Gindi Vincent

The Dish on Career, Fashion, Faith, and Family

Day 13 – St Patrick’s Luck

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Lucky number 13. Fell on St. Patrick’s Day! Ten days left. Two weeks.

In honor of lucky 13, in addition to my bright green radiation smock, I picked up green shamrock donuts for the kiddos. Then I picked up chocolate stout cupcakes filled with Bailey’s icing. Yes, please.

I’m just plugging along.

Not a lot of news.

I keep meaning to write about all my new skin products – maybe tomorrow.


Little bit organized again – she is a MACHINE! Her career goals are to be a home organizer to the stars. Ha! Right now, she can settle for our chaos.

The boys left to work cows. They were giddy! A bunch of new babies were born so that makes them the perfect size for two 11 year old cowboys! They left with the jeans, boots, spurs, holster and cowboy hats. Mercy. Can’t wait to see photos from that (we girls opted out).

I worked all day. I’m fatigued but still able to keep up so I am grateful!

The next few days we’re going to sit outside and soak up the perfect weather in my happy place. The backyard. The timing on that remodel couldn’t have been more perfect.

Day 12 – Fun

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Today was Day 12 of 23. Eleven days left. I passed the halfway mark. So we decided to go have fun.

It’s Spring Break here in Houston. As I can’t travel anywhere this week, I wanted to do a few little things with the kids to celebrate them being out of week. Their last spring break in elementary school (I’m not crying, you’re crying).

We love Top Golf. I mean we only went one time and none of us can golf to save our life, but we had a blast.

Tuesdays are half price at Top Golf so off we went this morning. I had a two hour window between work calls and trainings so we went sandwiched in a mini adventure.

Even though one of our crew was a little grumpy, his mood changed fast. We got a great bay right in the middle on the top floor even though the place was packed. If you don’t have a Top Golf in your town, the structure is basically a three floor semi-circle around all these golf targets. We love the top floor the best. Then each individual bay opens to the outside targets.

We cracked up at our terribleness. Well the baby can actually make some targets, but the rest of us were hopeless. I offered to give them a few lessons this summer just so we could make contact with the ball every time, but they said half the fun is cracking up at our awfulness! I agree.

We ordered appetizers and I let them have sodas (typically a no go). Then we came home and I let them watch Yes Day on Netflix. I told them I’m game if they want to start making their lists for our own YES DAY.

I love the premise of this movie. We moms did used to be fun.

I was a daredevil. Thrill-seeker. Laugher. Party-goer. Now I’m boring and stern and tired. Wouldn’t it be nice to show the kids I actually can still be fun? Although I’m incredibly nervous about what’s going to end up on this YES DAY list!

Anyhow, today was good. I’m still tired and I had a ton of work to do when I got home but it was worth it!

Day 11 – Sleep

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I’m tired.

So much so that when I finished radiation today and didn’t have any morning work appointments, I crawled into bed and went back to sleep.

I drive to MD Anderson West every morning. I leave the house at 7 am. After checking in, going through radiation (which is brief, thankfully), I’m home by 8.

With most of southeast Texas on spring break this week, my work calendar is lighter than usual.

When I got home this morning, I crawled back into bed. Jeans, sweater and all.

Shockingly, I fell asleep. That’s how tired I am. I can never go back to sleep. I’m incapable of napping or sleeping in the daylight. Yet here I was, stone cold asleep until my family got home from the farm at 11 am.

I plugged back in and went to work.

But I’m going to have to be careful to only do social media in VERY SMALL DOSES this week. Seeing everyone on these wonderful spring break trips nearly threw me into hysterial tears. I can’t take the kids anywhere because of FREAKIN RADIATION every morning at 7:30.

Sigh.

Thank you for enduring my pity party. It’s over. There’s gobs of people who can’t go on spring break either so let me put away the world’s tiniest violin.

I offered to take them to Top Golf tomorrow. Or do something fun that doesn’t take too long because I have the stamina of an 80 year old right now. Actually, if we’re comparing my stamina to my 80 year old father in law, it’s way less.

Twelve days left.

Day 10 – Different Sunset

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I’m late writing Day 10. I must write my Friday posts on the weekend because I can.

That sunset. It’s at the farm. I didn’t get away for long, but there’s something about different sunsets. Different scenery.

I needed something different.

The boys left on Friday and little bit and I followed with an ice chest full of food Saturday morning. My plan was to cook for my in laws while I was there. It’s nice to serve someone else after having been served so well these past few months.

Little bit and I missed the last trip over to Louisiana because of her basketball schedule. This weekend is in between basketball and baseball/softball so we could get away.

