And the overcome

Because we all need a can-do story now and again.

So. If the part fourteen years have taught me anything, it’s how to power through. Not saying that such an approach is 100% effective but then again, sometimes scrappiness and un utter lack of hesitation is key.

My son Peter and I have our inside version of the joke is on the universe (not us). It goes like this: ‘It’s impossible, now let’s do it.’ Oh, and we have. Both alone and together.

A couple of prime examples. When I began my first clinical trial in October of 2008, I was three months into ‘you have three to five months left to live’. In other words, officially a dying woman. I also lived up past Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire, a good two and one half hours from the hospital without traffic. I drove myself both to and from the hospital in the same day for all of my trial visits. And yes, I was married at the time and it wasn’t until much later that I would feel angry about the fact that I made those trips alone. However, more importantly, I did it. And, of note, I am no longer married 😉

Getting Peter into private school was a monumental effort as well. I was going through chemo and I would lay on the couch as he wrote essays and then when I was feeling better, we would go on tours and interviews. When he got into Phillips Exeter Academy it was an immense sense of accomplishment. And when it was time for him to apply for college, we repeated this routine, as I would go and hang out in his room at PEA while he wrote, just to offer support. Of course, it was his own academic prowess that got him into MIT.

When I left my marriage, I was post chemo and pre lorlatinib, my health again failing. Some close friends helped me move the heavier items but I drove the 26 foot truck myself—a first. The day it was due to be returned I had one more load and a seemingly impossible deadline but I simply told myself that failure was not an option and I got the job done.

Of course, some situations truly would be impossible without assistance. I own a little airstream trailer, and the parking lot here at the lofts is being hot topped. That meant I had to move my trailer but when August and I tried to hook up the hitch, we discovered the mechanism was rusted into place. One of my neighbors suggested that if we got enough people, perhaps we could simply lift the the hitch onto the ball. So, the next day, we did just that. Six people lifted a 3500 pound trailer by the hitch, gently placing it on the ball of my truck as I deftly (yes, deftness was mandatory, failure not an option) inched it into place at just the right moment. Not probable, but possible.