Snippets Of Life

** drain tube #2 came out Boxing Day. So far so good. When Dearest One was helping get the tensor bandage back on again this morning I lamented that I just wanted to be done with needing help getting dressed and presentable. Tomorrow is ten weeks post mastectomy. Dearest One reminded me that some people don't get to ten weeks post mastectomy.

I feel like a two year old when they wrestle their clothes away from you because they want to do it themselves. Perhaps in a week or so I will be able to do that minus the wrestling. Simple things that can both irritate the heck out of me when I can't do them and bring me joy when I can. The rest of the time I take them completely for granted.

** I made the mistake of shopping for clothes on Boxing Day. Looking in the mirror with a lovely new top on without wearing a prosthesis brought me close to tears; the grief enveloping me from head to toe. Reminder to self to never go shopping for clothes without two breasts, a fake one will do.

** new drug for blocking estrogen is giving me morning sickness like symptoms. Twenty four hours a day. Not sure I can do this for five years. Hopefully it will lessen. So far ginger tea hasn't helped settle the tummy.

** it's also giving me mood swings which I haven't had in years. I don't miss them one bit. Neither does Dearest One. Not sure I can do five years of PMS like symptoms either. I have bitten my lip a hundred times over the past few days. I am grateful that years of practising restraint of pen and tongue means that not every single thing that I think needs to be said out loud. And that I don't believe everything I think helps too.

** am going to see Les Miserables tomorrow. I saw The Hobbit a few days ago. That's more movies in one week than I've seen in a theatre in years.

** went to a family gathering yesterday with 40+ people. First time I've participated in playing games in the 30 years I've been a part of this family. Turns out a person can change and enjoy themselves in the process. Was good to put a crack in the "But I don't (fill in the blank)" rut I can so easily stay in.

Anything Could Happen

When Y2K was coming, preparing for it was like reliving the tension of my childhood but on steroids. I knew all about needing a plan to stay safe in the face of impending doom. So I canned 600 jars of jams, pickles, fruit and vegetables until my cold room looked like a jewellery case with its row upon row of pretty coloured glass. I also had six months worth of flour, sugar, salt plus canned goods, matches and portable stove fuel. Finally there was an out of control happening where I couldn't be caught off guard.

When January 1, 2000 arrived with business as usual, part of me was disappointed. I saw it as a missed opportunity to gloat about how I had outsmarted people who were stupidly living as if they were in no imminent danger. All I had to show for my fanatical planning was a much smaller grocery bill for the next six months.

I watched the countdown to December 31st this year with detachment combined with occasional bouts of patting myself on the back that I wasn't like those doom sayers  My self- righteousness deflated like a popped balloon when I bumped up, for what felt like the zillionth time, against my fear of not being prepared for whatever might happen next, just a few days before the supposed end of the world.

As part of an ecumenical class gearing up for the coming of light we were asked to sit in complete darkness for ten minutes before lighting a candle. Once I shut off the lamp in my office and stuffed the chinks of light coming through the crevices I was left in a blackness that took me right back to childhood. I strained to make out shapes of things in the room just as I did as a child. Back then I would work myself up into such a state until I became convinced that not only had the chair across the room moved but so had the creepy person I imagined my clothes had morphed into as well. I couldn't even run for help because I believed the Beagle Boys lived under my bed and only came out of their trapdoor at night. No way was I going to risk one of them reaching out to grab my ankle as they broke free from their prison.

So when eerie images began to form as I sat in the dark a few nights ago, I asked myself why was I scared of the dark. "Because in the dark anything could happen and I won't see it coming." Not exactly what I thought the darkness would reveal to me.

The tension between who I was as a child, who I am now, and who I have yet to become feels taut in these moments as I`m catapulted back to being a 9 year old girl with a vivid imagination in the dark.

When my Zen timer (oh, the irony) made its Buddha bowl sound I lit my candle and it`s glow grew to illuminate a photo on my desk of my parents and Dearest One. I felt comforted to be among people whose faces shine with love for me. I didn't always feel that way.

