Well dang it! I thought I published a blog on some organizing I did at our last pet sit. Not sure what happen to that. Then I tried to write about hot air ballooning in October & around our Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta adventures, but my heart & mind just weren’t in it.
During the last two months I have spoken to two more women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer. It pangs me deeply when I think about their journey ahead.
I have said it before & I will say it again, if you or someone you know has been diagnosed with breast cancer, I am available. I am available to laugh, to cry, to yell & scream, to answer questions & give unsolicited advice 😬 Please do not hesitate to reach out ❤️🩹
Talking to my friend yesterday was life giving to me. I have been lucky, blessed, fortunate, whatever you want to call it, through my journey & hopefully will continue to be, with anti cancer drugs & low rates of recurrence. But I won’t lie & say every follow up appointment doesn’t come with some amount of apprehension.
I may not be in the thick of it, but it is a still a part of daily life & will be for some time.
When I posted last, I said this wasn’t a travel blog. Neither did I have any intention of it becoming a breast cancer blog 🦠 There are plenty of both of those out there.
I guess Im just writing this to let myself off the hook to have written something & let you know we are still living this unconventional life.
As an Amazon Associate I earn $$$ from qualifying purchases when you click the links below. You do not have to purchase these items for me to get credit, just complete any order from clicking through the links & completing a purchase 🛒
To be clear, this is not a travel blog. Do I write about travel, sure, but I prefer to focus on our own experiences & blunders along the way. Yes, occasionally I will throw in some fun facts & recommendations. If you head all the way back to the beginning, you can see why & how we started our adventures. If you head back just a couple of posts, you will get a glimpse into my “starting over.”
During Covid 🦠 I gave up my organizing business of 15+ years, partially to keep the old folks 👵 in my family safe but mostly because I was tired of dealing with other people’s crap. I say that tongue & cheek of course 😉 What I was really tired of was never feeling like clients & I “finished” a job. There was always one more 📦 box or shelf or closet, that we would get to next time. Next time never came. Clients unsure of themselves & their decision making skills & me unable to assure them or convince them to push past their overwhelm & fear of letting go. Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s a lot! Believe me, being on the road for over 2.5 years has revealed my own disorganized tendencies & penchant for over packing because I can’t or won’t make a decision 🤷♀️
So I took a break. What I have discovered over these past 2.5 years is that I really miss it, not just organizing itself but helping other people who want to be organized. We live in other people’s houses 🏠 When I say that, others say, “oh, I could never!” or “isn’t that weird?” It definitely takes some getting used to & sometimes more flexibility than even we have 😬
We have done 13 pet sits since January of 2023. Our first was a beautiful beach front house in Mexico 🇲🇽 escaping a fraudulent AirBnB host. The rest have been in the US, mostly Colorado & Oregon. We have adopted this way of life for the moment, being homeless for all intents & purposes, living out of our truck. 75% of our sits have been everything we expected & perfectly adequate. 25% have been less clean & more cluttered than we would have liked 😣 It’s the chance we take.
I make no secret in our bio profile that I am a “retired” professional organizer. One homeowner said, “do whatever you want.” So I did & loved every minute of it! Another homeowner said, “do nothing.” So I only did a little. Oops, my own OCD could not be assuaged. Do they notice? Do they care? Does it make them happy? Does it irritate them? IDK… They all leave us rave reviews, most saying the house was cleaner than when they left, which is always our goal – leave it better than we found it 😊
The homeowners of one of our earlier sits, left us a lovely thank you note & a bottle of wine, so I cleaned out & reorganized their pantry. Overstepping without permission, ABSOLUTELY! Thankfully, they loved it & said so.
For me, organizing a physical space, helps me organize my mind. It’s like playing Tetris 🧱
What does all that have to do with starting over…? What began as a well thought out adventure, took a bit of a turn. There is nothing like finding out you have a deadly disease, have to regroup on all the plans & then sit on the couch for the next 6 months recovering to make one reevaluate life.
I want to create beautiful spaces for myself & others. Does that mean getting off the road? Probably, but that all depends on the housing market 😉 What we are not willing to do, is settle for less than what we want, because we don’t have to. We are still in love with Pagosa Springs& continue to believe that is where we will find a new home 🏡
In the mean time, I am trying to share more about what we are doing on the way to where we are going & I hope you are enjoying that as much as I am. I am also re-envisioning what a new organizing business looks like in the future… virtual organizing, vacation rentals & airbnb organizing or individual clients needing to downsize & declutter or some of this or all of this or none of this???
