Nancy Wehrell

I have tons of posts in my head ... lots to say ... mostly good and positive thoughts these days ... things I think you would love to hear. I haven't had time. Life has been extremely busy for months now (like heart-attack-busy) through this past weekend. I'm grateful for all that I've been doing, all that I have accomplished and even more grateful that it is all now complete. My schedule is wonderfully light as of this morning. I'll be able to focus on myself again, do more gardening and do more writing.

Unfortunately, I come here today to share the news of the passing of a dear friend.

Nancy Wehrell died Saturday. It wasn't unexpected, although I'm sad it came so quickly. Nancy was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2002. Early stage. No lymph node involvement. All of the signs she could yank, chemo, radiate and run. In the spring of 2005, she was diagnosed with metastatic disease, which means the sneaky beast of breast cancer had spread. In her case, it was in her lungs and bones. She soon learned it also had spread to her brain.

I met Nancy online in the spring of 2006 shortly after my diagnosis. She was the first Stage IV woman with whom I became friends. I'm ashamed to say that at the time, I was fully avoiding even speaking to Stage IV women - afraid, I think, of facing the reality of what could be in store for me. However, I was sucked in by her personality and how we seemed to think so much alike. I think in some ways I convinced myself if I liked her a lot, she would somehow beat it. She was an incredible fighter. It was obvious in how she wrote and all of the treatment she was taking. So, I figured if I poured some love her way, coupled with her huge fighting spirit, we'd beat this thing.

Of course, I learned over time that just because I love someone, it doesn't cure them. I've come to accept that if I'm going to love these women, some of them are going to die on me. It's just life. There is no doubt, whatsoever, that I would have rather known Nancy for a while and lost her, than never to have known her. (Of course, knowing her and keeping her would have been the best, but I didn't get that option.)

Losing Nancy hurts a lot. Knowing we were going to lose her and couldn't stop it hurt even more.

I say this knowing that she has a very loving, involved family who is missing her deeply right now, especially her beautiful sisters and her "sweedy" Jeff. My pain is teeny in comparison to what they must be feeling.

Nancy was the "grande dame" of YSC - queen of the boards. If we had a leader, she was it. She was smart, incredibly sharp-witted and quick with words. She was unapologetic in her criticism of people she thought were wrong, but she was also extremely compassionate and caring. She was beautiful, too, with blonde hair and big bright eyes that actually sparkled - in person and in pictures.

She hasn't posted on the boards in almost a year. At first, I think she was living life and avoiding some periods of negativity and loss. We all do it from time to time, but it was rarely Nancy's style. She seemed able to deal with anything and everything that came along. I think, for me, it was the first sign that something wasn't going well. We missed her like crazy. Her lack of posts left a hole. We could find her from time to time on Facebook. Then, it started to become obvious to me, long distance and without much interaction, that treatment was dragging her down and inhibiting her abilities. Otherwise, she would have been back. As my oncologist says, the treatment is often worse than the disease.

She never came back. And the updates on her condition, though always positive (because that, of course, was Nancy), started to show cause for concern. She recently entered hospice.

Nancy's services will be Saturday. In the invitation, her sister wrote that the attire is, "Casual. No Black. Nancy would love it if we all wore white with splashes of bright, spring time colors."

That is certainly Nancy.

Nancy was an incredible support to me during the dark, dark days of my life from January through summer of 2007. She wouldn't let me stay down and helped drag me back up with her phone calls and emails.

Nancy was a superb writer and had a brilliant knack for summarizing life events. She said once that she was sick of people saying, upon hearing her diagnosis, "Well, we could all be hit by a bus tomorrow." She wondered where the rash of people getting hit by buses was happening. She said if she heard it said one more time, she was going to go get a bus and start running people over.

That was Nancy.

She made her last blog post on "So it goes" almost a year ago in June. I think it's so appropriate in that post she linked to a clip from "It's a Wonderful Life."

That was Nancy, too.

