Do You Wanna Touch Me There...on my C2 and C3 Vertebrae?

I am not a huge fan of Gwyneth Paltrow, but I am loving her Glee character, Holly the over-the-top crazy substitute teacher. I am going to miss Glee next week as I will be under the knife and in anesthesia la la land but this video definitely made me smile. Also, loving Glee's newest cast member, Ashley Fink as zaftig badass goddess Lauren and definitely a good inspiration for BBWW (Big Beautiful White Women) everywhere (Also, don't you just love the word "zaftig"? Very 1920s.) You can't go wrong with Joan Jett and sexual education...all righty, Glee, you are winning me back as a fan.

Some of this I've already written about on my CaringBridge site, but I tend to be a little blunt here. The whole world can't handle abrasive Ginny all the time. *wink* I'm preparing for the home stretch. I go into the hospital on Monday for my Neurovascular test then afterwards that I am ADMITTED. Admittedly (pun intended), I have been a little nervous. I've never stayed in the hospital over night. I think when I had my deviated septum surgery, I was outpatient that afternoon. But this time, it will be Ginny's week-long adventure at the hospital. Bring the camera and the fanny pack! Honestly, I don't know what to prepare for or pack, despite the fact that a very nice PA went over everything in my pre-op consult today and I have handouts and all that. I'm thinking books, ipod, shower shoes, and pajama bottoms. I'm a terrible packer in these kind of situations. It's a little overwhelming.


I admit: I am scared about fusing some of vertebrae together - C1 and C2 and C3, I believe. I've known about it since my diagnosis, but I'm terrified of my body changing. I understand it's a small price to pay for beating cancer, but still. I will lose some of my range of motion for a while. I should gain most of it back, being able to turn my head side to side and touch my chin to chest (important for singing and acting warm-ups and stretching), I won't be able to lift up my neck too far to look up. Which how often does anyone do that anyways?Well, I never had that double pirouette to begin with and I guess I never will now, haha. Time to let that dream float away. *wink* It's unnerving, knowing that my body will change a lot in the short term and a little in the long term. But I keep reminding myself, that it will all be for the best.

Despite the fact that I've felt very good the past few days, I was so exhausted today. NEWSFLASH: Cancer makes you tired for no reason at all. They did take a lot of blood samples from me, so maybe that's why. Or maybe I had too much fun when my cousins came over and played Jungle Speed and joked around with me last night. Maybe I'm just anxious and nervous. The most important part of a musical or play is the climax of Act I, and this surgery is my climax. So what does Act II hold in store?...it's a mystery! I better come back after the intermission. ;)


So I get admitted Monday. Surgery is Tuesday. From what I understand I'm going to have enough wires and tubes in me that I'm going to resemble Robocop. But I'll be under the whole time, so I won't even remember. Thank goodness for anesthesia and modern medicine. Depending on how things go, I may spend some time in the ICU, depending on my condition and if my plastic surgeon decides to wait a bit before reconstructing. Each doctor has to go in and do their part. Tuesday is going to be a doozy for my family and friends, but I won't remember any of it. I will probably have a neck brace temporarily. And then off to my hospital room to recover and from then on...who knows?

I have been wearing a ton of scarves lately, not just for style but I am a little self-conscious about my super swollen lymph nodes and I'm sure I will be swollen and bruised and stitched up afterwards. I'm not sure if I'm ready to wear my battle scars with pride yet. My soon-to-be Aunt Patti got this awesome scarf holder from Ikea for Christmas and I think I'm gonna need one after all the scarves I've found and been given. I tried to find it on the website but of course everything has a Swedish name (I call it the Scarfenblurgen), so I had to look on ebay. If you have a lot of scarves, this thing is awesome.


Also, just found out that my phone upgrade has come up and since mine is a piece of poo and doesn't like to receive calls and I want to hear from all of you, I might bite the bullet and get the Iphone since Verizon has it now. And maybe find out what this Angry Birds thing is all about.