A couple of other things I have been working on are a newsletter & becoming an Amazon Associate. If you are reading this, you got here one of two ways… a social post or my NEW newsletter. My newsletter will be going out via email to ensure folks who actually want to read this drivel, don’t miss a post on social media 💻 The newsletter will also be an opportunity for me to share links to my favorite things I have found to make traveling & life easier via Amazon. We have generally had good luck 🍀 on the road as long as I remember to ask home owners not to stop 🛑 their mail & of course, change our “delivery address” online.
I get it, Amazon is the hundred pound gorilla, you either love them or hate them. I myself am a big fan, so much so I signed on to be an affiliate marketer with them. What does that mean? It means when you click on my links, here, in my newsletter or on social media & complete an order, purchasing items from Amazon, I get a few dollar & cents. You do not have to purchase the specific items I link to, only get to Amazon via my links & shop from there. Ideally 😉 you would bookmark my Favorite Things page here & always arrive to Amazon via my website.
A huge THANK YOU, to all of those who supported my launch on Prime Day in July. It was at least successful enough to keep it going & put in some effort.
As always, another thank you for hanging around & following along as we live this unconventional life. What comes next? Your guess is as good as mine, but I will do my best to keep you in the loop 😃 We are currently pet sitting in Colorado thru September. After that we head back into ballooning with a few CO rallies & eventually Albuquerque for Balloon Fiesta. Hopefully we will see many of your there or along the way… 🛻
Don’t miss a single opportunity to laugh at us or with us as we bumble through life on the road 🛻 This newsletter won’t overwhelm your inbox, nor will your info leave my contacts list 😊 Future newsletters will contain blog post updates, tips on organizing & how we are living rent free while making a little cash on the side with Amazon 🛒 I hope you will join my curious audience as we make our way forward ➡️ “Where’s the Bairs” Newsletter 😆
If you are just joining us, you may want to read the previous post. Alas, I have not been a consistent story teller, so the beginning isn’t too far back either 😉
So my boobs….We made it to Colorado Springs in early December. We settled into our holiday pet sit & I finally saw a doctor.
I had an appointment with one doctor, that was my first mistake. My second mistake was not diving down the doctor Google hole sooner. Or maybe it was my saving grace… When I originally called for an appointment for the “end all be all of breast surgeons” I was not given an appointment with her, but rather some other doctor. That doctor would offer me implants or another option I had never heard of & one I found very little information about online. Her response to what I wanted was, “yeah, we don’t really do that here.”
There was also no sense of urgency from the doctor or the nurse navigator, who God bless her, would take the brunt of my fear & frustration over the next few weeks. So little urgency, that the nurse navigator didn’t push back at all when I wanted the later surgery appointment over the one two weeks earlier. The compounding issue with my first appointment, is that Dave did not go with me. Why, because we were locked in a stubborn tango of control & emotions & denial & neither of us knew what was the “right” thing to do. Thankfully, that would pass.
My next appointment would be with an oncologist, who both questioned why I had come to see her so early in the process & berated me for not coming in sooner! Erin & Dave joined me for this appointment & I wouldn’t have made it through without them. The doctor brought me to tears with her accusations about my lack of urgency & her straightforward remarks, that she “didn’t care what certain tests revealed, she would pump me full of all the chemo & then some.” I left there in an absolute daze 😵💫 Within the week, between Christmas & New Year’s, I would dive headlong into self advocacy & find a new team of doctors!
What happened next was a whirlwind of appointments & bloodwork. All while we were pet sitting 🐶 I saw a new breast surgeon the first week of January & was put on their schedule less than 3 weeks out! Dave came with me to that appointment & every appointment thereafter. Every next step seemed liked the right one. My breast surgeon gave me options, she offered her opinion & preference but never pushed my decision. My new oncologist is a doll. She was gentle & compassionate with my concerns about the perceived urgency & assured me I had time.
I decided on the double mastectomy, even though my breast surgeon preferred a breast sparing lumpectomy & reduction on the other side. So many factors went into this decision. Although I did not have any cancer genes when tested & the likelihood of anything in the left breast was incredibly small, nearly every woman in this new sisterhood I spoke with had had issues with margins or recurrence. Not to mention, standard procedure for lumpectomy is to require radiation &/or chemotherapy. I decided to be one & done with this portion of the surgery. Radiation, chemo & reconstruction would all be concerns for another day.
