visited the Bikram Yoga studio, where music was supplied by Cous Cous, featuring our son Miguel on drums and vocals. Bikram Yoga (also known as “hot yoga”) occupies a space in a Key West landmark building on the corner of Truman and White. The building has housed a number of businesses since I’ve been here. On the second floor there are very cool apartments. But there is family history here, too. Long ago this building was a drugstore, where my son’s great grandmother, Norma Perez, worked the cash register. Norma had come to Key West from Cuba, as a child, after her policeman father was shot and killed chasing a bank robber in Havana. Norma’s mother brought her children here and worked in a cigar factory. They lived in a little Conch house in the neighborhood. When Norma’s mother died Norma moved into the house and lived there with her husband. My ex-husband Mike Perez was raised by Norma, in that house. He inherited the house when Norma died. Mike Perez and I married on the back deck, 33 years ago, My son lived in that house for the first 10 years of his life.
    When I tell this story to Miguel he seems to be only mildly impressed. 
    On that full moon night the Bikram Studio had been transformed into a gallery, featuring a show of erotic art. The space was still sizzlingly hot at 8 pm, and Miguel and his music partner TJ were cooking, too. Miguel’s girlfriend Sally was there and we posed for a picture. I was trying hard to keep my distance from Sally, who recently developed a case of Key West Krud, which is what we locals call a nasty winter cold. We didn’t stay at Bikram's long. It was too hot! Outside the building I unzipped my hoodie and exposed my bony chest in a celebration of erotica. The photo is sad, and includes the scar left behind by the feeding tube I wore for 12 months.

Celebrating erotica on the sidewalk outside of Bikram Yoga College of Key West.

    Aside from the erotic art show and a very crowded open house at the lovely Harrison Gallery, White Street was pretty quiet that night.
    The next day I had a mammogram. Recently women friends and I had discussed the pros and cons of breast enlargement, uplift, contouring -- you know -- the boob job. If I had a boob job, I wondered, would I be free of the need of the hot and uncomfortable bra? I told my friends I’d ask the mammographer and report back.
    At the hospital I ran into a nurse who asked me if I would visit with one of her patients recently diagnosed with cancer. She was one of a team of wonderful nurses who'd cared for me when I was hospitalized with side effects of chemo and radiation.
    “I told her that I had a friend who looked better after cancer treatment than she did before!” my former nurse said. 
    “Do you really think that?” I asked her.
    “Uh, well, your hair is amazing. . .,” she said. “And you’re so thin you look like a model.”
    I do look different. I lost my hair. It grew back super curly, like a Toni perm. I also lost enough weight to wear my college jeans again. The vestiges of my youthful figure are visible, but with the weight loss, went my nice plump breasts. Breasts are made of fat, and when you don’t have any fat, you need a boob job.
    I visited the newly diagnosed woman. She was beautiful. Her hair was thick and wavy. She was stylishly thin. What did chemotherapy have to offer her? 
    “If I can get thorough cancer treatment, so can you,” I told her. “Go shopping for a wig now. Get 3 wigs, in three different colors, so your husband can go to bed with a new woman every night.”
     She laughed and so did her husband.
     Then on to the mammogram. The mammographer told me how great I look, how cool my hair is, how heartening it is to see me well again. I get that a lot these days. I still love hearing it. I love it a lot. 
    “I’m wondering about a boob job,” I told the mammo girl, as she stuffed my breasts into the machine.
    “You aren’t serious are you?” she said. “After cancer you’d have a boob job?”
    “Why not?” I said. “The oncologist says I might live for 10, 20, or even 30 years. Shouldn’t I look good while I’m doing it?”
    “It’s a bad idea,” she said.
     She told me that in the course of her career she’s lived in Michigan, Ohio and now Key West. In those other places, she said, she rarely encountered a woman with implants. In Key West, many women have had implants. Some days every other woman. This she attributes to the heat and the corresponding brevity of our clothes.  Having a mammogram is a real challenge for those with breast implants. First the regular tissue is examined, and “then we have to separate the implants from real tissue. It isn’t pretty,” she said.
    “So as a mammographer you’re telling me it’s not a good idea,” I said.
    “No, as a woman with implants I’m telling you it’s not a good idea,” she said. “Why not just enjoy being alive?"

I found this poster on Etsy & it pretty much sums it all up. I'm feeling better & my hormones are dropping slowly but surely. My boobs don't hurt anymore, I'm finally sleeping through the night & I just am starting to feel like "me" again. I have my follow up from the D&C with my doctor on Wednesday & am PRAYING that I get the all clear to not only resume workouts (I'm going to spontaneously combust if she says no) but also to resume "other" activities ;) I miss my husband in that way!!! Not to sound all horn-doggy but I just miss that part of our relationship. And our 1 year wedding anniversary is coming up too. I can't believe it's gone so fast!

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for your sweet comments, support & encouragement. It's appreciated more than you can know. I'll get back to blogging more regularly soon (I hope.)

Hoping you are all well & enjoying some nice weather where you are!!!! Feel free to tell me how you are too...I've been sucking at keeping up with blogs lately!

Much love & prayers for a wonderful week ahead!!!

Who am I and why am I doing this?

