Sisterhood of the Secret Handshake

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  • Makratz
    Makratz Member Posts: 12,678
    edited November 2009

    That's what I think too!  Is that why we love asparagus??

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    Linda - I am like totally biting my tongue here...   

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited November 2009

    Thanksgiving!

    I will be in the States (in Los Angeles) for Thanksgiving this year. It is the first time in 38 years that I will been in the U.S. for it and i can't even BEGIN to say how excited I am.

    And not only because my sister makes great turkey.

    Leah

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    I'm cooking the chick pea soup- was I supposed to cover while simmering?

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  • LeggyJ
    LeggyJ Member Posts: 726
    edited November 2009

    Hi,

    Rachel, you made me think of when I was on chemo. and was in whole foods, just wandering around looking at food, but couldn't eat....I looked really bad, but always wore a newsboy hat, never a scarf, just couldn't keep them on my head.  Anyway I was so thin and weak, the only thing holding me up was the cart.  I avoided eye contact, with people, but a beautiful women stopped right in front of me, she bent down looking up at me, so I had to look at her, and she just smiled at me and walked away.  Truly, beautiful knowing compassionate smile.  I'll never forget her. 

    Leggy

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited November 2009

    Those are the people who keep us going.

    Leah

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    Leggy- that's brilliant.  Now I know, if I am in the same situation, I will make sure they know  I am intending to make eye contact, and I will think all the good things I am thinking for them and keep my mouth shut and smile.  (Of course in NYC they may think I am reaaaaallly creepy but maybe not.)  Sometimes words just screw things up.

    Mostly I feel like a jerk because I reached for the stuff in front of her.  I wasn't rude, and I guess it was kinda good because I treated her very normally, and she had enough growth that i know she must be a couple weeks out.  That is, if she was a chemo patient.  I never did see her eyebrows and eyelashes.

    Its really empowering to have a good idea what to do next time :)  Thank you! 

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  • smithlme
    smithlme Member Posts: 1,322
    edited November 2009

    I was in a Starbucks last week and there was a woman sitting with her PC in the corner. She had on a scarf and penciled in eye brows. My daughter called at that time so I went outside to speak with her. When the woman came out, her eyes went straight to my chest, which is flat. She gave me that knowing look and I smiled at her. She looked a bit freaked out, but I let it pass...I remember being there, not that long ago...

    Linda

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  • kookiesmom
    kookiesmom Member Posts: 143
    edited November 2009

    Hi Rachel!  Great idea for a topic!  I miss the Bottle O' T ladies but since I am off the bottle-so to speak- I didn't think I should say anything there anymore.  I have the alien baby again and will go to the tummy dr. to see if he can figure out why the tiny baby is kicking me in the same place every day.  It is such a strange sensation! I really don't think its my "bowels" as my gyno put it.  What a yucky word - bowels.

    Leggy - I liked your story about the lady smiling at you when you were feeling low.    I love when stuff like that happens - unforgettable little things that we never forget.

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  • GramE
    GramE Member Posts: 5,056
    edited November 2009

    You could adopt my "do a nice thing":   get some smily or heart stickers and carry in your purse.  If you see someone looking sad or hairless or who appears to need a "nice" , give them a sticker.  Say something like:  " I thought you might like this " or "this is for you" .   It works with kids, young, old, men and women.   No one has gotten offended when I did it.   

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  • BooBee
    BooBee Member Posts: 860
    edited November 2009

    Linda said....

    Thanks for the invite Rachel. I'll repost my question now that I'm "official!" If I don't have breasts, boobs, foobs and don't wear fake ones, can I still be here? I have nothing to "shake!"

    It's just like playing the air guitar, just fake it.

    Lefty.....I'm glad you're here.  I follow you also.  Does that make me a stocker?

    Cpara.....I am a whale according to a PS today who was dictating measurements to his nurse while comparing each breast.  "...stretch marks, moderate to extensive....auxiliary fat pads, extensive..... recommend lipo to remove additional fat pads to ......bla....bla....bla"  The dumb ass also had me remove all my clothes to get a look at my boobs.  I showed him.  He's going to have nightmares for weeks now.  Glad I got a second opinion.  The one I'm going with was smart enough to write this shit down after he left the room.

    DH asked me why I liked one over the other and I said because he looks me in the eyes while we were talking.  He said something has to be wrong with him because no guy in their right mind is going to look in a girls eyes if there's a pair of exposed boob in the room.

    Are we allowed to curse on this thread?

    Yay Rachel and chelev.

