New Beginnings

oh, there's so much to tell, where do I start?

2013 was MY year, a fresh start, new beginnings.
At least it started out that way.
My divorce was final in January.
My son turned 18 and was accepted to a very nice college (about an hour and a half away - close enough, yet FAR enough, ykwim)
I started dating.
Well, dipping my toes in, so to speak. A few online profiles, a few fun dates, some nice friendships, and no one too creepy. ;-)

Life was (is, really) good. 

I was busy. Having fun.
Navigating a social life.
Solidifying girlfriend relationships. If you're of a certain age, you *know how important those are, and how rare to find new, real friendships at a certain time of your life. I mean, it's fairly routine as a kid, at college, as a new mom... but when you're 50 and starting over? Not so easy.

I feel VERY fortunate to have made new friends and GOOD friends in the past 5 years of my life. They are so so important, especially right now. Oh, SO important.

I met a man in the fall and I stopped dipping my toes in. I got both feet wet. And then dove in.  It was exhilarating. Fun. New. And I'm not (wasn't) looking for a relationship. Not searching for a partner, or a soulmate, or whatever. But I am happy to have affection and companionship and the thrill of getting to know someone new. 
That's enough for now. :-)

But 2013 did not end as well as it started out.
I (and all of you) should get a colonoscopy when you turn 50. I procrastinated. Because, well, who really *wants to have a scope and a camera up their rear?
Anyway, some symptoms (I'll spare you the details) seemed to be a part of the aging process.. could have been a developing lactose intolerance, or gluten sensitivity... but not enough to impact my life or cause undue alarm. I knew I needed to schedule a colonoscopy and started digging out the old referral. Then a few more symptoms started emerging in the fall. A bit of blood, that's all I need to say, and the colonoscopy was scheduled for early December. 
The prep, I won't lie, is not fun. Laxatives and a liquid diet for a day. But the procedure is done under anesthesia and is fine.

They found a polyp. 
Fairly large - 5 cm. That's about 2 inches. So, right before Christmas (yay!) I went for a cat scan. Then a sigmoidoscopy (think colonoscopy, but without the anesthesia.) You're awake, the dr is chatting away. I ended up playing Words with Friends and facebooking photos of me in a hospital gown. Then an ultrasound.
Then a meeting with a colorectal surgeon the day before Christmas Eve.
At lunch that same day, his office called and suggested surgery on 12/31.
YiKeS!
Everyone said - "Start out the New Year with it out of your body", "Get rid of it and be done!"
So, surgery it was, on New Year's Eve. Morphine is not quite as celebratory as champagne, but with the help of my brother and sister-in-law and some VERY GOOD friends, I made it through the hospital stay in fairly good spirits. 
The worst adjustment was the realization that because of the location (and size - a SOFTBALL) of the tumor and nature of the surgery, I would need a colostomy, an ileostomy actually (*you can google it. It's my reality for the next 6 months, but I'm not enamored of it), to allow my rerouted colon to heal. *I thought that would be for 8 weeks or so, and I started counting down the weeks.
But nooooo, although the margins of the tumor were clear and the dr was certain he'd gotten all the cancer, pathology showed cancer cells present in 3 out of 34 lymph nodes removed. Automatically bumping me from a stage I to a stage III diagnosis with chemo and radiation in my future. 

.... more to come. 

Keep your chin up. That's what I'm doing.