Say Cheese

It's kind of difficult to understand what living with cancer is like, I would imagine, unless you have it or have someone very close to you who does.

I try to explain it. But it's difficult. It's somewhat random. It's somewhat unpredictable.

Basically, chemotherapy is releasing a poison inside your body. Somehow, through the magic of modern medicine, chemotherapy knows how to seek out areas of your body where cells are dividing rapidly. It then seeks to cut off blood supplies to those areas and dry them up, choke them off, and hopefully kill them.

Unfortunately there are healthy areas of your body where cells are dividing rapidly, and those areas get targeted sometimes too.

At least that's how I understand it.

So random battles break out throughout your body from head to toe. Everyday is different. The other day I woke up with a pain in my upper right calf. Then, later that same afternoon the pain completely went away and showed up in my upper left calf instead.

By the next day the pains in the calves were completely gone and the left side of my head ached instead. Now that's gone too.

I'm still waiting on today's achey spot. Somedays there are none.

Living with cancer, and being on constant chemo, is kind of like having a little touch of the flu, each and every day. You're drained, achey, feeling unenergetic and uninspired. All I can do is roll with the punches each and every day and do the best and the most that I can. I've learned how to juggle things and balance out the elements of life to still live productively and get as much done as possible each and every day.

Yesterday we traveled to the Lantern Lodge in Myerstown with Charlie and Alyssa to have our pictures taken. A childhood neighbor and longtime friend Scott Krall and his wife Bridgette, met us there with their son Jordan.

Jordan is in photography school and offered, very kindly, to take some family portraits of the Alberts. He hoped to use the photos in the portrait section of his portfolio.

Scott is a cancer survivor. His brother Jeff, sadly, had already passed away from cancer complications.

It's always great to get together with a cancer survivor and compare notes. Radiation, chemotherapy, and all the side-effects from both, a cancer survivor truly understands what I am going through, and Scott certainly does understand.

We spent most of the time yesterday, through the photos and through the breakfast at the lodge to follow, talking and catching up. It was good. Thanks Scott. And thanks Bridgette. And thanks Jordan.

And thanks Mom and Dad for organizing this all, not to mention breakfast.

I have no idea how I'm going to look in these pictures. I'm much more comfortable on the other side of the camera. But, I do know that Barb was in every picture I was in, and she certainly helps me look a little better. Sometimes it's all in the company you keep.