    Mary.... Phlegm, is there any word more disgusting in relation to bodily functions?  Diarrhea runs a close second. (Unintended pun.) Sorry DH has it.

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  • Mary22
    Mary22 Member Posts: 779
    edited November 2009

    TOO Funny Renee!!!!!! But I agree. I can not even stand to hear someone gag. Imagine that, with three kids, working with special needs kids and in the healthcare field!!!

    I was feeling kind of down, until Rachel invited me to this thread!!!! Good laughs!

    I understanding about seeing someone w/ a hat and bits of hair and not being sure if to say something. Two Sundays in a row I sat near a lady w/ bandana and what appeared to be regrowth peaking out, but never said a word. There is also another lady who always wears and wig and for sometime I had suspected, but never said a thing. One day my son hugged her and almost knocked the wig off. She smiled and said she was a cancer survivor, but her har never really came back. She suffered various cancers and looks great!!! We talk all the time in church, but I do not know her name,but during the "sign of peace" she hugs everyone, even my bratty kids.

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    renee ROFLMAO air guitar- that's perfect!  OK as to rules and cursing, I'm from fucking Noo York City for starters. Next i will quote a nice little old lady I met at radiation while discussing the criticism on the book Cancer Vixen on Amazon reviews complaining about the language in the book, she said "the only obscenity is cancer".  Right on.

    I also pride myself in an extensive vocabulary and used to have a saying about how people who curse are just too lazy to express themselves properly.  That was before cancer. Expletives serve a purpose. So please, feel free. :)

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    Mary- no I can't believe you have that achilles heel!  

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    Leah, one word: Stuffing.

    :) 

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  • Rachel_BC
    Rachel_BC Member Posts: 1,386
    edited November 2009

    kookiesmom- well that's another thing about this group, we've got all sorts of TX here and some have gone or are going from Tamox to AIs, so its all good :) what the heck is  going on with you and the alien baby?  Forgive me, I have forgotten why you had to go off Tamox?  It was the alien baby or something else?  What's the status?  Were you the one with blood clots in your legs?  I should shut up an look at your old posts, or go to bed, or both...

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  • Mary22
    Mary22 Member Posts: 779
    edited November 2009

    Rachel, I used to feel the same way, until I went back to my "old stomping grounds" in Michigan when a friend got married and every other word out of my other friend's mouth was fuck this and that and the other thing. Now mind you she graduation HS w/ a perfect 4.0. I was very shocked to hear her talk that way, of course that was 19 years ago and now I curse like a truck driver. After working 18 years in retail and unloading trucks and listening to the truck drivers, it sort of numbs you. AND THEN THERE IS SFBC!!!!! Need I say more. At least I can say I have never said why me? Or even blamed it on anything that I may have done wrong in the past. I just accepted what was thrown my way. Now it has become a way of life. I try not to let things bother me and speak my mind,

    Linda, do you watch hockey? The only team in Detroit that can seem to win a game, just beat the Boston Briuns 2-0. I love Hockey. Just got off the phone w/ my nephew and told him to puck off. Inside joke, his mom heard him say it to me and he got in trouble!!!!

    Boy I feel much better now!!!! GREAT IDEA RACHEL!!!!

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  • GramE
    GramE Member Posts: 5,056
    edited November 2009

    I had a co worker who used shit so often her baby girls first word was "dit"... we knew what she was trying to say...

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  • Juli50
    Juli50 Member Posts: 859
    edited November 2009

    I go away on a cruise and now I have to pay the price... catching up on the Tamox thread and why we are here now. Here is much better. Wink

    missed you all!

    hugs Kiss

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  • ktym
    ktym Member Posts: 2,637
    edited November 2009

    Well, a few months back when my hair was, oh maybe row 3 and obviously growing back in slowly, I was getting a mammogram done and another lady in the waiting room was almost bald.  I smiled and said, my hair looked like that a month ago, she said, that's great, but mine is on its way out, not growing back in.  I felt like I'd just asked someone not pregnant when the baby was due.  Haven't said a word since.  I know it meant a lot to me when I was bald or just starting to grow the hair back to have someone say a kind word about what they went through too, but, after that incident, keeping it zipped.

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited November 2009

    OK, Rachel, did you mean stuffing for the bra or stuffing for the turkey?

    Both will work.

