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| February 2014 - I had so much hair it was ridiculous |
The last time that I posted anything to the blog was on June 4th of 2014, and I had mentioned that I was having some personal issues come up, as well as falling into a new fandom. Looking back, I know that I had some issues going on, but I didn’t know that the worst was still to come. So over a year later, I am finally back and this will be moving forward.
At that time I had been dealing with a repressed memory that
I had somehow managed to hide in my subconscious for 12 years. And I was having
a really hard time dealing with the memories that were horrible. Although I am
incredibly happy that I was able to suppress them, if I hadn’t I’m not sure if
I would have been mentally capable of getting married or having my three
beautiful girls.
WARNING: This may cause triggers for some people… If you
want to skip this portion, scroll past the next two paragraphs.
What had happened was when I was in college; I had been
casually dating a guy from my theater classes. We had just finished watching a
movie, and since we had weird schedules, it was in the middle of the night. We
started making out, and he wanted to take things further. I was only 19 and
incredibly naïve about anything sex related, so I told him that I wasn’t
comfortable with taking the next step. It was at that point that I told him that
I better go home. Before I could fully stand up he grabbed me and pulled me
down onto his bed. He then pulled both of my arms above my head and held me
down. He told me, “I’m not going to have sex with you until you agree to have
sex, but I’m not going to let you go until you do either.”
I still don’t remember too much about that night,
thankfully, I do remember that I was trapped for two or more hours in that
position. He never fully raped me,
although I remember getting really close to agreeing to have sex just so I
could get away. While no actual sex
happened he did violate me in other ways. It took me months to fully recover from having
the trauma of these memories come back. I was diagnosed with PTSD and I still have issues sometimes, 20 months
later. I don’t think that I will ever get over it fully, and I have become
super over protective of my girls, but I have mostly recovered.
Now, as I mentioned above the last post was from June 4th,
2014. I had thought that my personal issues were getting better and that I
would be able to find the time to get back to this. I had missed dissecting Alias
and the weird joy that it bring to me. Unfortunately, 2014 had other plans for
me. I can officially say that 2014 was the worst year of my life, and I started
the year with meeting Michael Vartan. I
had spent almost all of May in the hospital dealing with a severe kidney
infection that required two surgeries, one of them an emergency surgery at
1:00am. Plus they found that E-Coli had found its way into my blood stream. So
I was already dealing with a lot. On the plus side, the company that I work for
was offering a special leave at the time. It entailed me not working for two
years, but not losing seniority, but I also kept my insurance and flight
benefits. With all that was going on, my husband (who was only working part
time and going to school), and I decided that the leave needed to happen to
give me a chance to fully get better. I was approved on June 12th. I
was beyond elated, for the first time in 14 years I would have to work.
The elation didn’t last long unfortunately. June 16th
I was sitting in bed and working one of my last shifts before my leave
began. All of a sudden pain shot through
my left breast. It took every ounce of self-control
I had to not to start screaming select four letter words to my customer that I
had on the phone. I’ve never been
tasered, but it felt what I imagine it would feel like. The pain lasted for
months. When I first saw my doctor about it, she thought it might be an
infection, but when the pain continued she sent me to get a mammogram and an ultrasound.
I wasn’t able to get in for that appointment until July 9th. So I
had a few more weeks of constant extreme pain.
After the mammogram and ultrasound, the radiologist came in and talked
to me. He said that from what he saw it could be an infection, but it was more
likely to be breast cancer. My heart dropped into my stomach, even though in
the back of my mind I had the nagging voice that it had to be cancer. He wanted to do a biopsy, so I told him I was
available anytime, and how soon could we get it scheduled. He told me that he
was calling my regular doctor to get the official request, but he wanted to do
it in the next few minutes.
The biopsy hurt like hell and you should have seen the bruises,
the mass was the size of a softball, looking back it’s still very surreal. We had to wait about two weeks for the
official diagnoses, because the pathologists couldn’t agree on what the problem
was, so they sent it to another pathologist who is considered the best in the world.
It was breast cancer, but they told me that I was incredibly lucky because even
though the mass was huge, all but one small section was in stage 0; the small
section was in stage 1. But they believed that they would be able to remove all
of it with surgery and chemotherapy wouldn’t be needed. At that point I met with a surgeon and a lot
of other tests were done over the next few weeks. My husband and I talked a lot
about my different options, and since I was only 31 at the time, and the
chances of it coming back was high, we made the decision to go with a double
mastectomy and hopefully avoid the cancer coming back. So we met with the plastic
surgeon and scheduled the surgery.
