Hello Everyone! It's been awhile since I have posted anything, sorry about that! Things have been busy and hectic for me the last few weeks, although I honestly couldn't tell you what I have been doing! I'll just blame it on the chemo brain. I can't believe that it is already Grey Cup weekend, almost American Thanksgiving, almost time for Black Friday and then of course almost time to decorate for Christmas! I always wait until December 1st to decorate. When I was little my mom used to wait to put up the tree until after my birthday had passed, so that I wouldn't feel like the family had forgotten about my birthday. I don't really remember caring all that much but apparently I did! Also, it's almost time for my last chemo treatment! This coming Wednesday I will have my sixth and final chemo treatment. I honestly cannot believe how quickly the time went. It seems like not so long ago I was starting my first treatment and thinking that the end of November seems so far away!

A lot of you have been asking for updates on what is next - wondering what the plan is for after chemo is done. We had a follow up appointment with one of the oncologists at the hospital on Monday last week. They seem happy with how I am responding to the treatments and have scheduled what they call a completion appointment for about 3 weeks after my last treatment. They will do one more blood test just to check all of my levels, and then we'll go through all of the details of how I need to live my life. Essentially, we'll go through what I need to watch for, who I need to call in specific situations, and when I need to go back for more blood tests. From the sounds of it they aren't going to do any scans, they are only going to do blood tests on a regular basis and watch my CA125 levels to make sure they stay low. They don't want to do any scans that would expose me to unnecessary radiation at my age, so for now just blood tests.

Obviously I am looking forward to being done, to getting back to a normal life, or whatever will be my new normal. My birthday this year is only two weeks after my last treatment, so while I will be excited to celebrate that everything is over, I won't really be able to do much celebrating outside the walls of my house! Chris is pretty strict about where I go and what I do in that second week since my immune system is low. So for now I look forward to Wednesday and the last time I need to sit in one of those chairs for 6 hours - and I look forward to ringing the bell at the end of the day and hearing the celebratory cheers! Then maybe I will celebrate by picking up a DQ cake on the way home. The bell is something that my dear friend Kelli told me about - apparently it has become a tradition to ring the bell after a last treatment, the survivor bell. I have mixed feelings - I know that there are many people that will not get to ring that bell, and that makes me sad. However, I am going to ring that bell loud and proud to celebrate the fact that I made it through 6 intense cycles of pretty heavy duty drugs. Then I'm going to ring it that one extra time to honor Leslie who REALLY wanted to ring that bell. Don't worry, I'll post a picture of me with that bell, or maybe a video if you're really lucky!

With that short update, I leave you with a picture of Ryker participating in Movember and supporting the cause to raise money for research for men's cancers!

I like to read. A lot. Whenever I get a chance to have some downtime I love grabbing a book and just getting completely absorbed. I'm not picky about the book really. Most of the time I will choose fiction over non-fiction. I can finish an entire book in a few hours if there are no distractions or interruptions. One of my earliest childhood memories (and really a tradition that my mom started) is about reading. Every Christmas we would get books to read - not just one book but multiple books. Of course being in elementary or high school meant that we were on winter break so of course had a lot of time. I would read all day and all night. I always finished my books before break ended and we had to go back to class.

Right now, on my bedside table I have two Nora Roberts books from one of her newly released trilogy's, The Cuckoo's Calling (a J.K. Rowling book written under a pseudonym) and The Emporor of Paris. In my Kindle app I have a lot, but only two unread right now; one called Clean, all about using food to restore the body's natural power to heal itself, and one called When Pigs Fly, all about how to train the stubborn breeds of dogs. Then there is the collection of books in the spare bedroom, again lots I haven't read. My current favourite is sitting on the coffee table in the living room - called "A Girlfriends Guide to Kicking Cancer in the Kitchen". Again, all about food and how to eat properly to enhance the good and get rid of the bad.

