Laura and I were like foolish children scaring themselves with ghost stories last night, who got in over their heads and ended up trying to find their way out of the forest by flashlight, each step getting scarier. We looked up pictures of breast removal and reconstruction online. No nipples, whether you "reconstruct" or not. No feeling. A friend says it's just like her foot's asleep, except it's her whole chest.
Both Laura and I cried ourselves to sleep, and woke up to cry again.
I did learn about tattooing on nipples, so we looked that up, too. Stay tuned. I suppose I could get smiley faces put on. Am open to suggestions.
Whether or not it is accurate, I will share here that I have a little theory about my vulnerability to this cancer. I think it may have to do with sleep. Go ahead, you can think (I am thinking it) that I am just looking for Reason when there may be none. But still! My ONLY physical complaint over the past few years has been my crummy menopausal sleep. The kids will attest to having had childhoods with a mom who at night becomes Sleep Czar -- I am a fierce advocate for good sleep as a means of staying happy and healthy.
Turns out that people who have higher levels of melatonin get cancer at measurably lower rates. Blind people, in the dark all the time, and who have higher melatonin levels, get cancer at greatly reduced rates (Yani -- add this to the there-are-no-blind-schizophrenics data). I have not slept well for about 2 years, and those in my immediate vicinity have heard about this with (here I apologize) great frequency. Anyway, my naturopath wants me to take 20 mg. of melatonin before bed. That's about 20 times what I have been taking. Full disclosure (as if I've not offered full enough!): it didn't help last night. But I don't think last night was a fair trial.
I am downing 3 cups of barium solution as I write this, then we're off to the hospital for the CT-scan and later this morning the bone scan.
Right now we are both okay. Urp.
Cancer runs among women on both sides of my family. At one time 7 of 8 women died of cancer. The one close female relative who did not contract cancer avoided the sun as though it were cholera which she also never would have gotten because she avoided water. Of course that had its own problems.
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