Remember to think of me on the 8th. I won't be awake, but you all will be! When I am lucid and stabilized, I will have my laptop and be able to give updates. Thank goodness for Duke Hospital wireless internet! 

Generosity

Braden and I and the family got really lucky this weekend in that some friends generously showered us with gifts. His co-worker gave us a $100 gift certificate to Acme Restaurant, a very upscale place in Carrboro with upscale prices. So we were able to get dressed up and have date night on Saturday without having to worry about finances or cancer for a few hours. We both ordered special cocktails (don't worry, I made sure to avoid taking the narcotics in the evening), had THE MOST AMAZING calamari and Asian salad (seriously we would go back just for that.) He had the wild boar and venison pasta (manliest pasta ever!) and I had the crabcakes. I wish we could have gotten desserts but we were stuffed. We even had a little left over, so we can have another date night there sometime in the future.


Sunday, one of my parents friends gave us tickets to see "In the Heights" and we got the VIP parking, Presidential Lounge privileges, 5th row seats and the show was really awesome. I was not very familiar with the show or the music, but it's one of the best contemporary musicals I've seen in a long time. Better than Wicked or Spring Awakening or Rent (which I guess is a relic now). It's about life in a Spanish neighborhood in Washington Heights and the American dream and family and love across race and somehow brings all those themes together without being schmaltzy. The relationship between the dad and his daughter Nina reminded me a lot of my dad and I, and it just goes to show, that so much reality crosses racial lines. The music is inventive, Latin sounds and hip-hop with a Broadway twist. Also the choreography is AMAZING. I was jealous watching it. Those dancers put me in awe, but then again all professional dancers do. So if "In the Heights" comes to your neighborhood, go see it! 100% worth it.


The generosity made me feel like a princess with perks this weekend, but it certainly doesn't outweigh the cons. Today, I had to consult with the chemotherapy doctor. Basically, we will not know until after the surgery exactly what kind of sarcoma I have until they run the pathology tests since they are a very rare cancer (1% of all cancers are sarcomas). It could be a "child/young adult" sarcoma or an "adult" sarcoma and that affects the type of treatment I will have post-surgery. We talked about clinical trials. Side effects of chemotherapy. And the possibility of my wedding in May started to evaporate. My brain shorts out. I try to control myself, but I get snippy and teary and I have trouble processing all this new information on top of old information. I know I have to adapt; the counselor told me that. But it's my G-D wedding, it's a tough thing to let go of. (Yes, wedding is still on, it just depends on what happens post surgery)

In general, I cope with this by living moment to moment, day by day. I cannot think about "what ifs" and hypothetical because there is so much information out there my brain would explode. And I guess that's why people applaud me in appearing so strong and courageous. But doctors don't do that. They have to go over all possible scenarios. They have to present you with all the options. The "what ifs" have to be explored. They have no choice but to tell you "the scary stuff". Everything has to be put on the table and my parents always ask a million (granted, legit) questions so I always leave the clinic feeling like someone took a hammer to my brain. It's easy, in a way, to take things one day at a time. It's harder to process the unknown.


My grandma Barbara was breast cancer survivor for 27 years. She got it the first time when she was 38. She dealt with it 3 times until it finally took her down in 2003. She passed when I was 17, but we were very close. I remember her being a strong, spiritual woman. She was a woman who valued her friends and life that she was given. She loved her family. I know she is looking down on me and is still in my heart, but there must have been times when she was at home and was angry and yelled "CANCER SUCKS." She hid that kind of stuff from my dad and my aunt and from us grandkids (I mean, this was a woman who hid the cigarettes behind her back when we walked into the house. Grandma, bless your soul, but we saw the ash and the smoke raising behind your head). And I wish she was still alive so I could ask her, "what did you do when you were frustrated with God, with the pain, with everyone, with life and you just wanted to scream about your life being turned upside down?" I would give a lot to be able to talk to her again.

