In the last six months of 2011, my family ate take-out more times than I want to admit.  (I don’t even want to think about the times my 18 year old son went on his own, but I contend that no one should be held responsible for an 18 year old boy’s eating habits, especially after two-a-day football practice).   Frankly, if we went back further, the last six months were probably better than most because—God bless them—our church was worried that my children would get rickets and cooked dinner for us many of those nights.

I’m not sure when the bad eating habits started.  I’m guessing it was somewhere between play practice, soccer practice, writing deadlines , and church activities.  We just got too busy to eat right.   It was easier to drive through somewhere or pick up Chinese food or a pizza or sandwiches.  Without me noticing it, my husband somehow made the switch in his afternoon call from, “What are we having for dinner tonight?” to “What do you want me to pick up for dinner tonight?”

If I don’t know exactly when the fast food frenzy started, I do know when I started thinking about changing it. Really changing it, like the kind of line in the sand that you know will stick kind of change.   July 12, 2011.  I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  I didn’t know the full extent of it that day–that was more the shock and awe day.  I guess you could say that I was lucky, if getting cancer can be considered lucky.  My cancer was found at Stage 1.   (More on that later)  And it was the wake-up call I needed.  I had known for a while that we couldn’t maintain the pace we were setting, but I didn’t know how to change it.

Cancer changed it for me.

With six months on the couch, more or less, I’ve had a lot of time to think and plan and research.  One thing I know we have to change is our diet.  Other things, too–which I’ll be exploring in future blog entries–but number one is to stop putting toxins in our body with preservatives and foods that  humans were not meant to eat.  But how?  The general plan is to change our family over from a fast food, take-out diet to a whole foods, organic diet.  I plan to eat more whole grains and less refined sugar, too.

So I just got the all clear from my doctor after my third and hopefully last surgery.   I figure this is as good a time as any to let you in on a secret .

I really don’t know how to cook.

My doctor is nice and very smart.  I am getting quite attached to my techs who are with me every day, but when I have the actual treatment, I am alone in the room.  The first week, I was really uncomfortable with the whole process.  By Friday, I was about to have a nervous breakdown. Yesterday, I was feeling a little bit better and had an easier time with it.  I ‘fessed up to my rads tech about how terrifying I found the treatments.  She was shocked.

“THIS?” She waved her hand at the horrifyingly huge machine that could kill a person with virtually no effort, and then laughed a little. “Psh. It’s no big deal.”

So I told her about the fantasy I had last week while the treatment was going on about the machine malfunctioning and them evacuating the building and forgetting about me until they looked around outside and she and my other tech gasped in horror. “Where’s Mrs. Newton?”

She laughed again and said, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, our protocol if there’s a malfunction is to get the patient off the table first.”

I’m like, “No, no…the fact that you have a protocol for a malfunction of that magnitude really doesn’t make me feel better.”

Bless her heart. She really doesn’t know what she’s dealing with, does she?  My rads techs are actually very, very good.  They’re not tentative at all, which I like.  If you’re going to radiate me, you should know what you’re doing.  ;o)

I’ll just leave you with the thought that sometimes having the mind of a fiction writer is really not a good thing.

In October last year, I read all the articles about mammograms and early detection and felt slightly superior.  Okay, not really superior exactly, but allow me a moment of personal privilege to make a point.  I get my yearly mammograms.  I’m young(ish) at 42.  I have no known risk factors (other than the aforementioned love for chocolate).  No one in my family has even ever had breast cancer.  I’m planning to die of something fast and painless when I’m 85.  I figure 85 is old enough to have lived a long and fabulous life, but not so old as to hate it, yet.  Breast cancer is nowhere, not even a distant blip, on my horizon.

Four months ago, in May, two months after my yearly mammogram–which was normal–I found a two inch oblong lump in my breast.  I knew it hadn’t been there before, so I called my gynecologist for an appointment.  The following day I was at the women’s health center for a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound.   I waited in the tiny closet-like space for the word from the radiologist.  He came out to tell me himself…things looked fine.  I could come back in six months for a follow-up, but in his opinion, there was nothing to worry about.

I had a book deadline in six days.  I was moving my family out of state in seventeen days.  I didn’t have time to worry about it, even if I wanted to, so I said to my best friend on the phone on the way home, “I can’t think about this anymore,” even as I thought in the back of my mind that a two inch mass in my breast couldn’t possibly be normal.

Apparently my gynecologist felt the same way I did, because when I went by her office to pick up my records before the impending move, she told me that everything was probably fine, but because I noticed a change in my breast, one that she could feel also, she wanted me to go for a surgical consult.  Thank God I had a doctor who listened to me.  I’m not sure I would’ve listened to myself.

Turns out, I did have breast cancer.  It was found very early, stage 1.  But if I had waited, if my doctor hadn’t urged me to follow up, the cancer might not have been so easily treated.

Since July, I’ve had a biopsy, two surgeries, countless doctors’ appointments and I just started seven weeks of radiation treatments.  My apologies to those of you who don’t talk about your personal parts but this is the real truth:  my boobs are now sort of wackadoo, I’ll soon be sporting a serious “sunburn” from the radiation, and I’ve yet to find a bra I can wear that doesn’t hurt my incision.  But…and it’s a whopper of a but…

The doctors say there is no sign of cancer now.  I am lucky–so, so lucky.

There are a couple of things I feel like I should say, and now feel I have a right to say, as often as I can.  Despite the fact that the first radiologist was wrong, my cancer was detected on mammogram.  If you haven’t had one or haven’t had one in a while, please go get one.  My next piece of advice is to know yourself, know what is normal for you.  And please, please, speak up if you think something isn’t right.  Don’t stop questioning until you have an answer. Trust your instincts.

