Jackie, Oh<----It's a play on words.

Hey peeps sorry for the delay.  I'm very sorry if I totes messed up your weekly schedule.  Like if right between "eat dinner" and "watch Two and A Half Men", you have "read Jesse Pardee's blog and laugh at all the hilarious things she has to say" I'm sure I really messed up your Wednesday routine.  But shit happens.
  Anywho, someone told me that yesterday was sibling day, and I was like, wtf, how perfect for this week's post...too bad it has to be a late post, but then yahoo answers told me that that information was incorrect and that sibling day is actually in April.  Wow, bad grammar.
   Regardless.  I am going to write a little bit about my sister...or rather...first I am going to share something she wrote.  She sent this to me a couple weeks ago; it's something she wrote for english. And you know, call me a big ole puss but I really got all choked up.  Jackie gave me permission to share it here:

Jackie Pardee          <--------------------I even included the heading.                                                                                                                                   P. 4 English

9/17/12                                                                                                                                                       Hughes Assignment

                Some say that sixteen years of age is not enough time to really experience something life changing. That may be true for many sixteen year olds, but not for me. Granted, that can be considered a good thing, because I wouldn't wish my families experience on anyone. To witness what I witnessed at age thirteen, is probably more intense, emotional, and "life changing" than many people witness in a lifetime.

                It all started during the winter of my seventh grade year. I was sitting in my eighth period reading class, and I remember it like it was yesterday. The phone rang and they told me to go the main office. I figured my mom was calling to pick me up for some appointment I have forgotton about, or bring me my lunch, or to bring me my basketball shoes that I left at home, seeing as though I am probably one of the most forgetful people you'll ever meet. Instead my dad was on the phone, telling me that he, my mother, and sister were in the hospital and my sister had been brought to the emergency room. I figured she'd be fine and I better get focused for practice, cause nothing bad could happen to us, right?

                It wasn't until I got another call that night at the varsity hockey game , in the bathroom stall all alone, that my life changed forever. My mom called to tell me that my sister had bone cancer on her pelvis and that she would probably start chemotherapy the next night, on Christmas eve. I couldn't think of anything but Christmas, and I will never forgive myself for being so ignorant and selfish given the circumstances. But I soon understood the seriousness of the situation and knew I had to be there for my sister.

                My sister! She certainly wasn't thinking of Christmas. How could you when you knew you were about to have extreme amounts of seemingly endless poison dripped into your system that was going to do nothing but make you vomit, bald, and basically give up your senior year of highschool. Throughout the next year she gave up so much, and put forth all of the fight she had in her. She battled day in and day out with her cancer until one year later, she came out on top and victorious.

                I watched my sister fight and feel weak for so long that I just wanted nothing more than to switch places with her. However, deep down, I knew that my sister wouldn't want that. If it had to happen to someone in our family, I know she would nominate herself because she wouldn't want to watch any of us go through it, as much as we didn't want to watch her. I met many genuinely good people that year, from the nurses to other patients, and to a little girl named Peyton that stands next to my sister in my list of heros. Nothing can describe the wave of sadness and emotional damage that followed us around everywhere that year, but I can't help but thinking that meeting these people was a blessing.

                Clearly, I wouldn't wish that awful diagnoses on anyone. But what I do wish for, is that everyone have some sort of experience that makes them feel as blessed as I do. That terrible year is my life changing experience, but having the honor and pleasure of knowing a person and warrior like my sister is a life changing experience everyday I spend with her.

    ----Now let me tell you: my sister and I love eachother very much, but there's sort of like...this unspoken agreement that it never be said aloud...simply understood.  We're not the type of sisters to hug it out or say 'I love you' all the time, but we don't need to.  We just know.

    Now let me say that I want to totally and completely reverse Jackie's entire essay.  It's gonna be all emotional and shit, but it's important that everyone know the massive amount of respect I have for Jackie.

   During that entire disgusting year, Jackie carried the burden of being the girl with the sick sister.  All of her teachers had had me before, so she got questioned constantly about me from them, and really...any family friend, acquaintance, or person Jackie encountered asked about how Jesse was doing.

