Optimism - Paige was full of it!

Every time I open the fridge I see a symbol of Paige's optimism.  About a month before she completed her battle with cancer she purchased this bottle of sauerkraut at Costco.  While Paige and I enjoyed cooking up a good bratwurst or two and enjoying a little kraut to go with it, buying a bottle this big is kind of ridiculous. I mean this thing is huge!  It is a half gallon of sauerkraut.  It would have taken at least a year and maybe more to eat this entire thing with both of us taking cracks at it but that is what Paige believed.  She never believed that cancer would beat her and in reality it never did.  She fought a fight like it had never seen.  Cancer may have taken away her body but it never came close to infecting her spirit. Paige was full of optimism and hope and she never, not even at the very end, let go of it.

 This is a photo of Paige speaking at a Relay for Life event in 2007...what a babe!

Here is the speech that she gave that day.

"I would like to thank Zoya Hyder for giving me the opportunity to organize my thoughts.  I would like to start out by saying that I respect each person who deals with a serious illness, and recognize that everyone has his or her own story, everyone has a journey that is unique.

I am happy to share with you today my story of survivorship.  This is my story.

I was a teacher just up the hill at Inglewood Junior High.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer October 15, 2004.  I was 28 years old, and was certain that the lump in my breast was anything but cancer.   I remember the day nurse called me in to discuss the results of biopsies and mammograms. It was a tender moment in that small examining room with the nurse, my good husband and myself.  When she shared the diagnosis, my heart was not sad for my own life in that moment, rather of the unknown and  of what this would mean for our chance to start our own family.  Would I ever see my husband or myself in a child? That was my strongest desire and my hardest heartache...

I underwent surgery shortly after diagnosis, followed with Radiation treatments, fertility treatments and chemotherapy.  When I think of my survivorship, it is linked strongly to gratitude.

I have a deep sense of gratitude for the many lives that reached out to mine in this critical piece of my life story. First of all I have gratitude for being in the best place to get Cancer! I was 20 minutes away from possibly the best cancer care in the country! I had incredible care even before I was diagnosed and that care continued with the great doctors, oncologists, radiation technicians, and nurses that made my life extraordinarily bearable.  I have to say that EARLY detection is crucial.  I have deep gratitude to my oncologist, Dr. Kathryn Crossland, who encouraged me to continue to teach through treatments.  I believe that was the best decision I could have made.

When I underwent radiation, I left every day after school, for seven weeks, after spending my time with 150 9^th grade science students and travel to Overlake hospital for my radiation sessions.  Once again I got to know and adore the technicians I saw every day.

When I started chemotherapy, I let the students know what was happening and my plans to continue to be their teacher, taking a day here and there for infusions and to deal with the toxic effects of chemotherapy.  I would have infusions on Fridays, try to recover a little over the weekend, and generally take a Wednesday Sick day to get back on my feet.  Somehow I was my best and my strongest when I taught school.  This is a confirmation that spending time with junior high kids was actually good for my health.  I will always have a special place in my heart for those students I had that 1^st year teaching.  I feel like they were sent especially for me, and we shared a remarkable experience together.

I am grateful to my family who think that I am smart, funny, strong and beautiful even when I was bald.  I attribute my emotional and spiritual strength to them because they influenced me with stability and incredible love and support my whole life. 

I am grateful to a husband who was the ultimate strength and comfort to me.  James decided that we needed a distraction and something to look forward to.  He got the ball rolling so that after chemo treatments were through we would go to Italy.  We spent infusion sessions planning an itinerary to Italy.  Those are my favorite memories in the big blue infusion chair! 

The best way I can express my gratitude for survivorship is the way I live my life.  I found the hardest thing to overcome were the questions that came with the headaches (is this a tumor?)  What if it comes back?  I don’t have those thoughts anymore.  I look at my life and plan my life according to LIVING it. I plan on LIVING a very long time. Part of LIVING my life will involve children.  I take the advice from my oncologist and plan on making the best decision with the information we have.

In Closing I would like to share a quote with you from Ralph H. Blum who stated “there is a calmness to life lived in gratitude, a quiet joy” 

I have found that survivorship is gratitude, a quiet joy. 

This is my story.

Thank you."