Catherine Corley - A New Chapter in My Life

So here I am, with my feet up, recovering from my surgery I had Tuesday.  I am so thankful and so blessed beyond words that the tumor on my ovary was benign.  My other ovary was also affected, but appeared fine in the ultrasound.  I made it through the surgery with no problems and was able to come home that night.  Yesterday, was the first day of the rest of my life.  A new chapter begins.

At 46 years of age, I am now in instant menopause.  A taboo subject in my mother's era.  "The change" it was called.  Well, just like any illness, it needs to be discussed and it needs to be medically and nutritionally handled properly.

As I have mentioned, when I first found out I needed a radical hysterectomy, I was very vague on Facebook and among certain people.  I was embarrassed.  But that lasted a very short time.  Then the thought of ovarian cancer and the lack of knowledge and understanding about it kicked that embarrassment right out of this girl.  Now, I'm proud to be a survivor because everything that could have been "something" or become "something" has been removed.  I'm proud to be alive and I am whole.  I am completely whole!  Plus, I have just as much chance of seeing my grandchildren someday as most women do now.  This girl might be in instant menopause, but that just gives me more to figure out, more to write about and more to share publicly to raise awareness.

A few great things came out of this past month of my life.  First of all, I had no clue about ovarian cancer, just like most people.  Doctors tell you when to start having mammograms, when to have pap smears, what age you should have a colonoscopy, when men should be checked for prostate cancer, and young women are given injections against HPV, but no one I know has been told you should have your ovaries checked every so often.  So now I have knowledge that I can share with people about symptoms, which, if you Google ovarian cancer, you can find are mostly "digestive" in nature.  Who would think it was ovarian cancer?  Please read up on it!

Second of all, even though it is uncomfortable for men to discuss, one of my good friends who is a man, read the symptoms because of me and realized his wife had most of them and should be checked.  He asked her to make an appointment.  He thanked me and I cried.  If just one woman gets checked because of my honesty, everything I have gone through physically and emotionally will be worth it!  Please, again, read the symptoms and talk to your doctor.

Third of all, I have met and talked to some wonderful survivors.  Oh my goodness, what they have been through!  They are the strongest women I think I have ever met, even if just through computer chats.  I have read stories of brave women.  I have found out about friends who grew up without their mothers because their moms died of ovarian cancer when my friends were young girls.  I never knew!  Again, I don't know all the statistics, but I have read 15,000 American women die every year from this silent killer.

Fourth of all, I found out who my friends are!  Wow!  I have never felt such an outpouring of love and kindness and prayers in my entire life.  I tear up just thinking about the phone calls I have received.  The cards in the mail that have brightened my day.  Yes, people do still use snail mail.  I laugh at the amount of emails, texts and Facebook messages I have gotten.  Sometimes, with being on Vicodin right now, I can't keep up with them and respond fast enough...sometimes I get to read them the second time just like they are brand new because I've forgotten already!  I think I could hide my own Easter eggs too!  But if you don't think a few kind words make a difference, you are wrong.  Just a "like" on Facebook gives a sick person hope.  Hope that there is someone out there who thinks they are important and that their life and well being are necessary.

I have had one friend, Liz, who has been the first to respond to almost every update I have made on Facebook and to every blog I have written.  I can count on Liz (a friend from high school that I haven't seen in over 25 years) to be the first almost every single time.  Then she sends me encouraging emails to keep me going through the day.  Do you know how that makes a sick person feel?  Important!  Fantastic!  Loved!  Cared about!  She is just one example.

There are a million more paragraphs I could write.  I could write about my wonderful children being at the hospital and making me laugh and keeping me calm while my surgery was delayed.  I could tell you about the lovely lady who brought us two family-sized dinners last night so we would have real meals to eat this week.  They should last us several nights.  She even brought a dessert using my mother's recipe that she still has even though my mother passed away in 2000.  I don't even have the recipe.  I could write about the wonderful hospital staff who treated me so great.  I could write paragraph after paragraph about each of the people who have touched my life.  My friends at church who prayed for me on Sunday and Tuesday night.  Oh, I am so overwhelmed by all the people who cared and prayed.