    It was all about me.  Is Jesse comfortable?  Is Jesse getting better?  Does Jesse have all her prescriptions?  Does she have a fever?  Should she go to the hospital?  Does she need food?  A blood transfusion?  Platelets?  What are her blood counts????

   Jesus, even I was sick of it.  Our neighbors who are good friends of the family would sit in the bleachers at all her games because Mom and Dad had to be with Jesse.  Jackie probably felt like she faded into the background completely...

   But Jackie never let on how angry or sad or confused she was about everything going on.  She would bring her backpack stuffed with books and binders to the hospital, and sit in the cramped room to visit me.  If I was in a shitty mood, which I often was, she would talk to the nurses or sit in the day room and play cards with my 3 year-old roommate, who cheated like it was nobody's business.  

   Jackie is a true hero to me, just as I am to her.  It's wonderful to know that I have a sister who will stand by my side through thick and thin, no matter what.  And I know...I know how badly she wanted to switch places with me...just as she knows how much I wouldn't want her to.  

   She put up with a lot of shit.  I remember screaming at her one time because I needed complete silence while my dad gave me one of my injections, and she was trying to tell my mom something about her day. Yeah, I was a peach like that.  I know she felt enormous guilt...like 'why Jesse and not me?'  I know she heard me tell my mom and dad that I wish I could just be Jackie.  That I didn't want to exist anymore...that I just wanted to be Jackie.  Because Jackie had long pretty hair, and Jackie got to go to school, and Jackie went to parties...but I know now that Jackie didn't have it so easy either.  Jackie felt genuine pain for what her family was going through, and for what the families around us were going through.

   I find it so interesting that she talked about how angry she was about Christmas...and how guilty she felt that it was her top concern...because I remember feeling the same way.  Never mind the cancer...I was ruining Christmas.  It's a guilt I feel to this day...it was my grandmother's last Christmas before she passed...and I often feel like I robbed my entire family and extended family of having that last perfect holiday season with her.  I remember how Jackie kept asking when we would have our "Christmas re-do", as my family put it...

   I don't think we ever really got to it.  I know my whole family feels a little blue when the holiday season starts to gear up...but for me at least...once Christmas morning 2010 arrived and I was cancer free, sitting around the Christmas tree and not the hospital bed...it made the holiday all the more sweet.  I actually love Christmas now, for that reason.  It gets a little emotional for me on the 23rd and the few days leading up to it.  But when my family is all together on Christmas eve and Christmas morning...we are all so f**king grateful.

   It's a bond Jackie and I will have for the rest of our lives...how wonderful moments like that are when you know how perfectly awful they could be.

   Jackie never freaking ceases to amaze me either.  She seems almost excited to give me a kidney one day, as it's predicted I'll need one.  She has made it known that she is first in line to give me one.  I hope she knows that if my body wasn't a deserted cancer-fest, I would give her a freaking kidney too, or anything else she needed.  I love my sister very much.  I think it's important for cancer survivors and their companions not to relish in the pain of the experience, but find joy in the lessons and bonding it brought with it.

Thanks for being a kick-ass bitch, Jackie.  

                          Jackie and Jesse 2009...The year from hell that taught us well.

Be grateful for the loved ones in your life.

Love,

Jesse

A Deadly Post

   Heyyyy.  As my friend Linda pointed out, it's Wednesday, so I should probably do some sort of post where I say some things and cross my fingers that it's coherent and somewhat interesting.  It's been hard to think of something to talk about because I haven't fully recovered from Seth Macfarlane's performance on SNL.  Mmmm.  Love me some Seth Macfarlane.
   But then I realized that Sunday marks the 3 year anniversary of the day my friend Robin died of leukemia, and as my mom pointed out, today is the 14th anniversary of my Grandpa's passing from colon cancer.  So there's a lot of...I dunno...death on the brain???  Yum that sounds awesome.  But yeah...September is a really depressing month.
   Just the other day, I heard someone talking about how we're all afraid of dying.  And when he said that, I realized he was wrong.  If you asked me whether I was afraid of dying, I can 100% without hesitation tell you 'no'.  I am not afraid of dying.  I mean, how could I be?  I feel like I was forced to deal with the concept, and it's one of the very few benefits to having cancer. I came to terms with death, and it's a huge weight off my shoulders.  It's just death.  People have been doing it for years.
   When I was going through treatment, my cousin would visit me quite often, and bring me books and DVDs and stuff to do in my downtime...which was all the time.  One of the books she brought me was "Crazy, Sexy Cancer Survivor" by Kris Carr, and there was a chapter in it called "Dirt Naps".  Sounds kind of harsh, but her words about death always stuck with me: "You are at a party with your friends and family, and you are all really happy...You then open a different door to an area of the house...removed from the party.  Now you can no longer hear your friends and family--but you know they are all still there, still in the house, still with you.  Instead of hearing their laughter, you can now feel it.  In fact, no matter where you go in the house, you feel their presence.  You know that even though your physical relationship to them has changed, your energetic connection has not.