I was so fortunate to meet her in person at the YSC conference in Jacksonville, Fla., in February 2007. I was able to give that lovely woman a big hug and just soak up her radiance for a while. Did I mention Nancy is prone to outbursts of cursing and obnoxious behavior just like me? This photo was taken at dinner that night. :) It's for an "f cancer" video I plan to make someday. If it wasn't blurry, I would frame it poster-sized for my living room.

We snuck Nancy and Jeff into dinner that night. Nancy was a spur-of-the-moment arrival to conference because she wasn't sure if she could handle the trip until that day. You had to be wearing nametags to get in to dinner, so we found two people not coming to dinner and borrowed their tags. I think Jeff was "Mary Jean Burns" (or some other woman) that night. We had fun.

I loved Nancy with all of my heart, despite the fact that distance and health conspired to keep her from being an everyday friend. Of course, how could she be an "everyday" friend? Nancy was not normal. (That would make her laugh.) Nancy was spectacular in every way. She was more like the best Christmas ever, instead of an average Tuesday. She is a person who will be missed more as time goes by.

The world is a lot less bright without this amazing woman in it.

I believe, though, that you haven't heard the last of Nancy. If there is anyone who can inspire posthumously, it's her. There will be more coming from Nancy Wehrell and those who loved her. I just know it. The light has dimmed, but it hasn't gone out.

Cancer is my scapegoat

I seem to cruise along, then get into a funk.

Today is one ... I hurt all over for no damn good reason. I know it's from chemo ... almost three years ago now. This hurting - the places and ways it aches - is just different. It's not normal ... it's not due to exercise or lack of exercise, nutrition, illness, etc. It's the damn chemo pain come back to haunt me. It's nothing I ever experienced before chemo, but now I do. It's raining today - a chilly rain - and I think that's what is setting it off. I feel like a grumpy old lady, bothered by aches and chills. And I am about to turn 38.

I met a woman last week who is 39 and just finishing radiation. She finished chemo in January. She looked great, even with a wig, and seemed to have lots of energy for her four little children! I was floored. I was half-dead by the end of chemo - I thank my lucky stars I didn't need radiation. She told me she really hadn't had a lot of problems and just breezed through it. Ergh. I was glad for her, but not happy for myself. I didn't breeze through jack shit.

A survivor asked today, "what is the new normal? WHERE is it?" I had to find a new normal when cancer struck, then again when my marriage ended. I don't believe in normal anymore! We have what we have and we are either happy with it or not. Some of it we can change. Some of it we can't. It just is what it is and THAT is what people call normal.

More than anything, my divorce has changed my life. I have lots of moments where I want to hit the "rewind" on that situation - go back to when I was madly in love with my husband and thought nothing could ever come between us; back to when we were planning more babies and loving the little one we have; back to dreaming about growing old, sitting on the deck in rocking chairs; back to when I thought he was the sweetest, most honest person I'd ever known; back to innocence; back to the fantasy.

As much as I might try, you can't do that. (Wouldn't it be exciting if you could?) Once that all fell apart, I really had to re-envision my life - completely. It destroyed everything I had or thought I had far more than cancer. So, it was a double-whammy. Cancer in 2006. Husband left in 2007. Everything I knew and held dear was stripped from me.

The best I can do is say that I have to approach everything with this "clean slate" that I have been given. I didn't choose to erase the white board. It was erased for me. But now I get to fill it up again. The choices are all mine. Do I use dry erase markers or Sharpies? Do I use shading or draw stick figures? Do I get artistic help or do it all on my own? It's exciting in a lot of ways; scary in others.

And the truth is: it could all get erased again. Even Sharpies aren't REALLY permanent.

Life is precious. Friends are precious. Love is precious. My mind, my freedom, my choices are critical. I will never give those up again.

Even though I feel like I have a pretty good handle on this a lot of the time, I don't always. And today, I'm hurty and I blame cancer.

