Well, I feel like a schmuck for complaining, but the surgery (double mastectomy) has been scheduled for Monday, November 30th. We had really hoped for a week earlier. Why a schmuck? Because good news came today, too. My liver and kidneys are clear, a fabulous thing, and my Her-2 receptors (which Ting points out sound like sci-fi code for boobs) are negative, which may be a good thing, too. So I think I should not kvetch about the wait.
I note here that I am not sure why I have begun to sprinkle my sentences with yiddish complaints. Mebbe it's the angst of it all. Oy.
I have some homework to do: this blood doodah and that EKG whatsit. But mostly we need to wait, and that feels hard right now. If the next two weeks feel as long as the last week, they will feel like a very long time.
We still don't know about the post-surgery treatment, the stage of my cancer, etc. Tests did show a lack of hormone receptors (this is not a good thing), which might limit me to chemotherapy as a treatment option. We won't know for sure for awhile. What we do know is that I will be in treatment for years, and that the challenge is to come to see that as good news. Years themselves are good news.
As I've said to some of you, my getting cancer defies all predictive measures. I don't drink (okay, maybe a girl beer every month or so) or smoke, have no family history of cancer, I exercise, I nursed my babies, had 'em starting at 29, I eat well, even arranged to have a Chinese father (low risk!), plus a (well, white) grandmother that lived to 105. I don't even hold a grudge. So I have been eating a lot of humble pie with a big dollop of gratitude on top.
Still, I am sometimes scared. Of chemo. Side effects. Of errant cells. Of a body with no breasts or nipples. All that.
One of the weird things about all this (more kvetching??) is that I feel absolutely fine. To elect to have surgery on a fine machine like mine (say it, sistah) feels like a real assault. I have to trust my doctors; I understand that. But it's something like taking a perfectly running car to a mechanic and having him/her say, "Well, yeah, if you don't get rid of your arugulator now, it's going to create kind of a fermionic phagmofinas effect and then spill into your apex fulminator, and that would be bad." And so you just have to say "Er...okay. I guess go ahead and take out the arugulator!"
Does it sound like I am whistling past the graveyard? Hell, yeah, I am. Laura and I are often deeply anxious and sad about this, and my sometimes goofy emails belie the topography of our reactions to the cancer. But I like that my sense of humor has taken care of me as it has. I like that in the midst of grieving that my chest will have no nerve endings or sensation ever again, my mind says, "Hey, cool. I can put a cup of steaming hot cocoa on my chest without a coaster." I love that my mind thinks of that, and offers me relief from the sadness. Thank you, Greatness that created minds at all, and Power that created these spectacular, nearly perfect machines that we inhabit. Thank you, breasts that fed three beautiful babies who turned out to be amazing, beautiful people.
I continue to work doggedly on boosting my immune system in advance of surgery and post-surgery treatment, and have had more beets in the last week than you can shake a stick at. FYI, and please cover your ears if you don't want to hear this: beets make everything else going through your system bright pink -- that's the most delicate way I can say it. But the pink seems fitting for breast cancer, doesn't it?
For now, family and friends who are reading this, please just keep sending good energy and thoughts our way. Help me get through these next two weeks in good cheer! Please support Laura, upon whom I can comfortably lean if she has reliable places to lean herself.
Thank you for listening, thank you for loving me. A thousand times, thank you.
Love all around us,
p/paula/mom
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