Happy Friday everyone

Yup! Carolyn is feeling fine! It is Friday, payday, and I am going out tonight with a girlfriend to a rooftop bar in NYC. I am excited. I actually got up this morning feeling happy! that hasn't happened in a LONG time.

The last couple of days have been pretty good. I posted on the GIST listserve and immediately someone from Rockland Co. NY contacted me off list. It feels empowering to finally learn a language that can help me deal with my kind of cancer and their are people who speak that language. It feel better and better to slowly give more a more articulate voice to my experience with cancer, to hear other's experience and have discussions about topics that are important to this type of cancer.

Another thing really helped me yesterday - I am giving a shout out to my dear friend Priscilla - many of you have met her. She is a true blessing in my life and the best of friends. Well she really helped me see that this is a disease that I will have to manage, probably for the rest of my life. With that realization sinking into my bones, and with a few tears shed, I know she is right. Cancer can not be my reason for living - in time it will become like my high blood pressure, something to be watched, monitored, managed and treated as it needs new treatment. I have been struggling lately to not have cancer become the center of my life. Now, for the last year that has been understandable that cancer has had that place, but now I am beginning to move away from that focus to a place where other things in life will be central, like work, working to give back and build connections and support for all that I do in life. It feels like now that I am making important connections with the cancer that it now doesn't need to be so central and having that support is allowing me to know turn to other things that make me happy and that I enjoy doing. I think this is generally helping my shift back to a more happy positive outlook on life.

Now, there will be times when the cancer will come back to the center stage - for scans and doctor visits - but that isn't all of life - there is some much more to it than cancer.

So to all of you - Have a happy Friday!