Today is the First Day of the Rest of My Life

I have for the past year been on life's roller coaster. I have accepted all that has come and gone with as much "chutzpah" as I possibly could manage. Coming out the other side of cancer is not the best way to come to some life realization, and I can honestly say my life realizations came long before the day I found a lump.

The funny thing about life is that is keeps on happening. And each day something happens that makes you realize that once again you have to make a choice, to go forward and be better, or to fall back and let life roll over you. Each day some of us recognize the persistent wake up calls.

I got another of those wake up calls last Friday. It was my internist Dr. Phillip Malpass. This dedicated man called me at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon to discuss my bone density scan. Um...usually no news is good news and getting a call from "Phil" is usually a discussion that resembles the morning alarm clock.

Now over the last year I have had to Google many things and this phenomenon doesn't seem to be letting up. So as I sat with my ear to the phone and listened to a description of how the chemo has effected my bones and how the drug I'm on now will increase bone density...blah blah blah. By the end of the conversation I made choices about my health care and the results of the bone density that both he and I agreed were for the best and a notation on my chart that I would see him in two years. Well i don't know about him, but I was left with more concern after than before. I'm sitting here at 47 years old, tossed into menopause and I have a bone density of -3.35. Not good. I turned to Google.

And this is what I learned:

So what was my results again...-3.35. As you can see anything lower than -2.50 is not good. Can you hear the alarm ringing from where you sit? All weekend I digested what was said to me. Realizing that my life choices have had me arriving at this moment, and not just at this moment, but the next moment right after this one. And it went on like this all weekend.

I had other parts of the conversation going through my head as I took this revelation on. Of course the chemo was intensive, and it shut down my ovaries and now I had less estrogen so that makes my bones lose mineralization. That the feeling of being in discomfort all the time (I feel for those with fibromyalgia) is part and parcel due to the last year of cancer treatment. But one thing kept nagging at me. That as busy a women as I am, exercise has not been a big part of my life. I'm curvy and soft. I can and at times do enjoy exercise, but it always falls by the wayside when life gets busy.

This has resulted in the low in bone density. Life catches up with.

So...to the point of this whole babbling blog.

I'm running. Well "I ran" is more like it. I have a great pair of shoes bought a long time ago and a trail behind my house. Today was the first day of a 13 week running program I am adopting. It starts slow and gains momentum over the 13 weeks resulting in a 10 K run.

Having a program will help me stay on tract. It will help guide me to what I have to do and all I have to do is follow it (Just like when I did P90X). I want to kick butt this summer.

Exercise is no longer about a lower number on the scale, or less jiggle on my thighs. It is all about getting that bone density number up. I want to ski next year, but broken bones from a light tumble is not on my menu. So I'm running.

This is the place where I'll chart my progress.  September 19th, 2011 is 13 weeks from now.

This is me today:





Thanks for joining me. Come back soon now ya hear.