My mother was the proverbial boogie man of my childhood. I never knew when she would morph into something as scary as the clothes on my chair in the dark, verbally, emotionally or physically lashing out with such randomness and without predictability. I could never figure out as a child if she loved me and I stood before her closed bedroom door on many a Sunday morning trying to get up the nerve to knock and ask timidly, "Do you love me?" I never got up the courage to go past raising my fist a hairbreadth`s away from my parents` unfinished wooden door. It was a question that hung in the air for decades.

So I find there is a tension as well between the mother I grew up with and the one I have now and the unknown one I will have as she continues to age. The woman who I today, without a doubt, know loves me. The woman who was the source of my greatest fear as a child was the one who comforted me the most in the illuminated darkness this week. 

If that isn't a sign of hope I don't know what is. 

 

Crossing The Line

This week we travelled for a second opinion about my treatment options.

It was surreal to be in a hospital solely devoted to cancer care. Everywhere we looked was a person carrying a green piece of paper which signalled they had gone through patient registration and were headed somewhere within the building for an appointment related to having cancer. I secretly wanted to stop every person and tell them that green was the symbolic colour for hope.

Asking for the second opinion was in that land between hard and easy for me. The doctor here mentioned I could go to that city far away for a second opinion but her tone and the way she phrased it let me know that it pushed her insecurity button when people did. I seriously considered sparing her any more button pushing at my expense.  Here, let me possibly keel over and die so you don't have to feel bad about my decision.  Not.

The doctor in the larger centre was refreshing. He spoke of living in the moment, being aware of what messages we internalize and listening to our hearts; on top of being passionate about oncology and treatment options and cutting edge technology.

He talked about how people feel secure because there is that yellow line  down the center of the highway as if that line alone would keep a semi truck from crossing over it and hitting us. Then he related that to how we get stuck in believing this, this or that is the thing that will keep whatever we fear from happening to us.

I looked at him rather fiercely and said, "I won't get stuck." He looked back and said, "I know you won't."

There is no clear cut treatment plan right now but there will be in the New Year. I am grateful to have a doctor I trust and who is advocating for me. So much so that he is sending my tumour to another country for further testing to aide him in his decision making.

I am healing. I am hopeful.

Cradling Her Face

This morning I brought my breakfast back to bed, added in a heated wheat bag to keep me warm, stopped and picked up a long sleeve shirt I had draped over the heat register and settled in to finish reading my book. It was -41C when I went to bed last night so extra heat was a must!

Two minutes later one of the Pugs was whining to be let up on the bed to join me. So I hoisted her up - the heaviest thing I've lifted since surgery - and she settled in for a nap. Or so I thought.

Before I knew it she was pacing back and forth at the end of the bed looking over the edge and whining. She wanted to be back down on the floor but was too scared to jump. I reached to help her and she ducked away. I tried again and again she ducked. Finally she came and looked up at me, her little tail wagging like an intermittent wind-shield wiper. I cradled her face in my hands and told her that she either had to get up the courage to jump or stop her whining.

I went back to my book and she went back to her pacing. Her story having as much to teach me about life as the one I was holding in my hand.

Eventually she jumped.

The Real Thing

"Don't laugh too much when I have a needle stuck in your chest."

For a moment I have an urge to laugh even harder, in that teenage laughter that gets out of control kind of way, but common sense prevails and I settle down.

The drain came out two weeks ago and slowly the pocket of skin where my breast used to be has been filling with fluid. Another drain will be put in but for today the surgeon has a big ass syringe on the end of a needle stuck in the pocket to remove as much fluid as he can to give me some relief from the pressure and pain.

Next week we see the powers that be in a city far away for a second opinion about the chemotherapy regimen they are suggesting here for me. If chemo goes ahead as planned it will be 6 months before I can put the active part of this breast cancer journey behind me.

My goal is to get well enough to head back to work next September. I miss my job, I miss the regular daily life. I was going to write that I miss the old me but I don't other than I miss my breast. Life has brought me to this point. I am a better person for it.