So I have no shortage of books to read, but what I have actually spent my time reading lately is medical journals, blogs, support forums, etc. I know, I've been told by more than a few of you to stay away from this, no good can come of it and I'll only scare myself - but I can't stop! I want to know everything I can. When you get the diagnoses of cancer, your first thought is, okay how can I beat this? The doctors have their plans for you but even they can't guarantee you a complete cure. So you start your research into their plan for you, you learn all about the drugs they want to put you on, you learn medical terms that you never thought you would have to know. Then you keep reading. C'mon Google, I typed in "how can I beat Ovarian Cancer", why do you not have a ten step program for that?! I would love to come across something that would give me an answer like that. So I just keep reading and reading. You read some interesting stories on people's blogs, the support forums, the not quite trustworthy medical sites from overseas. To the point of this post - the reading curse - you read so much and you start to honestly think about trying some of these cuckoo things. Oh that lady in Europe drank 1L of red wine every day and her cancer disappeared? Let's try it. Oh that guy from California went to Tibet and lived in silence with monks for two months and he was cured? Okay. This other woman went to South America and spent multiple hours a day standing in one particular position facing a certain direction and she cured herself of cancer? Sign me up! Yup, the reading curse. I'm a smart cookie, but when you are faced with a disease like this you are almost willing to try anything to get it to disappear. Western medicine is great, but sometimes you just need a couple of inspiring stories from elsewhere to give you a boost, or maybe a big laugh.

So if you have read any good books lately, send the names my way. I like having a stack I can pick and choose from so would love to pick up some more!

Today is... A day of reflection.

I have a rabbit that was given to me by the Sherlock family after my first surgery - well before I knew I had cancer, and actually at a point where we were quite confident that there was no way that this was cancer. He sits on my bedside table where I see him every night before I go to sleep and every morning when I wake up. I am bringing this up today because it is November 1st. The Sherlock's have a tradition of saying "white rabbit" as the first words of the day on the first of the month to bring you good luck. The Lenzin's just say rabbit. I said my white rabbits this morning, I feel like I need some luck!

Leslie Sherlock was like my knight in shining armor - sounds strange, but she helped me through my diagnosis and the shock of accepting the phrase "I have cancer". Even with everything she had going on in her own life she still made an effort to help me with my life, and I don't know how I could ever thank her enough for that. I will keep her in my heart and thoughts for the rest of my life, and especially through my fight.

I named my rabbit Fletcher - it means "arrow maker" in the olde English language. Throughout history, arrows have symbolized war, power, swiftness and knowledge. I also happen to be a Sagittarius, who's symbol is an archer.

In life, an arrow has to be pulled back to be shot forward. I am choosing to look at this as life's way of preparing me to shoot me forward into something great.

When I first got the "you have cancer" phone call from my doctor I did the following things: wrote everything down that he told me, knowing I wouldn't be able to remember any of it; wrote Chris a text message and told him he needed to come home; curled up into a ball on the couch and started crying. I stayed there until Chris got home, and then for awhile longer after that.

I had a lot of different emotions going on. I felt scared, worried, angry, overwhelmed, sad. I was in shock and disbelief. All normal feelings, I'm sure. The one thing I wasn't feeling was surprise. I had a feeling that he was going to give me that news. Partly because when I had called a week before asking why I hadn't received my pathology results yet he told me it was because he needed to review the results with the tumor board first. The tumor board? You mean you need to discuss this with other oncologists and pathologists and radiation oncologists and nurses? Was my case really that complicated? So at least I was expecting that phone call to come, and I had assumed that because he needed the time with the tumor board, or patient care conference as they like to call it, that it wasn't going to be good news.

As it all started to sink in I started to figure out how I was going to tell my family. Who do I call first? What do I say? How can I soften the news for them? Yup, even at this point if was more concerned for how my family would handle the news than I was about myself! I poured a very large glass of wine, took a deep breath, and thought to myself "you can handle this". I honestly can't remember who I called first, what I said to them, what we talked about. I got through that day though, probably the hardest day in my entire life, and I probably cried more on that one day than I remember ever crying before.