I came back today, Sunday, because I had to return for my morning radiation tomorrow. And because my precious friend and pastor had a big birthday today and I got to celebrate with her and a few friends. It was so nice to be in someone’s backyard with more than just my family.

By the time we fought the insane “all of Texas” spring break traffic, we were at the farm by 1 pm. The kids ran off to work on the continued restoration efforts, the well house and saddle house are now up, and I worked inside.

We were so lucky to get to see Bray’s brother and sister who came in to help too. So Saturday night was a virtual family reunion. Remember, we hadn’t seen any of them over Christmas because we were on preventative lockdown (which of course failed!).

I brought plenty of food so I pulled together an appetizer platter – simple but impressed the farm neighbors who rode down with their dog on the Polaris. Everyone was in high spirits and laughing.

Sunday it was more breakfast and lunch cooking and then tidying up. After lunch, I could tell I was sunk. I hadn’t slept well and was crashing fast.

So I bid my family adieu and headed back to H-town so I would have time before the birthday dinner. I got through two more new podcasts and got a good Voxer chat in with my best friend.

All in all, the weekend away was what I needed. This week is my last week of “full breast” radiation and then we move into the focused booster where the tumor was removed. I’ll be at the halfway mark on Tuesday!

Day 9 – No Chemo

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The punchline to today’s post is I do not need to go through chemotherapy.

This is an enormous blessing and answer to prayer. So many of my breast cancer warrior friends had to face chemo for months.

I am very grateful.

But today was hard in its own way. And I’m very tired.

I spent the afternoon at the main MD Anderson campus (I’ve been able to go to the smaller west campus for radiation).

I received the great news that my genomic testing assigned a very low number to my cancer which means chemotherapy would not help recurrence at all. Thrilled for that last piece I’d been waiting on.

My oncologist also gave me news about my menopause status (which I won’t get into), but now I know what medicine I will start at the end of radiation. When radiation ends this month, I start tamoxifen. Then, a couple of years later, I will likely switch to a different type of medicine. In all, I take the pills every day for five years.

This, combined with my lumpectomy and radiation, puts me at no greater risk of more breast cancer than anyone else.

I’ll have another mammogram in 6 months when I do follow ups with my oncologist and radiologist. Those will permanently be moved to MD Anderson which gives me great comfort.

But then, the rest of the day was rough. I had to go through a second radiation simulation. I had a young student who was pretty rough with me on the machine. They have to compress your breast under a plastic board which is fairly painful when your breast is burned from radiation. Then they mark all over your breast, more, to depict where the “booster” radiation will go, starting in 10 days.

If you are going through cancer, this is just another time you have to advocate for yourself. They were going to tape right over my central breast where the burns and pain are the worst. I said NO. I let the techs know I would take it up with my doctor, but I absolutely could not have tape over an area in pain and in desperate need of regular moisture.

It worked. I got out of there without more tape all over my burns. (There’s markers and tape all over the rest of my chest.)

In my meeting with the radiologist, she said, “you are pinker than most patients at this stage of radiation.” This means my burns have hit earlier. I had been praying the reverse would be true. It becomes super important to protect my skin so it stays on. She gave me Mepilex sheets for daytime and magic cool sheets for nighttime. I really like her and her team and am thankful they are being proactive to get me over the finish line.

She also noted that because my breasts are so dense (this is the struggle that has caused so many ultrasounds over the years), the compression may not help for the booster. The seed area they are trying to “super radiate” is deep and my breasts are dense. It could mean I have a little wider area of radiation than we’d hoped just to get to it.

Between the rough simulation and less than happy news coming from radiology, I left near tears again. I’ve decided end of week is really hard for me. I should have left overjoyed at the answer to prayer about chemo, and I am so so thankful, but I felt overwhelmed all over again.

Then last night, I read a post from Jen Hatmaker who has recently gone through a very painful divorce: Dear ones, some of you are sad right now, because you should be. You are feeling appropriate feelings about devastating things, because you are a normal, good person with a normal good heart. There is nothing wrong with you. You should be more concerned if you were skipping right into your next season with nary a care or tear. We feel it now, or it will come roaring out later, ruining every good thing in its path. Grief requires our attention, and we should give it with great care…

She’s right. This is advice I would give any one of my friends. So I gave myself permission to grieve. You can have joy and sadness together. That’s life.

So if you are in the middle of good and hard right now, you are allowed to celebrate the good while grieving the hard. It doesn’t make you ungrateful. It makes you human.

Happy weekend friends.