A Cancer Clusterf**k

I did not know this but today I found out that the ribbon that represents sarcoma patients is yellow with a sunflower. This makes me happy because in spite of my illness, I have been wearing a lot of bright colors recently (instead of the brown and purple and deep jewel tones I usually wear. I've always been rather anti-pastel. I mean, my wedding colors are red, white and black. No lilac here!). I wore a bright yellow sweater and red sundress with flowers for Valentine's Day. Gotta love 65 degree weather in February in North Carolina! In spite of it all, bright colors cheer me up. 

I did some major post Valentine clearance shopping and got this giant heart pillow at Target. Not only does it make me smile, it's actually quite comforting to my neck. :)

But some days, cancer effing sucks. Today was a decent relaxing day. I had a routine gyno appointment and my gynecologist used to be a womens' oncologist so she had very positive things to say. She's always been an approachable doctor so I felt very reassured leaving with my mom. I then went to the salon to talk to my hairdresser about the cancer situation and what to do with my hair for the portrait and the wedding. She said that I have so much hair that a little shaving from the surgery won't make a difference (luckily it's on the side of my neck and base of my skull, so I won't lose too much hair during surgery). So I made the happy Caringbridge website, the social site for cancer patients.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/ginnybuckner

But yesterday was a complete clusterf**k.

First of all, I did not sleep well because I was nervous about meeting with the oncologist and CT scan results. Oncology is cancer, and that means it's real. Time to man up, Ginny and face the truth. Not that I haven't, but sitting in that department made me anxious. Also it's in the SUB-basement of Duke hospital. Of course, cancer would be in the dungeon of Duke (it's actually because of all the radiation machines, but still it's a little coincidental  that oncology is in the sub-basement.)

I met with my oncologist for the first time and she tells me a) there are questionable lymph nodes in my chest from the full CT scan and b) she's not convinced that my sarcoma is one that surgery is necessary for because my samples from the biopsy were not all that great and maybe we should push my surgery back and run more tests. 

So I literally go crazy and yell, NO NO NO. In a doctor's office, for the first time, I lose my shit.

Usually I am very polite to doctors, but each appointment keeps bringing bad news and I have had it up to here with news and she says they could cut open my thorax for the chest biopsy and I go into effing hysterics (as a soprano singer...not cool with cutting near the throat). I pretty much start freaking out on the table. My dad is clearly firm and angry about all these tests because we've already pushed back the surgery once and when it's clear I'm in pain and this tumor is growing. My mom goes into supermom mode and actually calls my neurosurgeon on her cell 4 times and tells him to get his butt to the oncology department (she's ballsy like that. sometimes it backfires, but not this time.)

I was in tears for hours and despite the fact that I had pretty much bitched out the doctor, the RN AND the PA (yes ladies and gentlemen, I was Cancer Bitch), everyone pretty much had to keep their distance, parents included. I exploded everyone out of the room. Eventually, the PA who is about my age came in with some water and  talked to me about opera and music while we waited for Braden to come in from work. Then a  cancer counselor came in and sat with Braden and I. I felt like I expelled all my emotions, but it was actually really nice. Duke has really awesome cancer counselors that are free. He said that my emotions were perfectly acceptable and it was nice for me to hash out some issues that I had been dealing with since the diagnosis and let Braden in the room hear it all (who is a very good listener and I love him for that). It was also good for me to give Braden some time to express how he was feeling in a safe place.

In the meantime, my neurosurgeon and oncologist talk it out and realize that the tumor is growing on my bone, causing severe pain and needs to go. ASAP. So surgery is still on for the 8th. She was actually very sweet to me and called me today...I mean, she's an oncologist, she probably gets a gamut of emotions all the time. I feel a little bad about going crazy on her...but some days cancer sucks.

