On coming and going, and finally arriving:

Alicia Parlette- I had no idea she existed until I stumbled upon an announcement of her death recently. A writer living in SF who discovered she had sarcoma at 23, Alicia kept a blog about her cancer experience on the SF Chronicle web site.

Our stories are eerily similar. I wish I could have talked to her. The cancer struggle often goes on for years, on and off, and you've no choice but take it all in stride...

Here's her wiki:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Parlette

Here's her blog:

http://www.sfgate.com/alicia/

On a lighter note, here are a few preliminary shots from my thesis collection:


It's a dress with a tumor; how cancer-centric can I get??


I've decided that if my yearly scan is clear, I'm going to retire this blog for the time being. It is what I wanted it to be- a candid documentation of cancer treatment. It's over now, and I doubt anyone wants to hear about my chronic pain every few weeks.

That said, I won't be a stranger ;)
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and if it's back... well, I'll get to take you on a whole new adventure.

My birthday is in a few weeks... no, not my legal birthday, but the day I went from living dead to just plain living again. May 1st was my last day of chemo. It's the day I got out of prison... I can't believe it's been a whole year. It feels like just a few months have passed.

Yearly scans May 10th

Graduation show May 7th

Deadline for my senior collection garments: this Friday.

I have been working SO HARD. A whirlwind of work. Stitching still my eyes burn and my fingers bleed (literally!). I pulled an all-nighter, which is requisite college behavior, no? I was able to work through the night but my body retaliated soon after: fever and sweats, a debilitating migraine, and vomiting/heaving for the subsequent weekend. I'm still learning my body's limits, even a year after the fact.

Remember when I was bald? I don't. I can't even recognize myself, it's like I was in utero...

I just want to say, very quickly, WOOHOO HEALTHCARE REFORM!!!!

I realize it will take several years to be put into effect, but I'm so happy this passed in congress. Sharing is caring, even if it's our hard-earned money. Healthcare should NOT be big business, in my opinion.

Here are a couple of links, spelling out the pros and cons in a simple and succinct way:

Pros and Cons of the healthcare reform proposal

5 key things to remember about healthcare reform

eye heart this

I'm so high maintenance

pain status: same as before, but now a lingering fatigue. I can sleep 14 hours and wake up tired. Also, my bones hurt. It feels exactly like the pain I got from Neupogen injections, like hot lava in your bones, burning and radiating out. It makes me restless, I want to stretch and shake the pain away. My fingertips are tingly. I yawn a lot. I've had a constant nausea for the last few days, which makes food unpalatable.

I've been having a tough time keeping up with life. This is a hard thing for a perfectionist to handle. Harder, harder, work harder to be normal. You must hide your physical pain, you've got to fight off your anxiety, you need to combat fatigue. Take your pills.

My collection due date is in exactly one month and one week.
work work work

My friend is dying slowly, but much faster than me. This is terrifying; to have a window into what will probably (50%) be your own unwanted fate. A flip of the coin. Every moment my mind is left to wonder, it wonders about death.

It crosses my mind frequently that this collection may be the last I ever design. So it's got to be good. It's got to be. perfect.

Anais Nin once wrote, "I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing".


I postpone death.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux

Lizzy Mercier did a really cute song called "tumor" in 1976, sung to the tune of the classic Peggy Lee song "Fever".

Listen to it HERE, via Hype Machine.

A couple more of photos of Lizzie:


+Patti Smith on the left

Some bald high fashion for you:






me without hair, I missed those little follicles.