Hello Everyone,
Summer has hit the Waltz home with a Wham! Bam! Slam! For some reason I find myself irritable,
overwhelmed and tired. Hmm, maybe it’s
because my 3 children are finding it hard to live with each other all day. This in turn, is making it hard for me to
live with them all day! If anyone
has any tips on how to parent in the
summer (other than to leave the house for a week) please send them my way! My sister just told me that we have
eighty-something days left until school starts.
Ugh, is it that longJ??
I was at the monthly Waltz dinner last night and Brett’s
step-mom reminded me that she recently hit the ten year mark as a breast cancer
survivor. Wow! What an accomplishment. It seems so far away for me, but then again I
remember so clearly when she was going through her treatment like it was
yesterday. Maybe my ten year anniversary
will be here in a blink and maybe by then I will worry about cancer less…. I’m still waiting for the day when I will go
24 hours without thinking about cancer and recurrence. I know it can’t be good for my stress hormone
friends cortisol and norepinephrine,
but geez cancer is all around me. It’s
what I see every morning in the mirror from past surgeries, it’s what I read on
my computer, it’s what is in the literature that comes in the mail, it’s what
is on the prayer requests at church, it’s in the news, it’s in my neighborhood,
it’s what I fight every day.
A recent study came out of Stanford University that
looked at anxiety-prone mice and cancer.
Researchers found that the mice with anxiety developed more severe
cancer then their calm counterparts, the first
study to biologically connect the personality trait of high anxiety to greater
cancer threats. Aye Yai Yai! Are you an anxious mouse or a calm counterpart? This anxious mouse (Me, Myself and I) chooses
to embrace the big C by getting involved, sharing resources, supporting others
and talking about “it”!
Be Well,