New Normal

The lump is visiable now. On the side of my neck. It used to be just a little tender spot on the lymph node, and now it’s clearly grown. Only if you’re looking for it…but it’s there. I was getting ready for the play tonight and pulling my hair back and there it was, the alien toxin on the side of my neck. Even though I knew only I and close family would notice, I was embarrassed. Like I was branded.

My mom calls our lives the “New Normal.” I just don’t know how I’m going to deal with this pain for another two weeks and then surgery and then the real fun begins.

Tonight, we had a family date at Deep Dish Theater. I rarely go to the theatre just because I want to go. Usually it’s because I know someone in the cast or I’m trying to network or something. Okay, I was trying to network a little bit, some volunteer work to get my face in the scene. The show is called “Superior Donuts,” by Tracy Letts, who is definitely emerging as a prominent voice in American playwrights, if he hasn’t already done so. The show revolves around an aging hippie who owns an independent donut shop in the land of Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, and his relationship with his young black employee. It’s a comedy at times, but also takes some dark turns. Lots of themes about race and immigrants and the American Dream.  I was pleasantly moved. I love a good American drama.

Diagnosis

Like many women, I was diagnosed with HPV a few years ago. A couple of times I have had abnormal pap smears and they have had to do something called a colposcopy where they clip off the suspicious looking cells. Or maybe they scrape them off. It always feels like they are doing it with nail clippers. I know, ouch. That's why it's so important to get regular pap smears, because those suspicious cells can slowly mutate into pre-cancerous cells and then malignant cells and then full blown cervical cancer. It's a very preventable disease and trust me, I am super conscious about my regular gynecologist appointments.

So when Mom, Dad, Braden and I went to Duke for my diagnosis conference, I was prepared for suspicious cells in the tumor and some malignancy that would be taken out of my body and I would be free of pain. I felt confident. What I was not prepared for was what the doctor was telling me. I have an incredibly aggressive epithelial sarcoma on the left side of my neck and the bottom of my head. I have cancer. There, I said the word. The Big "C", as the Midwesterners call it. Southerners always whisper when they say it, as if the devil is listening and going to make it worse.


My sarcoma is extremely rare; It is usually found in the elderly and on young people it's found on limbs and extremities, not on the neck. There are only a handful of cases in this location have been documented. In fact, when Dr. Bagley came in to share the diagnosis, he spoke about how him and his colleagues had a meeting the previous morning discussing "my case" and how it's an anomaly. I'm pretty sure that I will end up in some medical journal as "Caucasian 25 year old female." (I did not want to be famous for this!) So I am so happy to be in the best academic institution in the world, where I know they will be all the more aggressive and precise with my treatment.


So this is going to be a challenging surgery. It is not in or on my brain or spinal cord, and we can all be grateful for that, but the tumor covers a sensitive area near a significant artery, the occipital artery, I think. So an angio surgeon (or whatever he is called) will have to analyze me before the surgery to make sure that the team of doctors takes special care around that artery. The surgery will require metal studs to stabilize my neck. There will be reconstruction of muscle tissue and a plastic surgeon will make my neck look beautiful again. So this is Big Potatoes. I will likely be in the hospital at Duke for at least 3 days to a week. And will spend 2-3 weeks taking it easy and slowly easing back into life the next 3 weeks. I have to meet with the oncologist next week to discuss radiation after I recover for six weeks. Thankfully, because we believe the tumor is isolated, I will probably not have to have chemotherapy. But if I do, I do. Hair grows back.


Taking it all in yesterday was like having the wind knocked out of me, and watching my mom and dad mentally collapse was hard to take as well. Mom had to leave the room, and I understood. Dad looked exhausted and shocked. Braden was strong externally. He kept looking at me the whole time and mouthing "I'm here" and "I love you" and "I'm not going anywhere." He held me the whole time and the more the doctor talked, the weaker I felt. And he kept holding me tighter and tighter. Never has an arm felt so safe and strong. If there ever was a reason to believe this is the man I am meant to marry, this is it. It was so much information, I was writing it down like a madwoman, trying to take it all in.