Then came the day to sit down with my oncologist and talk about The Plan. I went prepared, I had a full document prepared that had questions listed, split out into different categories and ordered based on importance and/or significance. Shocking, I know. It was such a "me" thing to do though, I'm always organized, and I think it gave me a sense of order in those hectic days. We learned the plan for the upcoming second major abdominal surgery, and the suggestion to follow it with a round of chemotherapy. We had a lot of information thrown at us that day, a lot of hard questions were asked but the one thing I tried to remember is that I am my own best advocate. No one can speak for me, no one should make decisions for me, and as hard as it was to have to think about certain scenarios, I had to think about everything. I came home that day exhausted but realized that I was ready to fight this with everything I have. With my family and friends by my side.

Excuse the language in this photo, but this speaks directly to how I decided to "deal with it" once it all sank in.

Treatment four is done, only two more to go. I'm still having decent luck with the side effects, a little more nauseous and a little more tired/sore every time but overall I still feel very, very lucky! I can't believe that it's already October 20th, I can see the finish line of my treatments! One of my nurses this past time commented on how positive I seem to be, and asked me how I continue to keep a positive attitude. I answered her honestly - I know I've discussed this a little in other posts - there really isn't room for negativity when you are going through something like this. You need energy, and keeping it positive just helps with the emotions. She then asked me whether I thought this experience has changed my personality or my character. Interesting question! Has it? So I have been thinking about personalities and character lately because of this - can people change? Can I change based on what I've been through and experienced? I think deep down you can change, and ultimately that will show on the surface.

A couple of years ago at work we did this personality profile test called insights - you answer a bunch of questions and it places you on a color wheel spectrum and defines your personality for you. I have always been extremely skeptical of these tests, I believe you can manipulate your answers to get what you want to see, but I still answered all the questions honestly. The insights system uses four color "energies" which are supposed to help you understand why you behave the way you do, and why others may behave differently. The exercise was supposed to get us to understand our team at work better, and possibly gain a better idea on how to work with these people. I personally think you should just get to know your co-workers and you can learn a lot by talking to them. In any case, the majority of my co-workers thought I would fall strictly into the Red energy- extroverted, high energy, authoritative, wanting power and control, but when we got our results I was anything but red. My other three colours were all pretty even, but red was the lowest it could be. We were given a summary of our personality profile and within that a list of careers that would fit our profile - according to the test I should have been a teacher, counsellor, nurse, psychologist - something in the helping profession. Boy was I doing the complete opposite being in technology with oil and gas!

Then a few weeks ago our team decided to do another team building event, and we were told we were going to do the Myers-Briggs personality test - this is probably one that more people recognize - I was curious as to whether everything I have been through in the past several months would have had a significant effect on the outcome of my test - i.e. had I changed much. Nope. Under the Myers Briggs test I have a personality profile of INFJ - introversion, intuition, feeling, judging. Now, like I said before I am normally skeptical of these tests but this oddly, this fits me perfectly. Here is a summary of "who I am":

INFJs make up only 1% to 3% of the population, the rarest of the personality types. They tend to be perfectionists who fear they aren’t living up to their potential. INFJs can always list the things they’ve left undone but have a hard time counting their accomplishments. INFJs hold strong convictions and are deeply affected by the suffering of others. However, because they are introverted, they prefer thinking about weighty issues to talking about them. Although INFJs are gentle by nature, they are formidable in battle.

When INFJs move into their extraverted mode, as they sometimes do, they can express a range of emotions and opinions quite effectively as they have excellent verbal skills. However, they tend to be cautious about revealing their positions. Like other feeling-judging types, they frequently feel caught between the desire to express their opinions and their reluctance to offend people. Some INFJs vent their private feelings to a few trusted friends. The friends are chosen with care, and the relationships are usually characterized by affection and trust. When INFJs turn from their feeling to their thinking function, they may appear aloof. Others sometimes conclude that this detachment reflects cynicism. A friend might fear that the insightful INFJ is so perceptive about human nature that the friend himself or herself is being judged. Generally this is not true at all. The INFJ is simply distracted by the need to focus and think. Under stress, INFJs are likely to overlook what’s going on in their immediate environment.

INFJs main objectives are leveraging their gifts as much as possible and feeling that they are useful to other people and that their efforts toward helping and caring for other people are appreciated. Material assets and wealth are important but usually are a secondary priority compared to the main objectives. Overall, INFJs are effective in occupations involving substantial intellectual work, caring for other people, and requiring creativity.