Lakes and life

I am having a tough week. Several sleepless nights, lots of stress. If you have read my blog since the beginning, you'll know I do this. When stress and anxiety get to me, I can't sleep. I used to take a lot of prescription drugs to overcome this and related issues. However, what I'm not sure I have shared on this blog is that I almost completely overcame this problem about a year and a half ago. I learned how to deal with my stress in some positive ways and learned how to get a good night's sleep even when there were worries in my life. (Someday, I'll share the answers, but this isn't the day.)

So, this recent run of sleeplessness is now out of the ordinary for me. I sleep like a rock, every night, without medication, and I'm ticked off when I am disturbed from my lovely rest. But not this week. If I detailed for you all that is going on, I bet you would wonder how anyone with all of that stress could ever sleep again! But I will, eventually.

This morning, after waking up too early and not sleeping enough, I decided to start my day by taking in some nature from my deck, which has a beautiful and peaceful lake view in a quiet (albeit tiny bit ratty) old neighborhood.

It's shaping up to be a gorgeous day here. When I first sat down, the morning sun was shining into my eyes. I didn't mind - it's been a long winter and I appreciated the light. But the direct light made it hard to see for a while and I could do little more than listen to the birds in the trees, the squirrels shuffling around in the leaves and some ducks splashing in the lake.

When the sun shifted a bit and I could see, I started watching the lake. This is one of my favorite past times. I have always been drawn to living on water, even though I'm just a mediocre swimmer and I'm not at all a fisher, boater, canoe-er or any other water-sportsperson. But I am fascinated by water - the beauty and power; the ability to sustain and destroy; the ever-changing qualities of lakes, streams and oceans; and the wildlife that is attracted by this necessity of life.

My lake looks different every day and I always stop to take in the differences. This time of the year is awesome, as the changes happen fast and furious, and my view is clear before the leaves fill the trees and block my line of sight a bit more than I would like.

Right now, the lake is muddy, churned up by a recent rain. When you are up on it, the water is gross - just a typical Indiana springtime lake. Further away, the picture is prettier, but I know the differences in the water and I can see the discoloration. I know the mud is there.

If it doesn't rain here or upstream for a few days, this will change. The mud will settle. The view from my house will become a darker blue, rather than the dark brown it is now. As the summer goes along, the color will evolve into a green and sometimes become red from algae growth. Then, DNR will treat the lake (to bring it back from the imbalance caused by farm chemical run-off) and it will be a bright bluish-green from the chemicals. After a wild storm, the lake will be a furious mix of red and green — clay churned up from the bottom and algae growing in the water. In the winter, if it isn't frozen over and white with snow, it will be almost black from a distance, but completely clear if you are near the water, looking into it.

Like all things, in the spring, new life starts to make it's appearance on the lake, becoming fully alive by summer. In the fall, it feels like every living thing alternates between hurriedly preparing for winter and leisurely enjoying the fading warmth. In winter, it's nearly dead - save for a few geese and heron. The turtles, snakes, fish and muskrats go wherever those critters go; the deer, fox and coyote make only an occasional appearance when hunger and lack of cover fail them. But now, the geese are making their nests and laying eggs, soon to hatch. They will teach their goslings to swim, then fly, then migrate. And next spring, it will start all over again.

On cloudless days, the water sparkles from the sunshine. As I sat there this morning, the light display was spectacular. When you view a new diamond ring up close — perhaps under a loupe — you see brilliant, multi-faceted points of light. Thousands of little bits of light — so much like diamonds it's hard not to make that comparison — were dancing atop the muddy water of the lake.

I watched the play of this light on the water and noticed how the sparkling moved in the direction the water moves. The lake is stream fed, so the water is always gently moving south, unless winds are kicking it in other directions. When a mallard duck cut through a patch of the sparkles in the opposite direction the water was flowing, it had a trail of glitter following it.

Maybe it's silly, but this light show was making me giddy, child-like - the feeling you get lying on the ground watching clouds or walking into a balloon-filled room. Patches of these little twinkles were moving about on the lake and I was enjoying following them with my eyes or trying to predict where they might appear next.

