#500 Every. Single. Day.

 Smiling. Every. Day

The 500th post!  What profound or heartfelt statement could I make on this golden entry?

Maybe a reflection on the past two and a half years living with metastatic breast cancer would be a beginning.  I have preached and hollered about the statistics of this disease and how funding needs to be increased and how we are dying every day--113 today, but I haven't written how it feels to live every single day not only knowing the facts but feeling the effects from the drugs and the cells mutating in my body at a faster rate than the drugs can stop it.

The good days do come and I embrace them with a vengeance.  Swimming, exercising with my buddies at the Zone or taking a walk with friends equal days that must be cherished and revered.  I have always been an active person and when I can get out and do something it is a treasured gift. When those wonderful days arrive I'm reminded that this is the best that it will get because around the corner could be one of the dreaded rotten days that pop up when least expected.

On those not so great days getting out of bed is an effort, talking to anyone is exhausting and the reminder that I have cancer raging through my body is debilitating.  This last one--the debilitating condition of the disease--is the one that wrecks havoc on my very being.  Mentally preparing myself for getting through another day--good or bad--is difficult because no matter what kind of day I am having the *&^%$ cancer is still there.  The best is today and tomorrow it will be the next best until...until the end, I suppose.

The pain, the fatigue, the unmentionables that go along with the side effects never truly go away.  I'll put on my smiling face and you may not know what kind of day it is and that's okay.

But what I'm really trying to say is:

Cancer wears you down.  That's it in a nutshell as I try to analyze and help others understand about my daily life.  I do live fully and completely as I can.  I do have a positive outlook but the word, reality, hits me in the face

   Every. Single. Day.  

And there is no getting around it.  Do I curl up in the fetal position and surrender?  Of course not--not today or any other day and that is why I keep advocating and encouraging others to advocate with me.  Hands clasped together and we are a force that will not be stopped.  Please, share and join me this holiday season by donating to the UW Carbone Cancer Center at my website www.onewomanmanylakes.org.  All donations made by December 31st--(End of the year tax write-off!) will be matched.  50,000 grand is the goal and we are getting there!

My daughter and my granddaughter should never have to think about "good days and bad days" of cancer.  Let's do it for them and the rest of us living it day by day.

Thanks for reading #500 of 7777.