August 26th, six weeks after the biopsy, I went
in for surgery. We had joked that since it was our 12 ½ year anniversary, that
we were getting started with a new boob package as a gift. We were trying
everything we could to lighten the situation. When I woke up, I was in the worst
pain I had ever experienced. Although I don’t know what I expected, I knew that
removing both of my breasts wouldn’t be an easy experience. The other thing I found is that your arm
muscles are more connected to breast tissue than I thought. I also woke up to a temporary medical
bracelet on my left arm. It said; DO NOT USE THIS LIMB. When I looked around
the room, there were signs strategically placed, stating not to use my left
arm. I looked over to my husband and asked him what was up with the signs and
he told me that the surgery was successful; however they ended up having to take
all the lymph nodes out of my left arm. The cancer had spread into the
lymphatic system. When my surgeon came
into the room, he told me that I would indeed have to see an oncologist, because
I had what is called the HER2+ gene. And that in younger women with breast
cancer, it causes the cancer to advance quickly. They removed all they could
and that they were still doing testing on my lymph nodes to figure out how
advanced it had become.
The video above, I recently found and it was right up my ally. I really have had the best support system throughout all of this.
I met with my oncologist soon after. She told me that by the
time the surgery took place, the cancer had advanced into stage 3; also that
they would have to be very aggressive with the chemotherapy treatments. In
addition, we were told that if I hadn’t have caught it when I did, the cancer
would’ve advanced to the point that I would’ve been terminal by Halloween and
possibly dead by Christmas. I don’t think that I had ever felt so scared (and
lucky) in my life.
The next week was
full of all the things that had to be done before I started chemo. I had to
visit the dentist, since I wouldn’t be able to undergo any cleanings while on
chemo. I had to do a special heart scan to make sure that my heart wouldn’t
give out because of how harsh the chemo drugs would be on it. I also had to
have a port placed, since my veins were unlikely to hold up against the drugs. I was to undergo six cycles of the really
harsh chemotherapy drugs, one treatment every three weeks. In addition they
were going to be giving me another chemotherapy type drug to fight the HER2+
gene. However I would need to have 17 cycles of that one, once again every
three weeks.
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| October 2014 - 15 days after starting chemo all of my hair was gone |
A year later, I have gone through so much, more than I ever
thought that I would be able to endure. My hair is starting to grow back. I’m
finally starting to get some of my strength back. I’m finally starting to feel
up to doing the things that I loved doing before all of this stress happened.
Best of all I have my last treatment in two weeks, and I’m officially in
remission. (Also I met Michael Vartan again in January, but I’ll do a separate
post for that.)
Please know that I am not posting this to get pity comments,
(I’ve had way more pity than I would like over the last year) but to let you
know why I haven’t been able to post here. I had a lot of grand plans for how I
wanted this blog to work. It makes me so happy to see that people are coming to
the page and somewhat enjoy my dissecting what I see in Alias.
As an FYI I have done a few re-watches during
the past year and I have a huge list of things that I missed or that I want to
include here sitting in my notepad on my phone. Also, my daughter had stated that she had wanted to start watching
Alias, and I told her only if I watched it with her. Two things have come from
that; 1) it is almost as if I am getting the chance to watch Alias again for
the first time, 2) I haven’t been watching it looking for clues and things to
try and figure out what I should put up here, so I’ve noticed some things that
I completely missed in other viewings. It’s fun watching it through an 11 year
olds perspective.
That’s it for my personal crap. I have already started the
post for APO part 1. And I am so excited for it, even if it is my least
favorite season. Also I’ve been watching
season four and looking for it’s good points and it definitely has quite a few
of them; including some of my favorite scenes.
The last thing that I wanted to put out there is I know that
currently Jennifer Garner and Michael Vartan have been in the news. A lot of
people are saying that Jennifer is turning to Michael in the turmoil of her
divorce and that he is in a good position to help her coming off of his own
divorce. I just want to remind everyone that all of the parties involved are
real people. We don’t know the exact circumstances of what is really going on.
I will say that I have never been a fan of Ben Affleck, but I think they
deserve their privacy, especially since children are involved. The other thing,
I’ve seen a lot of attacks on Lauren (Skarr) Vartan, once again we don’t know
what happened, so I don’t think that we should be judging. I will say that I
have interacted with her online a few times, and she has been nothing but
sweet, kind, and caring. She even contacted me on
Instagram (even though she doesn’t follow me) in a private IG chat asking me if
everything was okay since she hadn’t seen me on there in a while. I let her know
what was going on, and we ended up chatting for close to an hour. I never
brought up Michael Vartan, and if I chat with her again I’m not going to. I am truly
saddened that these four people (plus three little ones) have to go through all
of this.
I set up this blog as
a place to talk about how perfect Sydney Bristow and Michael Vaughn are for
each other. Even after entering more fandoms than I ever should be a part of, I
still believe that Sydney and Vaughn are the best couple out there. I did end
up making it more than just their love; I’ve included my own personal stuff,
and my crush on Michael Vartan has factored in. I’ve even expounded on more of
the episodes than I ever planned on doing.
But I am going to put this out here; Please do not use this forum to comment on how much you hate an
actual, in real life person, over things that we have no personal knowledge about
beyond what we read in a magazine! However if you want to hate on
Sloane, Evil Francie, or Lauren Reed, go for it I will fully support those
hatred remarks.
Thanks for sticking around even in my absence.
