There are Angels among us.

There really are. And they come from the strangest of places in the most unlikely of forms.

They don't always consist of the people who you'd imagined would be there for you at times like this. It seems to me that they are perfect strangers, who reach out and CARE for no other reason than that they want to.

I have met many such angels recently and I feel so incredibly fortunate.

It's been a bit up and down (understatement) recently. Having deteriorated pretty fast over the past few weeks, it was discovered that I now have mets to the brain, three larger ones and too many small ones to count. My radiation guy started me very aggressively on Temodar (a chemotherapy which has a known radiation response mechanism) and whole brain radiation to attempt to shrink these mets down. Needless to say that last week was... interesting... WBR is not the most refreshing of events, but then, this isn't Club Med and I'm not here to look good (especially not with this bikini line - did I just say that out loud?).

The good news is that I have every reason to believe that this treatment will work, why wouldn't it? Why? I didn't get cancer because I'm special and it's certainly not going to kill me first because I'm special. We all get the same chance of getting the breaks here, there is no bigger plan.

There is hope. Always.

Once we have better control of the brain, the rad/onc will do targeted SRS on the larger brain mets - but that's not all, he's speaking of tackling my liver again after it's all over, then having my sub-q's removed.

He wants remission. He said to me that with illness like this, in order to get better, you have to have good strong oil and good strong water and as far as he's concerned, I have good strong oil. He'll be the water. He sees no point in not being as aggressive as possible with this treatment, he wants remission and I'll take it if I can get it. If I got another year of life, no matter what I had to endure to keep it, I'd take it.

With cancer, you learn to stop living your life in the long spells and begin to learn how to just enjoy the small stuff. The NOW. It's the hardest lesson and one that I think is the most monumentally impossible to do without the benefit of lots and lots of time, and time is what we cancer patients just can't count on.

For the longest time, as you all know, my biggest fear has been leaving my kids. It still is, but something I have learned since this latest setback is that, it's not the letting go that hurts; it's the holding on too tight.

This is probably all over the place, the meds make it hard for me to see straight. I just wanted to say thank you to all my Angels, those who e-mailed me, posted to me here and on Arfcom and MPIP, who sent me thoughts and prayers and best wishes and love and light and interesting packages in the mail, and hope, and who help keep it impossible for me to give up. I don't know how I'll ever respond with what I'm really feeling for all of you, it is so utterly overwhelming.

I hope this will be enough.

Today is another day and for the record, I'm feeling pretty all right. Maybe the radiation is killing those tumors already and my brain is becoming clearer, there's no reason to suspect that it wouldn't. Day 5 today. 9 more sessions of WBR left.

By the way, they told me that my hair is going to be toast, so yesterday I had Jim cut about 10 inches off of it just so that it would feel more comfortable (it's so itchy). Thank God we're heading into hat weather, I'm scared to think what my poor little head will look like without all that curly hair, a taller version of Mini-me perhaps, but more evil...