Zoom Calls and Cancer

Today I am grateful for all of my siblings and for a couple of conversations yesterday that keep me connected to extended family and recovery friends.  

Speaking of siblings, I want to send birthday greetings to two of them. Happy birthday today Ruth! Happy birthday tomorrow Morry! Enjoy your special days! 

Looking back at posts I was writing a year ago has given me perspective recently. Living gratefully helped keep some sense of balance in a time of turmoil then, and it does today too. I had forgotten about 19 Gratitudes to Counter COVID-19 Concerns that I began on March 16, 2020 and carried through four additional blog posts with links below:

Numbers 5-8 (March 17)

Gratitudes 9-12 (March 18)

Numbers 13-17 (As Concerns Grow, So Can Gratitude (March 19)

Where did 18 and 19 go? Zoom and a Tree (March 23)

The list ranged from cashiers and stockers in grocery stores, to chocolate, and smiles, computer passwords, and Zoom. It was a year ago March 22 that my six sisters and I had our first Zoom call. Now, it is a Sunday tradition and one that we treasure. I talk to my sisters, collectively, more now than I did before the pandemic started. 

In that first Zoom, my sister Aileen was awaiting biopsy results from a suspicious growth in her armpit. She found out the next day, March 23, that she has follicular lymphoma.

A year later, chemo and monoclonal antibodies have shown really good success against a Stage IV diagnosis. She is now on "chemo lite" as she calls it, every couple of months. She often talks about the walks she has been on and the seasonal cross country skiing she has done this winter.  She is doing well and I am so thankful!  I think often though, about how the pandemic defined her cancer experience differently.

There is always fear with a cancer diagnosis, but hers was compounded by the uncertainty of how the pandemic might delay or limit her treatment. It didn't end up causing many delays, but she had to go to appointments and treatments by herself. Her husband John could only accompany her via phone or video. I can't imagine having to do that when I was in the early days and weeks of my diagnosis. 

A year later, Aileen is on this side of cancer and a new gratitude list is asking to be written. I will start it soon. Stay tuned. And stay tuned in to the present. It's the only place anything really happens.