But my breast, I do so miss it. It's been more disconcerting to look down and see what looks like a breast, minus a nipple, than it's been to see the road of transformation. It's helped me realize that breast reconstruction will not be for me. I want the real thing or nothing at all.

Which is my aim for life in general, too.

Sense Of Humour A Must

My temporary breast prosthesis is shaped like a little cotton filled football. I tried it out yesterday and well, between it and the increasing fluid build up in the place where my breast used to be, I couldn't wait to be rid of it the moment I walked in the door last night.  So I took my bra off right then and there, tossed that on the dishwasher and totally forgot I had been wearing a prosthesis at all.

A few hours later I walked through the kitchen and spotted my prosthesis laying on the floor, its cotton batten filling just visible through the flap in its side. I scooped it up in a hurry, so very grateful that the dogs had not discovered it. More than likely they would have snatched it up in their jaw and carried it to the living room, dropped it and then picked it up again and again searching for the squeaker that inhabits all their toys. I can only imagine.

Gatekeeper Into An Unknown Land

Dearest One and I are silent as we glance at the arrow on the "Cancer Clinic ahead" sign. We drive past it like it's a gatekeeper into an unknown land. We swoop down a ramp that curves around until we are right at the clinic's front door. It looks like we've driven up to some fancy hotel with its carport like roof over head and the sliding glass doors that part as we draw near to them.

I check in at the reception desk and hand over my paperwork. She glances at it and says, "Oh, you're new." She turns to start transcribing it into the computer and asks me to take a seat.

I sit down and watch people. A man shuffles in in slippers and sweat pants. Another man cracks a joke with a nurse. Beyond another doorway I can see a huge sign that tells everyone it's the chemotherapy treatment room. There is both a stillness and a camaraderie present in the air.

A volunteer calls my name and I follow her to get weighed and measured. Down a little more weight since before surgery. Who knew my breast weighed that much?

Within minutes we are ushered into a room and our nurse starts asking questions and filling in yet more forms. Over her shoulder I notice a watercolour painting. I answer her questions while gazing at its gently rolling hills, watery blue sky and winding road. Symbolic of the journey I am now on. The one I didn't sign up for but the one presented to me.

I'm aware that I get to choose how I look at it. It doesn't divorce me from the whole range of human feelings, it's just that after I feel what I feel there comes a 'now what' point where I get to choose my focus. It's not a one time deal but a revolving door of feeling and choosing that will last the rest of my life. The rest of yours, too.

Forms are completed. The doctor comes in. We listen to her recommendations. She is wonderfully non biased and I appreciate that. She tells us to take some time to come to a conclusion.

I leave her office convinced which way I am leaning. My heart sinks as I listen to Dearest One come to a totally different conclusion.

In the middle of the night I lay in bed, fretting about which direction to take. Convinced that the decision I make is akin to deciding between life and death. As if it is all up to me. And in the stillness of the night comes a thought, you're forgetting God in this picture. A wry grin spreads over my face and I chuckle to myself. I had forgotten. That little nugget of grace comforts me so much that I fall back asleep.

In the morning I wake up unexpectedly joyful. That grin involuntarily springs up on my face every time I think about making a decision. I make phone calls about second opinions and get details about the chemotherapy regimen they are recommending. I scribble them down on the backside of an envelope.

It's only later when I turn the envelope over and see "Limited Time Offer" stamped in capital letters that a wry grin spreads over my face once more.

Gripped

"I'm scared you're going to die."

She hugs me tight, her words filtering down through her fingertips onto my back, desperately hoping in the power of her hug to keep me here.

I understand that grip.

One time my brother-in-law caught a bald headed eagle and put it in his truck. On the floor of his truck was a paper bag full of groceries. That bird put one of its talons right through a can of tomato soup. My brother-in-law knew he didn't have the power to get the bird to loosen its grip, the bird had to do that itself.

And so does my friend. I can try to calm her fears but I can't make them disappear. I haven't seen her since my first surgery. I'd been puzzled by her silence and yet not really. I reassure her that I understand her lack of contact.