But this really was about starting a new chapter.  Today, when I am not "under the influence" of Vicodin, I will be reading and studying about menopause and nutritional/fitness concerns during menopause.  It is much safer to be reading than operating heavy machinery, according to the bottle, I should avoid that!  So I have a lot of time on my hands.  No bulldozers for me today!

I proudly embrace instant onset menopause and I will learn everything I can about it.  I still want to become a personal trainer for people who really need it including the morbidly obese, people with special disabilities and now women moving through menopause.  I want to learn everything I can!  You know I will share.  Maybe start a separate blog so you "youngins" don't have to read it!  But someday you will wish you had!  Just sayin'.

I have a lot of things I want to start blogging about as I recover and move into this chapter.  I have a couple of blogs already, this being my primary one.  I really want to write about things I have gone through that some of you might be interested in or might have been through too.  If you have concerns or want me to share about something, please let me know.  I am an open book.  God has kept me on this planet over and over again, there must be a reason for it.

Thank you again to all those who have cared and prayed!  Please take care of yourselves.  Put your health closer to the top of your busy to do list and let's all make 2013 a wonderful, blessed year!

STRENGTH!

Catherine Corley - Gratitude!

A new year and a new beginning!  Last year, my resolutions included getting healthy, losing weight once and for all, and keeping a gratitude journal.  

This coming year is only my second time in my adult life that I won't have to make weight loss a New Year's resolution!  Wow, that feels pretty great.  I still need to get healthier, but that is a process.

So today I am going to talk about gratitude.  One of the greatest things you can do for your own mental health is to keep a gratitude journal.  I have a journal called "Journal 10+."  Actually, I have two of them.  One to use as a regular journal and one to use as a gratitude journal.  You write on the same page for each date for eleven years, about four lines per day so it's easy to keep with it.  (Google it, it's worth the $40.)  There are carry-over pages in the back for days when you want to write more.  So each day you can see what you wrote that day on every year before.  It's really cool and a great way to remember where you have been and how far you have come.

Studies show that people who keep gratitude journals or lists of things they are grateful for live happier and healthier lives.  I didn't do the study, obviously, but I know in my own life, if I wake up every morning and one of the first things I do is write down five to ten things I'm grateful for, my day starts on a happy note.  I try to do it every single day without fail.

I read a great book at the end of 2011 by Debbie Macomber called "One Perfect Word."  She has written a few great non-fiction books, but that one was so important to me.  She said to choose a word for each year (I often choose a secondary word for each day).  I chose my word then for 2012, which happened to be "Gratitude."  By the way, I would be very grateful if I could meet Debbie Macomber, her non-fiction books have inspired me to be a better person.  Meeting her is on my bucket list!

Gratitude - The quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.  A small word but it packs a punch.  

I have met my 2012 New Year's resolutions.  I lost the weight I needed to lose.  I got a healthier, if only by a portion (some things are out of my complete control).  I kept my gratitude journal and I know what I am grateful for each day.

I'm grateful for my faith and the incredible members of our church (which I am happy to be back to having grown up there).  I'm grateful I was raised by amazing parents who loved me unconditionally, I still miss them every day.  I'm grateful for the love of women in my church who nurtured me as a teenager to help me become the woman I am.  I'm grateful I have life-long friends who I still keep in touch with or see on regular occasions.  I'm grateful for new friends I've made who make me laugh, smile and keep on going!  I'm grateful for the people who read my blogs and who care what I have to say!

But, most of all, I'm grateful for my loving, wonderful, insane blended family and the fun we have together.  Jim, Kate, Jon, Molly and Ruth!  I am so grateful for each of you and how you take such good care of me -- emotionally and physically.

I'm grateful for hope.  I'm thankful I found love.  I cherish all my memories.

I'm grateful I understand gratitude and I hope I never take anything I have for granted.

Take care of your health!  And start working on your emotional health be beginning a gratitude journal of your own!



Please check out my other blog SimplePathsForward.blogspot.com where I am going to start posting fitness and weight loss advice