Okay, I have to admit, my blog is starting to feel overwhelming. Mostly because I’m so behind now that I don’t know how to catch up.
But – now that I think about it – I do know. One foot in front of the other, right? That’s become my new mantra.
So here we go:
Since September…
- I skidded into the finish line getting my fourth book done (Lavender Island 2) on Oct. 6.
- The next day, I went in for a long-overdue mammogram because I felt a lump about 2 days prior.
- Over the next couple of weeks, I did a follow-up visit to my dr, a diagnostic mammo, an ultrasound, a biopsy, and was diagnosed with breast cancer on Oct. 19.
- My edits came in on Oct. 21.
- Life became a bit of chaos through the end of October as I navigated fear, appointments, more fear, a PET-CT, an MRI, a gene test, meeting a breast surgeon, meeting an oncologist, fear, edits, having port-placement surgery, my regular full-time job, fear, edits, and more edits. Also Halloween. Also my son’s 16th birthday.
- I started mellowing out once all the testing was done and I was “staged.” I was put at Stage II-B breast cancer, which means lymph nodes were also affected, but also nowadays has about a 97% success rate of living beyond 5 years, so that relaxed me considerably and made me square my shoulders and just get ready to do this thing.
- November was mostly about telling everyone that I had breast cancer – Who to tell? How? Plus I worked on edits for 6 weeks. By Thanksgiving, though, I was feeling strangely calm and ready to roll on the breast cancer treatment! We’d decided on chemo first, surgery second.
- My first book with my new publisher (The Kiss on Castle Road) came out in the UK on Dec. 1.
- My first chemo was Dec. 3.
- I turned in my edits on Dec. 7.
- Then December was another month of chaos, but the fun kind — lots to keep my mind occupied while I did two rounds of chemo. My older kids came home from out of state; we mostly sat around and visited (very low-level shopping, wrapping, and decorating – they helped out a lot!) Plus there were lots of family gatherings and parties that made the month fly by and kept me very preoccupied. My husband shaved my head on Dec. 25, and things got real.
- My third round of chemo was on New Year’s Eve.
- The Kiss on Castle Road launched officially on New Year’s Day.
- January was adjusting to a new reality of no hair, feeling sicker with chemo, and not as many happy distractions to keep me from noticing how sick I felt. But I was excited about my book!!!
- My copyedits for the second Lavender Island book came in on Jan. 7ish and were due Jan. 26.
- I had my fourth (and last) round of the “worst” chemo on Jan. 14.
- I turned in my copyedits for the 26th.
And here we are! – Both books are done, all edits are done, my contract is done, my “worst” chemo is done, the holidays are done, and I’m suddenly feeling like the groundhog from yesterday’s Groundhog’s Day, popping my head out, looking around, and seeing what’s going on. What happened while I was in my own little personal tornado since late September?
And where do I go from here?