I was having fun — feeling happier than I had in a week or longer. But then, suddenly, it all disappeared.

The lake went flat. Either the light wind shifted or the sun moved a bit in the sky and my glittering light show was gone. My giddiness faded away. I was bummed. I sat staring at the lake trying to find any spot where the light was flickering away, but there was none. It was just a dumb muddy brown lake.

I had that feeling of disappointment where the voice inside of you says, "well, that must be a sign to get off my butt and get moving with my day." I ignored that voice. I didn't want my day to start yet.

So I sat, trying to find a duck or squirrel to entertain me or hoping to see a fish flop into the air. It all seemed so blah after my own personal natural fireworks display.

And then, in a snap, the lake was on FIRE. Before, there had been large patches of dancing light. But now, every bit of the surface exploded with tiny bits of light. I actually gasped out loud. It was so instantly brilliant that I had to squint (with sunglasses) to let my eyes adjust.

This grand finale went on for 15 or 20 infinite seconds and as the glitter started to fade, I realized I had been holding my breath. I had been so surprised by the encore that I forgot to breathe. I wish you could have been there. I don't think any number of words could describe it.

Call it God. Call it spirit. Call it an "a-ha" moment. But I knew this was a little life lesson for me.

Life is muddy. It just is. Sometimes it settles down and you can see clearly - almost to the bottom. Then a storm kicks up and you have to deal with it.

But it goes on, with or without you. The colors change. The geese have babies and the babies fly away. The view is different every day, even if you never move an inch.

And if you pay attention, there are little light shows all around you — displays of brilliance, self-created or natural. It's the child who proudly shares her artistic creations or tells you a new joke that's actually funny; it's the flowers pushing their way through the packed dirt; it's a minor accomplishment on the job in the midst of too many tasks to count; it's knowing you are loved, even if it's just your mom telling you this. :)

But if you are counting on something external to make you happy, your happiness will be quickly yanked away when that thing quits. So, you must create these moments, look for them, see what is in front you, appreciate all that are inside of you.

When you least expect it, a spectacular display will fall into your life. You have to cherish it, hold your breath and take it all in. You must savor the light show and burn it to memory, so that it is accessible after the next big rain, when the water is churned up, gross and stinky, and the sky is filled with so many clouds you aren't sure what time of day it is. You can remember the fabulous moments and appreciate the muddy, stinky ones for what they are — necessary moments in the cycle of life. Without the ugly, how could we ever see the beauty?

This moment is all we have. Live in it.

Loud, angry music

Because some days just call for it ...

Who Knew
by Pink

You took my hand
You showed me how
You promised me you'd be around
Uh huh
That's right
I took your words
And I believed
In everything
You said to me
Yeah huh
That's right

If someone said three years from now
You'd be long gone
I'd stand up and punch them out
Cause they're all wrong
I know better
Cause you said forever
And ever
Who knew

Remember when we were such fools
And so convinced and just too cool
Oh no
No no
I wish I could touch you again
I wish I could still call you friend
I'd give anything

When someone said count your blessings now
'fore they're long gone
I guess I just didn't know how
I was all wrong
They knew better
Still you said forever
And ever
Who knew

Yeah yeah
I'll keep you locked in my head
Until we meet again
Until we
Until we meet again
And I won't forget you my friend
What happened

If someone said three years from now
You'd be long gone
I'd stand up and punch them out
Cause they're all wrong and
That last kiss
I'll cherish
Until we meet again
And time makes
It harder
I wish I could remember
But I keep
Your memory
You visit me in my sleep
My darling
Who knew

I mean, I know I'm beautiful, but a cover model?

This could be taking things too far. ;)

I am featured in the ... well, I guess you would call it the masthead, but it's really a side graphic of photos on the newsletter for the Young Survival Coalition.


I am the sixth from the top.

If you would like to read the issue, you can find it here. (Despite my fame and fortune, they have not interviewed me for any article.)