Boob Voyage – Ta Ta to the tatas w/ some of my bresties 😉
Turns out, bras are mostly plastic 🤢
Journey on!!!
January 29th came & went & so did my 40DDs. The double mastectomy would be a “short” surgery in comparison to the 10 hour reconstruction. Thankfully I got to come “home” to the therapy cat we were pet sitting. My original surgery date was actually after this pet sit, so rescheduling turned out to be purrrrfect 😉 We, & by that I mean Dave, would move house four times during recovery, while managing follow up appointments & planning next steps. We waited anxiously for the final pathology. Days before my 50th birthday 🎂 we got the call we had hoped for, my test number was very low, 9 out of 100, which meant no chemo or radiation ☢️ I was given the option to enter one of two randomized studies for women of my age & results. You will not be surprised to know that I declined.
Remember that first oncologist who said, “ she didn’t care about test results…” Never have I ever been more thankful that I listened to my gut, my God, my intuition 💜
I celebrated 50 🎂 cancer free! The first part was done ✅ The hard part came next.
Fortuitously, the plastic surgeon on my new team happened to be the ONLY doctor in southern Colorado that regularly did the reconstruction I wanted. That did not stop me from getting a second opinion. A long time friend that was equally new to the sisterhood, about a year ahead of me in diagnosis & procedures, was an immense comfort through this whole ordeal. She recommended her plastic surgeon in Austin, with whom she was very happy. The fact of the matter is, I actually spoke with her plastic surgeon before I changed teams. Dr. Potter was a huge resource of information about everything, specifically outcomes. What did I want at the end of all this? What were all the options? What were the financial & insurance ramifications of multiple major surgeries?
Both of my potential plastic surgeons had incredible records & references with photos to match. I’ve never looked at so many boobs on the internet 🤣
Again, there were so many big & small decisions that had to be made… Could I make the drive from CO to TX & back? Where would we “live” in either town? How close did we need to stay for follow ups or God forbid, complications? In the end, which was really only the middle, we decided to stay in Colorado Springs with the same plastic surgeon who worked on me through my mastectomy.
Yes, these were the months I questioned everything we had done with our lives… selling our house, traveling, being vagabonds 🛻 I worked through my grief all over again, denial, bargaining, anger, depression. When I considered walking into traffic, I decided it was time to call my therapist. Every part of this was hard, it is still hard even as I write this nearly eleven weeks post reconstruction & a week before my NEXT surgery.
But I digress. Near the end of April we settled into an AirBnB in Colorado Springs, close to doctors, close to our son, Andrew & close to friends. April 29th, it was back to the hospital, this time for new boobs. I didn’t want implants because they come with their own set of difficulties, namely having them replaced every ten years. So instead I chose one of the most intense & invasive options, the DIEP flap method. In short, they took my belly fat & made it boobs. Two for one, tummy tuck & a boob job! I won’t go into a ton of details, but essentially this is a micro vascular surgery where they cut the blood supply vein to the belly fat & then graft it into the vessels in the chest wall 😮 That is a super simplified explanation but it makes for a softer boob & less chance of infection or rejection (& replacement) than breast implants. Totally more than you wanted to know, but here you are….
I would not wish this recovery on my worst enemy. To add insult to injury, during surgery, a compression cuff & the blood pressure cuff competed with inflations & left me with a crazy painful pressure wound. The following 2 weeks would be the most pain & terror I have ever experienced in my life. I would question my own sanity for choosing this, but choose it I did. I hated my plastic surgeon, just as he said I would. Days passed. Bulbs were drained. Drugs were taken, so many drugs 💊
Here is a poem I wrote…
My brain is full of drugs
My heart is full of tears
My body is not my own
Well I guess it is
But the parts are all rearranged
I’m exhausted from rest
During this time of healing, Andrew came & took care of me. We watched Harry Potter & ate custard he brought from work 🍨 Dave & I celebrated our 28th anniversary 🥂 We felt incredibly cared for & loved, as friends brought us dinner & visited with us. For as horrible a time as it was, I will remember it as a time I was not alone.
The healing continues. We are still on the road. We are back to seeking adventures. There are a few more details to sort out, but truly the worst is behind us. I am excited for what is ahead even if we are not really sure what that is….. 😬