I asked the doctor to leave the room before my scheduled CT scan to have a moment with my family. Dad went to find Mom. I stood up and cried. "I HAVE CANCER," I wailed. "I COULD DIE." And Braden just looked at me and said, "You cannot think like that. You will beat this." Mom and Dad came back in the room and we all made a pact to be strong for each other, as we will all have our weak moments. But we all have to be strong in our own way.


Before the full body CT scan, I had to drink some fluids and wait an hour. Thankfully it is 60 degrees in February in North Carolina so Braden and I sat outside. It was surreal. We wanted to talk and didn't want to talk at the same time. We reminisced about the first time he knew he loved me. A couple of weeks or so when we started dating, we had been out at The Station having some drinks, like we do. It was summer and it was pouring rain. So we decided to go somewhere more intimate. We were soaking wet running to the car. He said he knew of a gazebo on a lake...somewhere where we could be alone, but when we got there, it was just a deck with a picnic table. I guess the gazebo part had burned down. It didn't matter, we made out in the rain, my embroidered hippie jeans soaking wet, his plaid collared shirt slightly unbuttoned, and we kissed for what felt like hours. That was when the spark happened.


We talked about how we've got a long life ahead of us; marriage, road trips, careers, kids, house. And how I would pull through because my life is just not ready to be over yet. How blessed I am to have such a wonderful man to help me through this ailment.


I retreated to my room that evening for some alone time. I sent out emails to my respective families, friends, theater families, professors and the response has been overwhelming. Some people have even forwarded my message to others...people I haven't spoken to in ages. For someone who has had long time issues with loneliness and insecurity, this outpouring of love and concern from so many is emotionally overwhelming and exciting and makes me cry happy tears. I had no idea. I really didn't. I never have.


There's a passage in James in the Bible...I don't have it verbatim, but essentially it says that through the Lord we can face always adversity, and there will be peace. And I truly believe it. Yes, I have cancer and yes, there are risks and the surgery is intense and frightening, and yes, there is a part of me that is scared, but for the first time in 6 months, I do, in fact, feel a sense of peace.

My take on Sondheim's Cinderella in "Into the Woods"

Blogger is being annoying and won't let me put this in the previous post. So you'll have to read the previous post on character development to fully appreciate this.

Let’s take, for example, my favorite musical in the whole world, "Into the Woods" by Stephen Sondheim. I have always vocally wanted to sing Cinderella but before I was like “she’s a princess” and I am just not. But now that I've done this discovery I've realized she is not really that at all. Sondheim’s Cinderella is complete solitary and has no family who loves her or knows her and she just wishes and wishes to be someone different. Plus she is kind of abrasive and quirky…hello, she talks to birds. So she meets the prince and suddenly she's this beautiful princess and she's not really sure that that is what she wanted. She is a big pile of worry and confusion, but she’s sharp and takes a risk and lets it happen. She becomes the princess even if she isn’t sure she is on the inside. And she has the prince.  But life, as it always is, is not perfect. 

In the Act II, her prince cheats on her and her friends start getting killed via Giantess and she becomes the nurturer for many of the surviving characters. And I just GOT it. I realized that I can, in fact, EMBODY her. This system really does work. And I love this musical so much, not because I can sing the hell out of this character, but because I understand HER. I can BE her. It's very fulfilling as an actor to make this kind of discovery. And I'm so excited to find and discover more characters just like this. Let's just hope I get to play them someday. :)

Sondheim is a genius and Patrick is a bit of genius too. Not to be hyperbolic, but he has yet opened another door for me. And I’m so thrilled to walk through it and discover what’s inside. 