Dominic Chianese as Uncle Junior on The Sopranos

June Keith as Uncle Junior July, 2010

Welcome to my very first blog post. The date is Feb. something, 2011.  I intend to write about my life in Key West, my wonderful life in Key West that is.  I'm full of energy, brimming with ideas and madly desirous of writing my story while I'm still on the planet and capable of writing it.  What's so great about my story? Nothing really. The good part is in the telling.  I'm good at telling stories. And I'm good at having adventures. Finally, I'm real good at summing things up in postcard-sized essays thanks to eight years of column writing: four years at the Miami Herald and four more at the Key West Citizen. Why switch from the Herald to the Citizen? Money of course. The Citizen editor at the time lured me into my hometown paper by paying me about double what the Herald did. Then new people bought the Citizen and said they wouldn't pay me—or any other writer—as much money as I was making for one weekly column. So goodbye column.  I'd do it again if anyone would ask, if anyone would pay, but they haven't and they won't, so here I am—giving it away.  Which some people might say "and what's new, June?"  Ha ha.

I am a cancer survivor, and somehow I feel awkward saying it. Why, I can't say. It certainly ain't nothing to be proud of!!!  (By the way, a cancer survivor is a survivor from the day they're diagnosed until the day they die.)  In June, 2009, I was diagnosed with metastatic squamous cell carcinoma, which later proved to be localized in my throat. It had progressed to a lymph node, however, and thanks to the fact that I had health insurance (thank you, God) I was able to submit to a heavy course of treatment which included 37 hits of radiation and, at the same time, a course of six weekly hits of Erbitux, a chemo agent. Here are the questions people ask me about my cancer.  1) Did I smoke?  Yes, I did, with great glee and enthusiasm from the time I was 15 off and on for 25 years. Two years off. Four on. Etc. That's called "25 pack years".   2) How did I know I had a problem? I didn't. In conversation I mentioned to a friend, who is a doctor, that I had a lump on my neck that felt hard and painless and that I was wondering if I should get it checked. The no pain thing is what made me feel that nothing was wrong. In fact, something was very wrong. I've come to understand since then that cancer doesn't make you feel bad or sick or weak or anything at all until the tumor gets in the way of bodily functions. Like, in my case, swallowing. Colon cancer, for example, might show itself with blood when you poop 'cause the cancer is big enough to get in the way. Lump in the breast you gotta find yourself. Lumps and bumps that are new and stable are something to look out for. 3) What is my prognosis? I wish I knew. Head and neck cancer is not well understood because it is not well studied. It is less common as other big cancers like breast or lung or prostate. Of all cancer deaths in any given year head and neck cancer deaths account for only 5% or less. So nobody is gonna invest much time or money into research on a cancer that attacks so few people. Lately there has been a cause and effect link discovered involving human papillomavirus (HPV), a sexually transmitted virus. You get the same treatment, whether it's HPV or standard cancer—but for people with HPV I've read the outcome can be better.  Since I figure I've probably got the HPV-related cancer (how could I not, considering my triumphant march through New York during the Sexual Revolution of the '60s) I figure I got a shot at living for a while.

Since achieving remission following my final chemo treatment in August, 2010 (yes, dear readers, it came back!!  I had it twice in one year's time) I have been assigned to a number of tests designed to discover any stray cancer cells lurking in other parts of my body—cervix, colon, lungs, etc. The most frightening of these is the dreaded PET scan, which scans you from head to toe and shows "hot spots" where there is cancer activity.  That's how they found my recurrent cancer in February, 2010. Which led to surgery in April and four rounds of chemo in May, June, July and August. Whew!  They PET scan me every three months, and as the PET day gets closer I get crazier and more desperate to live.

Today I feel wonderful. I have daily aches and pains with which I sort of negotiate regularly. As in: first I'll make breakfast and take a shower and if I still hurt after that I'll pop a pain pill. Sleep is hugely challenging, 'cause I have a big imagination and the thought of a new cancer and death is always lurking at the edges of my consciousness.  I've realized that cancer treatment can be every bit as dangerous as cancer itself. I think I came close to dying during a chemo treatment in May. After that, the oncologist turned the volume down 25%. I tolerated the next three treatments a whole lot better. I lost my hair. I lost 40 pounds. (Nothing compares to the agony of radiation burns. I'll take chemo over radiation any day.) Now that I'm back to life I want to do everything I love all day, every day. I love to write, to read, to cook, to putter in my tiny house, and to secondhand shop. I love to spend time with family and friends. These days,  I run out of energy around 4 pm every day. Just in time for Judge Judy.

Yesterday my husband I went to Publix for groceries.  At the store I ran into friends who told me that Doug Childs, a guy diagnosed in October with the same cancer as mine, had died the night before. The news slammed me. It was like we were both on the same sinking ship only my life vest worked while his didn't.  Why did Doug die and I survive? What do I do with this hard-won survivorhood? Is it a gift? Or a curse? Or a gift with strings attached? My husband Michael says: What do you think Doug would say?

Well.

There's really no easy way to say this. I've had a miscarriage :( I'm heartbroken & devastated but really leaning on God. In fact, I asked him yesterday to carry me for a while.

I ended up in the ER on Sunday afternoon after a gush of blood (sorry for the TMI) & after a very long hour in ultrasound was later told that the baby stopped growing around 8 weeks which was when I experienced the "old blood" discharge. I had a D&C yesterday (at what would've been 10 weeks) & am just resting at home now.

My heart hurts but I can understand that this was not our baby to keep. We got pregnant so fast (after one cycle) so we are encouraged that it'll happen again when we are given the okay. Not to mention the science that shows you are more fertile in the 6 months following a miscarriage. There is also an encouraging study about the very high rate of successful pregnancies that occur after a first pregnancy miscarriage.

So we are hopeful, keeping faith & turning to God A LOT! Prayers would be GREATLY appreciated!