I do.

I think specifically of several people. A friend whose life I disappeared from while she had cancer. I just stopped showing up. Or the friend who used to babysit my kids when she was a teenager, who - years later - lost her own teenager in an accident. How I couldn't bring myself to ring her doorbell. Much to my shame it didn't prevent me from telling anyone who would listen to me at the funeral that I knew her when. I also think specifically of this friend. Mea Culpa.

A loved one told me she did an online search for"how to not be an asshole while trying to support someone who has cancer." I think that's the reason many people stay away. The reason I have done so, too. When I look at it that way, my lack of action is due in part to an ego driven response. Fear of not looking good, of someone thinking less of me, in the face of their pain. And then there is the desire not to add to their suffering. I'm scared of getting it wrong.

Fear has been my most faithful companion in life. I've gripped it's hand so tight through the years. It's been one of my longest standing prayers for it to stop overshadowing my every move. Now is the perfect opportunity to learn how to let go a little more. Holding on tight doesn't have the power I thought it did. Thank God.

As my friend and I hug goodbye, her grip a little looser, she whispers in my ear, "Please don't die." I whisper back, "I don't plan to anytime soon.".

Fingers In The Dark

"I know, I've touched your incision."

His answer surprises me. I have absolutely no feeling for several inches on either side of my 26 stitch mastectomy scar, which comes in handy when the surgeon is digging deep to get the sutures out, but is awkward when it comes to Dearest One's touch. Has he run his fingers in the dark over my incision and I've been oblivious? I guess so.

No one writes about this part. Regaining physical intimacy while manoeuvring around drain tubes and foot long incisions. It's hard not to feel like there is an intruder in the room with us. A permanent one.

We've slept in separate beds for the bulk of my recuperation. We've learned the hard way that restorative sleep is not in the cards when you worry about accidentally hooking the drain tube with a body part or flinging an arm right over the area above the incision that burns without touch. And we need all the sleep we can get.

Tomorrow the drain tube and remaining stitches get removed.

In 6 sleeps we meet with the oncologist to see what comes next.

It's not the first time, nor will it be the last, that numb and painful and awkward will describe my continuing road of transformation.

The Sweater

It doesn't take much to make me dissolve in tears and this certainly did it today:

(Thanks Rebekah Grace!)

Story of The Sweater

Three Weeks

I apologize for the silence. Typing increases my pain level so I've tried to cut back on it and it's helped. I've also felt conflicted that all I'm writing about is my having cancer and not about anything else. I told Dearest One today that all I really wanted was regular life again. You know, dishes and housework and commuting to work. I still have stitches and a drain tube. Both will come out by the end of the week. That will help with feeling like we're getting somewhere.

Today is three weeks post mastectomy. I still find it shocking that my breast is gone. I look in the mirror at the flatness, trying to make friends with it.  Sometimes I look down and remember what my missing breast looked like and I wonder why I didn't hold onto it all the way into the operating room. When Dearest One comes to hug me from behind and encircles my chest with his hands I feel both loved and sad.

Last night, in the middle of the night my blood pressure tanked and as a result I crashed into the wall as I made my way to the bathroom. No harm done but it sure made me feel vulnerable. I have done very little, next to no 'Googling' about my health issues. Tanking blood pressure in a cancer patient is the second time I've done it. It reminded me why I don't.

I've always been curious to the nth degree so it's surprised me that I have had little interest in research about this journey. The surgeon recommended last week, when he handed over my pathology reports, that I not Google the heck out of them. Not because he didn't want me to be informed but he didn't want me to be overwhelmed. And I don't want to be either.

What happened the first time I looked stuff up was that I came upon a site of people writing blog like posts where they defined themselves by their cancer and prognosis and it fed into the fear that comes so easily to me that I recognized it would not be a good thing for me to read.

So there have been no late night searches. No quests for more information. I see the oncologist in just over a week. We will talk about what comes next that day. It's about all I can take at the moment.