   This last room is the universal God soup.  The place where the saint tells us we're home; welcome to the new party. Jesus hands us butterfly wings, Buddha offers a bowl of rice and peas, and Elvis gyrates in white socks and sequins, offending no one." 

   For some reason, it clicked with me.  Kind of hokey, but comforting. It made me realize that I'm a very spiritual person.  I don't really believe in religion, but I believe in the spirit.  I believe that the spirit is an entirely different component, completely separate from the body.  I believe in spiritualism.

   I had an 85% cure rate, and while that was very hopeful, there was 15% unaccounted for.  I had to tell myself and accept that there was a 15% chance that I was going to die from this cancer.  There still is. I could die very soon. Die.  Be dead.  No looking back, no second chances, no more Snooki.  At some point, in order to keep my sanity, I told myself that I was going to have to be okay with that.  

   OKAY WITH THAT?  Okay with the fact that you're going die?  It's hard to do.  I guess what it came down to for me, especially after my friend Heather passed away, was whether I believed that all of these children, all of these innocent children who were dying of disease in front of me...could I really believe that all of their short lives, all of their suffering was for nothing?  Was to become a hole in the ground? To simply cease to exist?

   The answer is no.  I don't believe it.  I don't believe that there is nothing awaiting us in the end.  You read those stories about people who've been on the brink of death...seeing the light...seeing those who've passed before us...they talk about how beautiful it is, how utterly breath-taking it is...I believe it.  

   And that was my thinking...this was how I accepted my fate...and really the fate of everyone.  Would I love to live a hundred years?  Sure.  If I had a recurrence, and was told I had a month to live...so be it.  I'm not saying it would be easy for me to live out that last month knowing it was my last few weeks with the people I loved...but I can honestly say that there would be no fear.  None.  I truly think something wonderful is going to happen...it's almost kind of exciting, in a weird, twisted, don't-worry-I'm-not-going-to-kill-myself kind of way.

   For all you atheists out there, shaking your heads and what not...maybe you're right.  Maybe there's nothing.  Maybe we'll all be holes in the ground.  But I still have the advantage.  Because I'll be living my life right through that very last moment with the hope of something new.  And if I'm wrong...who cares?  I'll be dead!

   I'm not afraid of death.  Some people don't believe me, and think that in the back of my mind, there's still fear there.  But I don't think so.  I think people would be a lot less up-tight if we all came to terms with death.  It's a trend we'll all follow eventually, something we'll all tweet about from the great beyond.  I embrace it, and it really makes my life all the more enriching.  Instead of "Rest in Peace", I see "See you on the other side"...wherever that may be.

I sure as hell hope I don't find out anytime soon.