And if you would like to learn more about the Young Survival Coalition, if you are or know a young survivor of breast cancer, or if you know a woman age 40 and younger who has recently been diagnosed, you can learn more about the organization on their web site.

I'm not sure I'd be here without the wonderful support and information services they provide and the community of friends I have because of them.

Lazy blog post #5928 - Random Things About Me from my Facebook page

1. I want a maid. I am always afraid when my house gets into the messy state it currently is in that I'm going to end up on an episode of Cops. The only thing missing is dirty diapers on the floor and neighbors screaming unintelligibly from an upstairs window next door.

2. Speaking of Jerry Springer, I really can't believe he hasn't called to have me on the show yet. I know I am just one paternity test away from being a featured guest.

3. My goal in life is to try to make people laugh so hard they spit out whatever beverage they are drinking, preferably onto the computer screen.

4. I love my dog - and please don't tell him what I'm about to share with you - but when he dies, I am replacing him with a Lab.

5. I once went on 12 dates with 8 different men in one month. 11 of the dates went spectacularly well (which made the next month very challenging). The guy from the 12th date got banned from all future forms of communication with me.

6. I am one class away from a French major in college, so I ended up with a minor.

7. I am a journalism major.

8. I thought I was going to work for Cosmopolitan in France.

9. I stopped reading Cosmo long before I graduated from college.

10. Now, I claim to read the New Yorker because it makes me sound smart, but really I just leave issues that I get from my friend Christine lying around the house to impress people.

11. I can barely speak French.

12. However, I can pronounce things with a lovely French accent when I want to sound like a snob. (Yeah, that was totally worth 7 years of my life.)

13. I meant to have five children. I have one, so far, but time is running out. However, she is brilliant, beautiful and hysterically funny, so maybe she's equivalent to five average kids.

14. I am laughing right now thinking about all of the people out there wondering if their five kids are average.

15. I used to say the only thing I was afraid of was railroad crossings. It is true - I freeze when I see a train coming, even if it's 1/2 mile in the distance. However, now the idea of a joint checking account makes me hyperventilate. I think it is safe to say I will not be doing that with anyone at any point for the rest of this lifetime.

16. I used to be afraid of the dark, but I got over that when I was a camp counselor at Na Wa Kwa and found myself without a flashlight or a buddy and had to walk over a mile through the woods back to my unit - alone. And there were coyotes in them there woods. I sang camp songs under my breath the whole way.

17. Recently, I threw away and donated more than 40 pairs of shoes. The scary part is, I still have 21 pairs of shoes - and I want to scrap all of them and buy new ones.

18. My "most played songs" list on my iPod includes "Crazy Bitch" by Buck Cherry, "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, "Cowboy Take me Away" by the Dixie Chicks, "Bring me to Life" by Evanesance and "Low" by Flo Rida.

19. I have always had a bit of a potty mouth, but after I was diagnosed with cancer, I reached new levels of gratuitous cursing. I had not realized this until one day my co-worker said, "I know how cancer has changed you - it has made you cuss a lot more!" I think that is a funny side effect of cancer treatment, but I have tried to tone it down.

20. My boyfriend is 11 years younger than me, but I'm not even sure he realizes it. I wonder if that means I'm immature?

21. I never get tired of Italian food ... or wine.

22. If you saw me on a dance floor, you would not believe that I work for nuns - and you might ask security to escort me out.

23. Secret confession time: when I am daydreaming, not only do I imagine myself as an author being interviewed on Oprah's book club, but I also imagine making spoof music videos of myself to entertain all of my friends on YouTube.

24. I had never sung karaoke (well, except for one time when Lisa and I popped into a bar for a brief rendition of "Stand By Your Man") until about 10 months ago. Now, I've sang all of the songs everyone in the bar can possibly stand to hear me sing.

25. I am very grateful for the life I have and I try to have fun every day of it!

We interrupt this design ...

For a temporary change. Deal with it. I don't have time to fix it tonight. :)

Oh, and does this make you wonder if I'm working on a new post? Does it? Huh? HUH?