    Leah

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  • kookiesmom
    kookiesmom Member Posts: 143
    edited November 2009

    Rachel - Yup I was the blood clot in the leg poster child from tamox. so went off it.  As to what else it did - lets just say Tamoxifan ate my lunch!  Right now I am waiting to have a endometrial biopsy due to an endless 3 week period.  I am not looking forward to that as I heard it hurts.  Anybody have that done lately?  Then I get my fibroids & cysts peeked at again via the Starship Enterprise TVUS.  I am not taking anything at present  but I am waiting for my mother's onc. to send me her initial diagnosis.  If I have the same "brand" of SFBC as she had  then I think I will have to decide whether to wait for menopause naturally or have an ooph.  I don't really want to do the shots once a month. Not taking an AI is not an option IMO if my diagnosis is the same as moms.  I may not be a doctor or scientist but to me its just common sense when you are a 3rd generation to come down with SFBC (BRCA Neg. but who the hell knows what other demented gene is living in my family)  you gotta go at it with both barrels.  My onc. refers to my cancer as a "baby cancer" & that pisses me off!  She says "don't worry it will be alright".  I think I am getting a 2nd opinion soon.  Once I get all the plumbing issues resolved that is! 

    Have a great day everyone!

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  • Mary22
    Mary22 Member Posts: 779
    edited November 2009

    Good Morning to all!!!!!

    Off to the psych ward!!! LOL

    Have a happy day!

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited November 2009

    On this language thing - I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be careful abut the words I use. That doesn't mean I'm offendd by others using them - as Rachel said, sometimes those are the words you need. I do wonder if they lose something in their power for people who use them all the time. In other words, if you refer to BC as SFBC tht's one thing, but if you refer to it as SFBC but then the elevator is slow so it's th SF elevator and then you miss the bus so it's the SF bus and then you're stuck in traffic so it's the SF other drivers.... You get no emotional release from calling it SFBC.

    When I called my parents to tell them my dx, the first thing my father said was, "Oh, S#%&T." Summed it up succintly, all right.

    Leah

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  • Makratz
    Makratz Member Posts: 12,678
    edited November 2009

    Mary, I am not a big Hockey fan.  It's so violent, I hate watching it.  I'm happy you and your nephew enjoy it.  Now, watch that language!

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  • didle20Diane
    didle20Diane Member Posts: 404
    edited November 2009

    Hi everyone!  I just wanted to pop in to say hello!  I am not on the boards as much anymore...trying to restart my life pre BC....I have met so many wonderful women on these boards and am grateful for this site during my treatment. 

    I am in touch with several of you wonderful beauties on FB and look forward to seeing you all there for the next 60 years or so :)

    Big Hugs!

    Diane

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  • cparandjuk
    cparandjuk Member Posts: 33
    edited November 2009

    When I was mid-way through my chemo and had just a few wisps of hair left, I was out walking my dog and passed a couple walking in the park.  As they walked by me, the lady smiled, said hello and then turned back to me and said, "I used to have that hairstyle, I hope you are doing ok."  I will never forget her or that day.  The act of kindness...unforgettable.

    I like the idea of the stickers...it's great!

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  • goldie0827
    goldie0827 Member Posts: 6,595
    edited November 2009

    Rachel, thanks so much for the invite. You have sure created a busy, fun place! You are surrounded by many many friends!

    I have 2 related stories. While at a gas station one day, gal on the other side, was bald no eyelashes and no eyebrows and not wearing a hat, scarf or any head cover. I approached her and asked if was due to chemo or cancer. It was NOT, she had alopecia. Altho very embarrased I told her I was glad it wasn't cancer and that I think I would rather have alopecia than the cancer.

    My other story relates to asking someone if they are prenant. I did that to one of our favorite waitresses a few years ago. And NO she was not. I felt like such an A$$ and couldn't apologize enough, ended up crying I felt so bad! 

    Hope you all have a wonderful day. Lori

    P.S. Rachel, did you get into the Blue School?

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  • Leah_S
    Leah_S Member Posts: 8,458
    edited November 2009

    I never ask women if they are pregnant - too easy to be wrong! I was once asked that when I wasn't, and it was uncomfortable for me and the woman who asked. She was my rabbi's mother.

    Leah

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  • brookside
    brookside Member Posts: 77
    edited November 2009

    Hey Rachel

    Thanks for the invite and I've been doing that secret handshake for years!!

    I am finally done with radiation and wouldn't ya know it, I got swine flu!!! I am presently recovering from that and waiting for frogs to rain on me or locusts to swoop down on me.  I haven't started tamoxifen yet and I don't care to know when i start.  I have never had hot flashes and I don't want them either! 

    this looks like a GREAT site with some really sweet energy.  I look forward to the future here! 

    Becky

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