Hope you enjoyed thinking about your impending doom, 

Jesse

Grief Over Grilled Cheese

     So it appears that Monday is not going to work as far as posting goes--wayyyy too much going on that night.  Wednesday is the new day peeps, so yeah, I know you all sit in front of your screens on the edge of your seat until I post, but try to relax and keep calm until Wednesday nights now.
   I wasn't sure if I was going to talk about this today, because it makes me sound very pitiful.   But I've vowed to be honest with this blog, and for me to paint this picture of me being this strong, confident, well-adjusted survivor is just sooo far from the truth.  Well...it's just not the only truth.
   I like to think of myself that way--I recognize the strength that I've had to show, and the confidence it takes in order to be a somewhat well-adjusted cancer survivor back among the "normal people."
   But on Sunday--and I don't even remember what prompted this random pity party I threw for myself--I sat in Panera Bread with my boyfriend, and all of a sudden began sobbing into my grilled cheese sandwich.  It was one of those times where it all just hit me...
    The only thing I can truly remember saying was "when will it be easier?  It should be easier!"  And while the kick-ass, gung-ho cancer bitch inside me is disgusted with this display of self-pity...I just couldn't help it...I saw glimpses of my past, and then glimpses of my future...and I don't foresee my life ever having that "normalcy" that we all search for.
   There's this part of me inside that is still so, so, so angry.  As if all of this just happened yesterday.  I am so angry because I'm different.  I'm angry that I don't have those wonderful high school memories...yes, I was not diagnosed until senior year...but the gravity of cancer just hung a black cloud over those entire four years.  I don't have the memories of being a senior in high school: my senior ball memories are speckled with shots (of neupogen, not vodka), nausea, and jealousy of the girls who got to sit and have their hair done, have their makeup done.
   I don't have the graduation memories of sitting with my class and celebrating as each person crossed the stage...I sat in the back, away from all the germs, and waited there for my turn, and listened to the thunderous applause that people gave me...not because they liked me so much, but because I had cancer.    I will forever be, in all of their memories, not the girl with the big voice and the Broadway dreams, but the girl who got cancer senior year...and oh, yeah she could sing, too.
   Oh, but the pity party doesn't end here.
   As all the memories of what I don't have flooded me while I sat in Panera eating my sandwich, I also was plagued by the questions of the future.  The questions I never would have had to ask had it not been for cancer: When will I need that inevitable kidney transplant?  Will I be denied health insurance because of my pre-existing condition? (Vote Obama)  Will I have children of my own?  Who will choose to spend the rest of their life with me, knowing that they will have to help me through the struggles that these questions will surely bring?  Just how much higher is my risk of developing breast cancer than the average person?  Is a recurrence of Ewings Sarcoma just down the road?  And where the hell is the long, thick brown hair I had before I took the razor to it?
   And as all these questions and memories plagued me and my grilled cheese, I thought 'why the f**k should I STILL carry this burden???"  I paid my dues to the cancer world, and the land of the sick.  I PAID MY DUES.  WHY SHOULDN'T I GET TO LIVE LIKE EVERYONE ELSE NOW???  Don't I f**king deserve it???
   Thus I reached the peak of The Great Panera Pity Party of 2012.  And I re-realized something I'd acknowledged several times before.  One of the biggest reasons I hate people feeling sorry for me, is because I already feel so sorry for myself.  I picture that bald version of myself, with her medicine pole, and her black and blue legs...and I want to cry for her.  I pity her, just as I would pity a helpless puppy on the side of the road.
   And this disgusts me.  And I'm forced the take all of those horrible questions and memories, and balance them against the biggest, most crucial fact:  I'm here.  And I'm grateful, I truly am...but I have a problem with that whole assumption that cancer survivors must have this wonderful outlook on life, and must be grateful every single day...because most of the cancer survivors I know are pissed.  This entire post has been about how pissed I am, still.  Pissed and angry.  That in itself is a burden.
    It's hard being pissed and angry, especially when everyone expects you to be nothing but grateful and happy all the time.  But it's just not realistic.
   Don't get me wrong.  I'm here.  And I'm so, so happy to be here.  I had a moment of real gratitude to counter the grilled cheese meltdown on, when I was doing barre in ballet class yesterday..  A moment where I thought: I am dancing seven and a half hours a week, not totally sucking at it, and we thought I might not dance again at all.  I did my left split for the first time the other day, after 2 years of wondering if my left hip would ever recover enough to gain flexibility.  There are many moments when I am really, really grateful.
   But unfortunately, there are many more moments of being pissed and angry.  And they may or may not happen over a grilled cheese sandwich.  I guess that makes me human.  I guess that's life.
    And at least I'm living it.


Love,
Jesse
PS. Mad props to my boyfriend, Matthew, for surviving The Great Panera Pity Party of 2012!!!  Thanks for just nodding and smiling until the end!!!

