Officially Day One

'That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, I am strong.' 2Corinthians 12:10

Survival is the first thing I think about in the mornings. Of course it comes after I talk to God then I get my son up kiss my husband good morning and start my day. I am on a journey to get back into shape. I have endured six months of chemotherapy due to a breast cancer found in the Fall of 2011. I am now currently undergoing five weeks of radiation and then I take an anti hormone pill for five years. I appreciate and respect Western medicine. One should not ignore or look the other way to offerings that may help keep them alive. It is like the story I tell my friends that I once heard, a man was in his home and flood waters were rising around him. He prayed to God for help and as he did so he climbed to the roof of his home. He sat waiting for God's help. A boat came by and they offered to pick the man up, he refused and said, "God will save me" A few minutes later as the flood waters were still rising ominously, another boat came by to offer help, the man once again refused. The man ended up not making it and in heaven the man asked God, "Why did you not save me?" The Lord said to him, "I sent you two boats, why did you not get in?" The same goes for the medicines offered to patients. Yes, there are side effects and risks. I was told with radiation I may have another type of cancer develop in 20 years. I told my radiation oncologist, "I hope that I lucky enough to be here in 20 years, I need to think of right now and what is best for my family today." So as I take the medicines offered by my doctors and endure the physical and mental issues that came attached
I have decided to take matters into my own hands too. First, I believe in Eastern medicines and treatments. For example, acupuncture. I have been going to acupunture for one year, it helped me to balance my hormones and to discover the lump in my breast. I believe it is beneficial to those who are willing to try it out. Acupuncture helps to relieve the energy that can be stored up or blocked in certain areas of the body. It is not good for these areas to remain blocked because physical ailments can soon follow. I also believe in eating greens and cutting sugars from the everyday diet. I mean processed sugars too, not natural sugar. I found eating healthy is helpful and the headaches I used to receive most days are now gone. This is coming from someone who used to eat candy everyday and eat drive through Mexican food two times a week at most. I have since then stopped eating candy and stopped the drive thru mexican food. In that time I have lost six pounds. This is necessary when fighting cancer...many women gain weight during chemotherapy and this does not help the body out and so the cancer cells are able to grow when the body is so busy trying to process energy produced by the bad foods and store it as  fat.  I am not a doctor, my husband is, but I do what I feel is helping my body out the best. So far eating better and going to treatments are making me feel much better both physically and mentally. Now the final issue that I have been tackling is going back to the gym. I started to go back while I was in chemotherapy. I was in the middle of my 12 rounds of Taxol and I was tired of being in bed. I needed to get out and get moving. My belly looked flabby and I was grouchy most days. I called up my gym and told them about my situation. I remember asking the manager if they are used to helping women out recovering from breast cancer treatment. She said, "Yes, but not someone this young." I was stunned. I remember telling my husband and his response was, "Well most thirty year olds are comfortable with going to the gym on their own after treatments." I decided to go ahead and sign up for private training sessions.
I went to the gym with a scarf and hat on. My trainer Danielle was quite encouraging and honest. We had to figure out which exercises were best for me, especially since I had all of my lymph nodes removed from my right arm, one needs to be careful due to possible swelling of the arm.
As days went on with training I started to feel better and more active. I was still not feeling my best but I made myself get to the gym, I may have even cried somedays as I drove there because I did not feel great. However, after each session I felt awesome. I felt good about myself and it was nice to be out among the masses again. One day I was at home with my husband and he mentioned a mini sprint triatholon coming up in the fall in our hometown. It seemed managable, 500 meter swim, 10 mile bike, 3 mile run. I am a runner and have ran in events before. I told him this is what I wanted to do. However, I told him that he would need to do it with me. He said ok and we signed up. I needed him to sign up to for motivation. I asked my trainer about it and she said,"why not? All you can do is try!"
So here I am, it is July, I am one month out from my last treatment. I am undergoing radation and I am trying my best to train for the event being held the last week of September. I am far away from my goal for all events. I am a terrible athletic swimmer,  and the biking part was not so great, I spent a morning falling on the ground and enduring painful bruises after realizing clip in shoes are not easy. So instead of training wheels, I put pedals on finally and went for a ride down the street. The running part is the only part I seem to be doing ok with, except I have sciatic nerve and neuropathy from the chemotherapy. This means my feet hurt and are numb at times to the point advil does not help. However, with the persistance of my trainer and my husband I am chugging along. Today, my trainer looked me in the eyes and said, "You need to start swimming everyday" So here I am after a training session this morning i will be heading the pool to swim laps.
Update: It has been a few months since this post and I have had to stop my training for a bit. I was experiencing set backs and needed to slow things down. I have since then decided to go back to training but slowly. It takes a good year or two to recover from therapy. I need to take it one day at a time. I hope to join in a bike race or half marathon someday but not this year.