Babies, Brooklyn, and Hormones

Tomorrow is my appointment with Dr. Healey; I’ve been doing better with my anxiety about the check-up. It hasn’t gone away, to be sure, but I have gotten better about just accepting it, and also trying to think a few positive thoughts for every negative thought that enters my mind. It’s helped.

Right now I’m blogging from a café in Brooklyn. I’m walking around mostly without my cane, and it’s kind of weird being back, hanging out with my friends in Park Slope as if I’ve skipped right back to 2005 and the Year of Recovery and Moving Back to Denver never happened. It’s also neat because my friends haven’t seen me in a while and are impressed with my walking and it reminds me how far I’ve come since I saw them last fall when I was still on crutches. I sat cross-legged on Megan’s bed and she squeaked with delight: “Look what you can do!” And it made me smile to myself, yes, look what I can do!

Which is all kind of funny since before arriving in NYC I went to Philadelphia to visit my friend Heather and her one-year-old girl, Tyler. Tyler is SUCH a happy, smart and supremely adorable baby, and I spent most of my two days with them making similar declarations: “Look what she can do!” But being around a baby brought up baby talk, as in: are you and Brian going to have babies?

It reminded me that I still need to go see a genetic counselor. In fact, just today, I was reading the boards on the Chondrosarcoma Yahoo Group and there was more discussion on the estrogen link between breast cancer and chondrosarcoma. There are several studies showing that estrogen feeds chondrosarcoma just like certain breast-cancers, and that there is a close link between the two cancers because of that. This is why I will never ever take the pill again, but it also makes me wonder if getting pregnant would pose a risk of recurrence for me, because of the elevated hormone levels. (?) I’m going to ask Dr. Healey this question tomorrow.

But that’s in the future. Right now, I’m having so much fun seeing my friends—I’ve missed them all so much!!!