PPS. Congrats to my friend, Mike Mort, on winning the Cindy Award at the Make-A-Wish Ball.  Can't think of anyone more deserving!  Check out his blog!

Who You Gonna Call?? Not me, 'cuz I'm scared as shit.

The stores have Halloween stuff up now.  Like when you go to the drugstore and you're trying to pick up your potassium pills and there's this little skeleton dude singing 'Puttin on the Ritz', next to a pumpkin head singing 'Thriller', next to a hand in a bowl that pops out at you whenever you move near it...and I'm like...yeah, this is a public place and I'd rather not shit my pants in front of the pharmacist.

I don't like Halloween.  And while I am well aware that Halloween doesn't happen for another two months, it seems that the retail business is unaware...or doesn't care.  Probably the latter.  

Now, I know you're probably like...Jesse, shut up, you're not afraid of Halloween.

BUT I AM.  You know what that shit is, right?  It's that day when spirit activity is said to be at its highest, and the legend was that you like...dress up like scary shit for some reason or another on the day of the dead and...you know, I really don't know.  But if I was dead, which I am not....but if I was...I wouldn't want people dressing up scary, and being like.....ohhh I'm a ghost or a zombie or a vampire or a mummy...I'd be like...are you mocking me?  Seriously?  I'm dead, it's my day, and you're mocking me.  Let's have some respect.  I'm gonna go all Ichabod Crane on your ass.

And then there's people who do the opposite, and dress like playboy bunnies, sexy nurses, and all that slutty stuff...and if I'm dead, I'm like....THIS IS MY DAY, AND I HAVE TO LOOK AT YOUR ASS?  And like...SIR, ARE YOU REALLY WEARING A COSTUME THAT SAYS YOU'RE A MAMMOGRAM SPECIALIST????  And then I would be like...why did I come here?  I'm going back to my respective haunted house because everyone has ruined my Halloween by being all disrespectful.

In all seriousness though, Halloween makes me uneasy.  First of all, I am a believer in the paranormal.  Wholeheartedly. I think the spirit world is a real thing.  Who are we to think that our realm is the only one???  Have you seen Long Island Medium???  Anyhooo, I always have this eerie feeling during October...I don't know how to explain it. Like there's freaking ghosts watching me eat my lunchables and brush my teeth. And I've never liked being scared.  I can watch scary movies and all that shit, but if you think I'm gonna laugh because you decided to jump out at me in a Michael Myers mask, I'm probably not gonna talk to you for awhile.  It's very traumatic for me.

I remember trick-or-treating when I was ten years old, dressed as Britney Spears, and I went to two houses...and then I was like....I'm done.  I am DONE.  The vibes are weird out here, I'm too old for this, mischief is happening, and I just want to curl up on the couch and sleep til this day is over.

I spent one Halloween in the hospital.  And boy that was a treat (or a trick???  No, no, the cancer was not a trick...or a treat...anyways...)  I had volunteers banging down my door, like "heyyy, the other bald kids are trick-or-treating around the ward, would you like to join???"  Oh, HELL NO...I'm 18 years old, it's the day of the dead, I've had a little too much "death" on the brain lately, and the last thing I want to do is stand my ass up, put a raggedy hospital sheet over my head, and lug my pole around begging for candy from rich oncologists and then throwing it all up later when you pump me full of Ifosfamide.  But hey, that's just me.  And I think that this blog has established one thing overall:  I have severe, severe issues, and I'm probably going to spend lots of money on therapy.

So this whole Halloween business...I just...I know it's fun and people eat candy and shit, and that's all fine and dandy.  But it's just...I dunno...be careful...don't FUNK with spirits...they'll get'cha.  When I die, I'm gonna be watching all these peeps on Halloween from some tree...being like "really, people?  Really?"  It's my freaking day and you're running around in a costume, looking like a fool.  I'll bet the spirits are laughing at us.  They're probably like...Oh, Mitt Romney and your thirty-seven houses...how droll.

I know it's a little early for a Halloween post, but hey, don't tell me.  Tell freaking Rite-Aid.

Much Love,
Jesse