New Year. New Me.

WHAT A YEAR IT'S BEEN!

A LITTLE ABOUT ME:)

Name: Billie

Age: 38

Favorite Color: Pink 

Favorite Food: A big juicy medium well cooked ribeye steak:)

Favorite Hobby: Photography

Favorite Book: Vivian Maier: Street Photographer

HIGHLIGHTS FROM 2011

Greatest Lesson Learned:  Life is short - live today as if it were your last...

Hardest Thing of the Year: Being diagnosed with Malignant Melanoma and facing the "unknown" journey of the beast, & my lil man breaking his leg and being in a wheelchair x 2 months!

Favorite Memory: My beautiful grand-daughter Adalyn's birth

What I Loved Most About 2011:  Being alive and spending time with my family....

LOOKING FORWARD TO 2012

Want To: Spend more time doing my photography and definitely kickin up my fitness

Hope To: Have good positive news on ANY and ALL skin lesions, biopsies

Biggest Goal: Try to remain positive throughout the year even when life throws curves...

FUCK YOU 2011!

Wow, Twenty-Twelve is here... and it's a Leap Year! I wonder how many men will receive marriage proposals on February 29th and how many will give scissors or gloves in return instead of a "YES".... LOL  (Yep, just an ol' wives' tale)

This past Thursday I had my 3 month skin exam. I left feeling somewhat defeated and disappointed - not only did she find a "suspicious" area on my mid back that she would like to watch but the entire visit was a major cluster fuck for sure. It started with me being seen 1 hour after my scheduled time... OK, I can look past that - me being a nurse, I know "shit" happens to throw the schedule off. So, once I'm called back the nurse asks why I'm there, etc... then proceeds to ask me if I want to put a gown on for my visit.... "Ummm, well, I am here for a skin exam and I'm pretty sure my scrubs are NOT see-thru"... fuck yes lady I need a gown - DUH! OK, I'm stripped down and waiting another 20 minutes on the doc... she comes in and boy oh boy is she "scattered brained", one minute she is asking me to stand up and pull my gown up to check my legs, while I'm in action doing as she asks she jumps over to the computer reading documentation then bouncing back not to check my legs but my face! I'm privately thinking "WOW, there is medication for this type of behavior"... Long story short, my rosacea is worse so I stopped the finacea cream and started Metrogel. I have a 6 mm area on my left arm that bleeds -she says is superficial BCC and she will treat it with cream instead of cutting it out... the area on my back is 7mm elongated with slight redness freckle - she's gonna watch it... This disturbed me, why watch it when you can cut it out and be done with it. Why give the lil fucker time to invade my body and cause havoc??? Like I said, the visit was worse that having the shits in the middle of a field with only grass blades to wipe your ass with! I was her last patient of the morning - this lead me to believe she was in a hurry to get to lunch or whatever... When I checked out, I let the rude receptionist know that I do not want an appt at the same time, I would like my next appt early in the morning! I left feeling like I had a bad case of ADHD with my head spinning! OH, then I realized she sent me out the door with only the script for the Metrogel not the cream for the arm lesion... What a disappointment! 

I did learn one thing from that visit - I'm truly always gonna be looking over my shoulder (literally) waiting on the next "suspicious" area... Melanoma is no fucking joke people. It takes all your dignity and rips apart your life! No joke!

Tanning beds are bad news - if anything, I hope my story reaches others that frequent tanning beds and makes them really think and and realize what they are doing to their body. I wish I would have had just one person present their story to me as I was foolishly frying my skin - it would have opened my eyes! Are you still tanning???

2012 - I hope you bring me good news and happiness.

XOXO - Melanoma Diva

David Haas - Fitness and Cancer- Physical Fitness Can Help

I have the privilege of David Haas writing a guest article for my blog today. David is a cancer patient advocate who cares very much about the well-being of people not only diagnosed with cancer but also their families and those who are in remission. You can check out David’s blog at http://www.mesothelioma.com/blog

Read this fantastic article written by David and let me know what you think of it in the comments section:)

XOXO - Melanoma Diva

Fitness and Cancer- Physical Fitness Can Help

It can be difficult enough to motivate a healthy person to get up and work out on even the best day. When it comes to getting a cancer patient or cancer survivor to exercise, it can be an even greater battle. Dealing with such a difficult illness, not to mention undergoing exhausting chemotherapy and radiation treatments, doesn’t leave many cancer patients rearing to get up and head to the gym. But exercise - even light exercise - can help boost dwindling energy and prevent cancer from recurring.

Many people who have battled cancer - and won - have keeping cancer away for good at the top of their priority list. Fitness and exercise can help with this goal. Not only can a healthy diet and regular exercise prevent cancer from occurring in the first place, but it can also prevent cancer from recurring. This is mainly due to the fact that people who are overweight after going through cancer treatments have a shorter life span than those who maintain a healthy weight - exercise can help people to control their weight.

Exercise has benefits for both disease-free people and people with cancer, but cancer patients may reap even more rewards than their healthy counterparts. Every regular exercise will enjoy benefits that include gaining muscle strength, having a leaner body and warding off weight gain. But additional benefits include an improved mood, more self-confidence and less fatigue…things that are all extremely important after undergoing radiation treatment. People who have cancer, whether they have common cancer like breast cancer or a rare one like mesothelioma, they often experience a depressed mood and extreme fatigue. Exercise can combat both of these problems.

It’s best to start exercising as soon as you can after getting a cancer diagnosis and undergoing treatment. While fatigue will make you feel like you simply can’t get up to work out, or that if you do, you’ll feel even more tired, the opposite is actually true. While starting a workout program may make you sleepier than you usually are, exercising actually increases your energy level. This is a huge help for cancer patients who feel constantly fatigued - instead of leading an increasingly sedentary lifestyle; people who are dealing with cancer can actually increase their energy little by little.

It’s important to perform a variety of exercises, including stretching, aerobic exercise and resistance training. Stretching and increasing flexibility is important to do even if vigorous exercise isn’t possible at the moment. Aerobic exercise is the kind that will burn calories the quickest and help you to maintain your weight.