You are what you wear

I'm sending subliminal messages to my body with some of the choices I have made in clothes recently. It can't hurt, right?

One set of messengers is my collection of pink T-shirts from the many Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure events that I have participated in for most of the past dozen years. The pink shirts are reserved for breast cancer survivors, and the word "survivor" is prominent on the front of them. Paired with pajama bottoms, they make dandy sleep shirts. I take special note of the "survivor" as I slip one on and smile as that becomes one of my last thoughts of the day before drifting off to sleep.

Another special messenger in my wardrobe is jeans that had become my new favorite pair when I bought them in the spring, long before Cancer 2.0 had surfaced. I remember wearing them to dinner for my brother's birthday on Sept. 6, the day I first noticed the lump in my abdomen. As the tumor quickly expanded my tummy, I had given up even trying to wear them, sure that they would no longer fit. But those jeans ended up in my hands recently as I searched my closet for some I could still wear. I pulled them on with low expectations and was delighted to see that their low waist tucked in just under my belly bulge.

The jeans' name? Lucky Brand. That's me -- Lucky survivor!