Today was about little things. The gentle fat snowflakes that fell like glitter this morning. The sun coming in the window this afternoon that made me stretch out like a cat to enjoy its rays. A peppermint foot cream to massage into my feet. Writing with an orange gel pen in my journal. Which sounds like regular life to me.

At The Top Of My List

"How are you?" Dearest One asks the waitress as we place our order for tea and toast. [lovely song about tea and toast .]

"Old and bitter," was her reply.  I looked at her and said, "Life's too short to feel that way." I'd just said goodbye to my sisters who were boarding a plane to go back home. There had been tears and hugs and much love. The waitress looked at me and at that moment the tape that holds my drain tube in place was itching and I reached to scratch it. In doing so my sweater lifted and the drain tube was visible for a second. She glanced at it as I said, "truly, it's too short." Our eyes locked for a moment then she nodded in agreement and left to put our order in.

I can't read between the lines at the best of times, nuances stump me often. It was a few minutes before Dearest One told me that the waitress had been joking when she'd said she was old and bitter. Oh.

In the pitch black darkness of the early morning we watched out the airport restaurant windows, waiting for my sisters' plane to leave. While doing so we had a very frank talk about what could come next in my cancer journey. Dearest One told me he was grateful that we didn't need to be separate and alone with our thoughts, some of them as dark as the night sky, but that we could speak them out loud to one another. Thoughts lose some of their power that way.

The waitress brought our order and said something that made us laugh; something that showed us her feisty, kind hearted side. I cut myself some slack for taking her so seriously.

Later that afternoon we sat down with the surgeon to talk about drain tube plans and pathology results.

The news unbelievably good.

No lymph node involvement, no blood stream involvement in the mastectomy tissue. Very likely that the cancer was contained in the lumpectomy.

It feels like we won the lottery.

Until the hormone receptor tests are back and I see the oncologist, I won't know for sure what comes next, but it's looking far more probable that chemotherapy and radiation will not be in my future. Words are not adequate to describe how I feel.

I lay in bed this morning before sunrise pondering not only my day but my life. Hoping that if God grants me a long one that I won't be a walking advertisement for "old and bitter" as I age. That instead I will be feisty, joyful and real. Real is at the top of my list.

The Road Of Transformation

You know the nurse I mentioned earlier? She had been a classmate of Dearest One's twenty years ago. What I remember about her is her hard as a rock countenance. The kind that says she'd seen a lot of life and it hadn't been kind to her.

When she was helping to transfer me to my bed back in my hospital room, a ladder of arms in my line of vision, I picked out hers and reached up with my good arm to grasp it. When I had her attention I thanked her for her kindness. I wanted her to know what a difference she had made in my journey.  I couldn't help but think as she left my room of her being a recovery room nurse and how she must have faced her own recovery from a hard life to have such a changed countenance that I hadn't recognized her until she and Dearest One talked. And even then I had to peer to see a faint recognition around her eyes. It made me want to sit and visit with her and ask her what had happened in the intervening twenty years.

Looking at my scar, and the place where my breast used to be, is not for the faint of heart I wrote to some friends the other day. People want me to see it through eyes that are not my own. With the beauty, the hope, and all the potential it could hold but doesn't at this point. It starts as a hollow and then rises up gently like a bunny hill at a ski slope until it curves downward again so abruptly that you'd get some air, if you truly were on skis, across a winding train track until you landed on the other side and came to a stop on my belly. It's especially brutal where the tumour was, scraped down to the bone.

[On a funny note I gasped in horror at my belly in the hospital asking Dearest One when did my belly get so big? How could it? I'd had no appetite since surgery. How unfair. I haven't thought of my journey as unfair at all except when I thought I lost a breast and it's dimensions had slid southward. It took me days to realize that all that had changed was I now had an unobstructed view of my belly. I was just seeing it from a different viewpoint now. We laughed and laughed about that one.]

There is profound sadness when I look in the mirror at my train track like wound. I named it the Road of Transformation the other day. Needing to attach some kind of significance to it, something to be hopeful about. I know it has the power to transform me if I let it. But first I must look long and hard at the reality of it. Not unlike I imagine the recovery room nurse had to do in order to change from rock hard countenance to Christ like kindness.