So, in a couple of weeks it will be October.  Everybody’s talking about it anyway.  You won’t be able to escape the pink.  Let it be your reminder.   Make the appointment.  And just for fun, buy some pink M&Ms and share them with your BFF.

1-Golfers are allowed on the golf course.

2-The cart girl in her work cart is allowed on the golf course.

3- Mowers are not allowed on the golf course.

4-You are not allowed to walk on the golf course at any time if you are not a golfer (I don’t know how they can tell the difference, but they can.)

5-You are not allowed to walk on the other side of the street, either.  You might get too close to the golf course.

6-If you are an animal other than a dog (heron, squirrel, turtle, snake) you are not allowed in the backyard.  Or on the golf course.

7-Floating in the pool, allowed.  Swimming in the pool, not allowed.  (It’s dangerous)

8-Swimming in the neighbor’s pool, not allowed either.  (Dangerous for the neighbors, too)

I love my dogs, but their rules are weird.

But I think finishing this book and meeting my deadline deserves some sort of reward.  So, since cupcakes are about my favorite thing in the world.  I’m going to reward myself by making these:

The recipe for that divine frosting (and ideas for the cake too) can be found at Our Best Bites, a blog which is the source of much culinary delight. And cupcakes.

No, not that kind of Prairie Chick.  The romance writing kind!

Come by Prairie Chicks Write Romance to talk deadlines and comment for a chance to win a copy of Flashpoint!

My dogs aren’t used to a quiet house, either.  Every time a bug would hit one of our four billion windows, the dogs would erupt in barking as if there were someone lurking outside, just waiting for the right moment to break in. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep.  So I turned on the television.  Luckily we get OnDemand from our cable provider, so I found a show that I’d been meaning to try and hadn’t.  After one episode of The Good Wife, I was hooked.  I watched nearly the whole season in one gulp.  Talk about characterization.  Each one of them is interesting and for different reasons, even the secondary characters.  But Alicia, the main character, was fascinating to me.  She is a strong character and yet she constantly found herself in situations where she had to choose between survival and making the moral choice.

I think I’ll try to find the early episodes on Hulu so I can see how the series started and how her character has grown.  Maybe after I take a nap.

• Write.  This may seem like a no-brainer, but I’ve been surprised how many people want to write a book, have the book in their head, plan out the chapters, or even have a detailed synopsis and never write the book.  Writing takes practice, lots of it.  So if you want to be published, you have to write. (Come on, you know you want to!)
• Research.  I realized pretty soon after I started writing my first (unpublished) novel, that no matter how much fun I was having, writing a book was way too much work–for me–to do just for fun.  So I started researching what publishing companies would be interested in a book like mine.  There are market guides, there are magazines like Writer’s Digest and Publisher’s Weekly.  Most publishers’ websites have submission guidelines available.  My suggestion would be to spend time learning about the market while you are learning to write.  Then when you are ready to submit your manuscript, you will know what to do.
• Join.  Writing is not something most people can do in a vacuum.  Left to our own devices, we think everything we write is either brilliant or awful.  It’s really important to find other writers to join with and learn together.  There are all kinds of organizations for writers.  From the RWA, to the ACFW, to the ITW and MWA, to SFWA to hundreds of small local writers’ groups around the country, you will find something that appeals to you and can help you improve.  If you live too far away or can’t afford to join right now (where I was when I started writing), there are plenty of online groups.  The internet makes the writing world a much more intimate and fun place!  Just as an example, I met both of my critique partners, now good friends, online–we live coast to coast.
• Network.  Attend conferences if you can.  Frequent message boards and blogs where writers and agents hang out.  Many publishing companies are using Twitter, as are agents and editors.  Follow them.  Learn.  Check out agent blogs.  ( kidlit.com, Query Shark, Nathan Bransford, Rachelle Gardner, just for starters)
• Submit.  You might start with contests to get your feet wet, get some feedback and make some contacts with editors.  But when you think your manuscript is ready, you should begin sending it agents and/or to advance-paying, royalty-paying publishers.  You will know who these are because you will have done your research.  (There is some leeway here because of the ebook market, but as a rule, the money should flow to the author.) If you are like the majority of working writers, you will have to repeat the steps several times, which brings me to the last point…
• Don’t give up.  A writer who is published is one who didn’t give up.  I wrote for six years before the right manuscript landed on the right editor’s desk at the right time.  You might also want to check out this list of famous rejectees at Inkygirl.

Keep writing, keep learning, keep submitting.  It’s good practice, because once you’re published, you still keep writing, keep learning and keep submitting.

There are so many of these milestones in life.  My next door neighbor was sad this week because her youngest moved up to a “big boy” carseat.  Some of us have kids graduating from kindergarten or high school or (gulp) graduate school.  Some of us are looking at life with a brand new degree in hand and thinking, what now?  Some are becoming grandparents.  Some, like my parents, are retired and finding themselves way busier than when they worked full-time.

We have milestones in our spiritual lives too.  Maybe it’s a new commitment to short-term mission work, a new in-depth Bible study, sacrificial giving, or prayer and fasting.  Sometimes we accept a challenge and are amazed at what happens when we partner with God.  Sometimes we’re not ready yet and before we know it, we’ve mangled the garage door because it wasn’t open when we put the car in gear.  Then we have to call the insurance company, make repairs and try again.

One thing’s for sure.  Life moves fast.  I wouldn’t want it any other way.  I love new challenges and learning new things.  I love knowing that God has plans for me.  Sometimes I wish He’d clue me in–a text message at the appropriate moment of decision would be fine.  But there’s that Bible verse from Jeremiah 29:11 that always gives me a feeling of peace, “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you, not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’”

(For those of you with new drivers:  Zephaniah 3:17:  “The Lord your God is with you.  He is mighty to save.”