Wild Abandon

Three car "incidents" in 15 days.  You say accident, I say incident.  Semantics!

BEFORE

(No "after" picture because I don't know where my camera is.)

I'm just an idiot?  I'm just distracted? I'm just a menace?  I just don't know.

Next topic.

J and I went to Portland to take Uncle C and Aunt J out for brunch to celebrate UC's birthday, which I spaced out last week.  (I am sensing a theme.)  We had a lovely meal at Wild Abandon in Southeast, and then J and I saw a puppet-show version of "Stellaluna."  She liked it well enough; I was bored, distracted, hot flashing and wishing I hadn't spent the money.  And I have concluded that puppeteers are their own special breed.

And the name for that breed is "creepily and aggressively enthusiastic."  I don't deny their obvious talent.  I just think they are a little...much.

There's really no logical segue to the other thing that's been weighing on my mind lately:

Cancer.  

Or more specifically, the aftermath of cancer.

In the last 18 months, I:

• Found a lump (September 2010)
• Had a negative mammogram and ultrasound (9/29/10)
• Had a lumpectomy (10/19/10)
• Was diagnosed with ER+ breast cancer (10/27/10)
• Had a positive MRI with an enlarged lymph node (2 actually)
• Had a core needle biopsy of an enlarged lymph node (11/12/10)--negative, so I got to avoid the full axial dissection
• Had a sentinel node biopsy (negative!) and a port placed (11/16/10)
• Had chemotherapy (11/23/10, 12/14/10, 1/3/11 and 1/24/11)
• Had a bilateral mastectomy (2/18/11)
• Started aromatase inhibitors (3/1/11)
• Had my ovaries, tubes and uterus removed (4/28/11)
• Had my implant exchange (8/18/11)
• Had nipple reconstruction, with areolae made from abdominal skin grafts, and fat grafting (12/8/11)  

The only thing I have left is the nipple tattoos.  And the rest of my life.

My health is good, as far as I know, and I only hope that I am not jinxing it by writing that here.  But cancer never really goes away, at least psychologically speaking.  If you are very lucky and your cancer doesn't come back, you are in remission.  That means it can still come back any time, though the risk does decrease over time.  And if it does come back, in my case (since I have no more breast tissue) it's almost certainly going to be metastatic, and that's incurable.  Some nights it keeps me up; some days, thinking about it causes car incidents.  

I used to be afraid of death, and I used to want to live forever.  Now I am accepting of death, though I will fight hard if I have to.  All I want now is enough time to raise J into the woman she will be.  And to be there for her when she faces her own risks and fears.  And, hell, while I'm at it, to dance at her wedding and see my grandchildren.  Each day farther from the paralyzing terror of diagnosis, I want to live just a little longer.  Tempting fate? Ordinary hubris?  Or just a healthy recovery?

The thought of recurrence is scary.  I think of it every time I stand up and my knees and ankles cry in protest from the AI.  I think of it every time I get on the scale, for being heavy increases your risk.  I think of it every time I pour a glass of wine, for drinking increases your risk.  The only thing that doesn't increase risk, as far as I can deduce, is smoking, the one vice I have never had.

When I lie in bed at night, I think of all I have lost, and it goes well beyond hair and body parts. I have lost my innocence, my sense of "it can't happen to me." I have lost my place in the universe.  I have gained a new one, of course, but it's a different place on a distant shore.  Cancer has been bad for my marriage, bad for my family, bad for just about everything.  But I am alive, and to borrow a line from John Irving, cancer can't "get the me in me."