A few days after I posted about Jesus being a boob man, I got up the courage to sit in stillness and face him, to see what he did after cupping my breast in his hand. And startlingly, or not, he leaned down and kissed my breast and then stood back up and blessed it. And in every conversation since, when a visual has come to mind, he is making the sign of the cross in front of me. Blessing me on my journey. On the road of transformation.

The Rivulet of Tears

I wake up as my head is thrashing from side to side like wind shield wipers going full speed. Vaguely I hear a nurse call my name and the taste of anaesthetic is so thick in my throat that it's hard to breathe. It takes all the concentration I can muster to slow my thrashing from warp speed to intermittent. It's like this every time I wake up from surgery.

Eventually my head stills. And as it does the reality that my breast is gone hits me so hard that I arch my back as a sob rises from the very core of my being.  One single sob then I'm gasping for breath. Over and over again.

The nurse leans her head close to mine and says, "I can't do anything for your emotional pain but I can dry your tears." Then as gently as a lover she takes a tissue and dabs the rivulet of tears as they fall towards my ears.

Home

Am home and coping as well as can be expected. Thank you for praying. Will post more as able.

Surgery Day

Surgery is at 10 AM (mountain daylight time). Prayers appreciated!

Jesus Is A Boob Man

I know because he cupped my breast in his hand.

I was in the shower cupping it myself while trying to wrap my head around the reality that soon my breast was going to be replaced with a train track like wound running diagonally across the right side of my chest. I tried to flatten my breast and imagine what flatness would look like. I traced my fingers around the orange sized crater left by the lumpectomy. All the while I was talking to God about it, because, well, that's just what I do. And into my head came a picture of Jesus standing in front of me cradling my breast in his hand and staring into my eyes. If only I could lift my head and stare back. But I couldn't. The thought of Jesus affirming not only the whole of who I am but this part of me, too, left me feeling vulnerable to the core.

So I stood there and let my tears and the shower water mingle reminded that all my grief and gut wrenching pain is being held in hands much bigger than my own.

Reaching Through The Darkness

He reaches for my hand through the darkness, turns on his side and whispers, "Are you worried?"  "Yes."
We talk about our fears, saying them out loud to one another. Many have told us to not go there but we know that going there, especially going there together is not something to fear but to embrace.

Keeping The Tears At Bay

Warning - dark humour ahead.

Tonight I wore a brand new dress to a community function. I felt pretty. I felt fantastic. I've lost a lot of weight without trying - a bizarre experience in itself -  the doctors haven't  been able to confirm if it's a result of having cancer or not. I'll be having a chat with a specialist about that on Monday.

A friend walked in the door of the reception area where we were standing tonight, took one look at me and said, "You look fabulous." She hadn't seen me in months and the last time she saw me I was wearing clothes that didn't fit very well - they were pretty baggy which unintentionally hid my weight loss. I'd phoned her last week to tell her of my cancer diagnosis and because of that and because of our 30 year history of friendship, when we hugged I whispered in her ear, "That's what having cancer will do for you."

And then we laughed and laughed until our sides were sore.

Sometimes laughter is the only thing that keeps the tears at bay.

Comforted Down The Road Of What Ifs

Today, while pouring out my heart to God, I heard a question inside me that asked, "Can you be present to what is? That's all you need to do."  After I had a good cry I said, "Yes, I can do that." It helped bring me back from running way down the road of what ifs.

A little while later Yoga Pug started barking at something invisible in the room. I'm used to him barking at unknown things out the window but this time it was definitely something in the room. Normally I tell him to be quiet and to hush up. Out of my mouth popped the words, "It's okay. They're not an enemy."  Half an hour later my phone rings and it's a dear friend. She tells me that she had prayed earlier that Archangels Michael and Raphael would come visit me. We compared notes and she prayed and Yoga Pug barked at the same time.

I like to think that a visit was indeed what happened. Either way I was comforted.