The Psychoanalysis of Character Development

I had to divide the last post which included this into two posts. I diverged on a tangent and I've been writing so much. There's not really much else I can do except sit, watch TV, write and think. I can't sit down and read a book (the tumor and pain make my brain disoriented and unable to focus), I can't exercise obviously, singing is hard because my energy is very low and the meds have been causing some vocal blockage, and my driving is limited because I get drowsy and disoriented and have tunnel vision. So writing has been my big outlet when so many of my other ones have been shut down. Which is good in a way. When you are ill, you have lots of time to collect your thoughts, so you may as well record them.

I'm not sure if I've ever talked about this before, but when Patrick and I had an artistic career meeting, he discussed about how to connect to characters you play and how you pick the ones that are perfect for you. He says that you have to go back to the root of your childhood and identify a motif that affected how you behaved for the rest of your life and why you do what you do. And all your strengths and weaknesses come from that. It's an interesting theory. The reason we started this conversation is because he says he thinks my "awkwardness" is a wall I put up. It's a defense mechanism. For what? I'm not sure exactly...I'm still on that road to self-discovery. But if I had to pick a core psychoanalytical moment it would be being an only child and being surrounded by large extended families, 4 kids on side, 3 kids on the other, and that feeling of loneliness and solidarity, seeing the bonding of siblings around me that I didn't have. It's rather ironic that I'm marrying a man who is the oldest of 4 because of this. There have been moments, as an adult, with Braden, where I will cry when I get home from family functions, because of the bond and vibe and that unique relationship of the siblings. It's like a bunch of us are in the house together at Christmas and then the Adams kids all leave together and the Apple kids all leave together, and then I'm just alone. And sometimes this involuntary crying just flows out of me. I get embarrassed, and he reassures me that I will always have him. This is why I bond so closely with my friends and why it's very very painful to me when friendships fall apart, either naturally or delibaretely

So I guess to deal with my solidarity, I became incredibly shy as a child. I mean, I wouldn't look anyone in the eye. I was afraid to look or talk to their friends, salespeople, anyone. It was kind of freakish. I think my parents thought I might have had Aspurger's syndrome. My whole life I've struggled with eye contact. Kids made fun of me sometimes. By high school I had an abnormally high case of social anxiety. But I made friends and because I grew up in the same school for 13 years, I kind of became that quirky, awkward, funny girl that everyone liked in spite of her oddness. But by college, I had all these walls that had been accepted before; social anxiety eye contact, awkwardness, funny abrasiveness, a need for lots of alone time, quirkiness and SOLIDARITY and they were my protectors and I had a very hard time making friends. Plus, I was painfully insecure at Elon about my talent and got shit on by many a self-absorbed, ladder-climbing actor. And occasionally a professor. And I just kind of let these walls run my life for years.

And it wasn't until I found myself in the heat of this illness that I was able to start letting all those things melt away. My experience at Elon did not cause a burning pain for me anymore. I could greet new and higher status people with confidence. A CATHARSIS, if you will. Patrick called it, in simplified terms "the ugly duckling turning into a beautiful swan." Not just what we think of as physical beauty but the evolution of self.

Another facet of this is that I am a complete nurturer and mother figure to those who suffered like I did for their social inadequacies. Like there was this kid in Evita who was kind of annoying but sweet. He was constantly singing random showtunes over and over and would say really inappropriate jokes, blow up at authority figures and didn't seem to have an "on deck" for ideas to come out of his mouth. My friend said "Does he ever power down?" Then it was a down low thing that we found out he really DID have Aspurger's and suddenly I had to be his big sister. I had to take care of him. I actually became quite fond of him, in spite of his quirks. Cruelty towards the socially anxious kills me on the inside. I HAVE to protect people from it.

This entire conversation really spoke to me and I saw myself and my past in a mirror that I had never seen before. I feel a new breath inside me because of it. He really should write a book on it. (And let's not even get started that he shared that his motif is SEDUCTION. Oh Lord, could it be any more clearer?) And so now I am discovering myself and with that, I am discovering how to connect to characters and which ones I should strive to play. I am suddenly excited about reading plays and librettos again. It will give me lots to do when I am recovering from my surgery.