The official beginning of my blog (or maybe someday my book!) I have written a bunch of things that have led up to this moment, and will fill them in with back dates. But I keep procrastinating getting started with this actual blog, so I am starting now and will back fill over the next bit of time. The upshot of this whole endeavor is that i have cancer. As we know at this point, it's pretty much distributed through my body in a whole lot of places . . . my left lung, the base of my tongue/throat, possibly my GI tract, my lower left belly, a spot on the back of my scalp, and odd bits of cancerous "debris" in various and sundry spots here and there. It's serious. It's life-threatening. And I'm OK with that. I believe I will live through this and will recover. So most often, I'm not worried. Every once in a while, I have an overwhelmed moment, but, I'm mostly OK. 

The official diagnosis is "Diffuse B-Cell Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma." It took about two months and a lot of trouble to finally get to a confirmed diagnosis. Hopefully, if I have succeeded at filling in the previous posts, that will be obvious by now. Short version, just in case . . . I was becoming anemic, and on December 4, went unconscious and fell down 13 stairs at home. Woke up all broken art the base of the stairs, and crawled to the kitchen, where I got my wonderful neighbors who came and rescued me and got the ambulance. I was baaaad. Thankfully, my buds on the ambulance were amazing as they rushed me on oxygen and IV to Bennington, where my husband Jim was working (he's an ER nurse) and shocked when they rolled me in. Crazy low blood pressure, confusion, blood transfusions and a one week admission got me more stable. Thank you Southwestern Vermont Medical Center! But my scans showed suspicious lesions in multiple places. Endoscopy and colonoscopy showed 3 ulcers. Referred to Dartmouth Hitchcock because SVMC Cancer Center was not taking any new patients. More tests, scans, and biopsies. All the while, we and the docs expected straight lung cancer, as Jim and I tearfully prepared for me to die. Well . . . surprise, surprise! It is not lung cancer! It's lymphoma! And there's a pretty decent prognosis. It is not necessarily fatal and may be quite treatable, so I may not die after all, at least not soon and not of this.