Plans

After my LiveStrong class tomorrow and when Naomi gets home from school, roughly the same time, we'll take off to NY stopping somewhere in PA for the night. If we are making good time, we might stop in "Jersey Gardens" for a prom dress. A few years ago, Naomi and I spent a week in NJ (with occasional side trips to Philly and New Hope) and went there. She was very much relieved that they weren't actual gardens but a huge discount mall perched in an industrial zone along the Hudson. No sales tax on clothes in NJ. We'll then make our way to somewhere in Long Island for the wedding and then return to Brooklyn to Diane and Harold's (Steve's brother)place. We'll go to Manhattan Sat. for the breast cancer race in Central Park-not sure if I'll actually run it yet. At the same time, my Michigan friends will be in Brooklyn too. Sunday at some point I'll either take the train or Mega Bus to Boston.

Naomi now has severe laryngitis and can only croak or whisper. Probably lost her voice making plans for the prom. Her best friend is a juinor who wants to take an outside boy to the prom but only seniors can buy tickets and get guest passes. Naomi's boyfriend has no interest in proms (turns out he is 22!) and Naomi planned just to go by herself but in her friend's eyes, that would be a waste of a guest pass. Naomi needed to find a Huron senior to take her to the prom according to her friend. This is where that cloud o'boys flitting around her came in handy. She asked the nearest one, a shy Ethiopian boy named "Noway" to be her date and he happily obliged even after it was explained in her croaking whisper that he technically would be taking her friend while she got a guest pass for her friend's date, but not to worry, she really will be with him. If I were Noway, I'd say 'no way'.

I got her to clean her room with the promise of a Jersey Gardens visit.

In my LiveStrong class, there is a woman who is even more active than me. Throughout her treatments for ovarian cancer, she kept up her Master's swim program and ran quite a bit. Two weeks ago, she eyed my pink fuzzy cap and asked what was growing underneath. Absolutely nothing. Less than this? She then whipped of her wig, which I had assumed was her real hair as it was gray. She was completely bald except for some stray patches of very short stubble. Yesterday she showed me about a half inch of hair. Amazing how fast hair grows on some people. I asked her when she had finished treatment. Oh I'm still in treatment, my cancer came back.

If this cancer comes back, I don't think I would be capable of smiling. I don't think I'd find the strength to deal with it. Just dealing with the 'what-ifs' is too much for me sometimes and living in denial that this could happen is sometimes the only way I don't sink into despair.

During my walk the other day with a neighbor, we ran into another neighbor who I found out is dealing with melanoma-thankfully early. In a row of 4 houses, 3 of them are clouded with cancer.