It’s about damn time to write again!

Hello there all!

It’s been a while and an eventful month. I had my reconstructive surgery on February 20th. I didn’t want to write about the new girls until I felt a little better aquanted with them myself. Guess what, I love them! First of all, they aren’t in my armpits anymore like the spacers were and they are SOFT!! Those shitty spacers were filled to the max which made them hard as rocks under my skin. I also had a hefty amount of scar tissue on the fronts of my breasts which kept the spacers from moving forward. There was no scar tissue in my armpits so that is where they mostly chose to hide. Because of the scar tissue the spacers gave my breasts a squarish appearance which was no good either. 

These new girls after the reconstruction are perky. I don’t really need to wear a bra if I don’t want to, and I almost never want to! They are soft and round. The Doc even removed my old scars which had become stretched during the expansion process and replaced them with much finer scars. I may be seeing things but where my old scars looked a little like comedy and tragedy, one smiling and one frowning, these new scars both seem to have an upturn at the corners. I think it will take a long time before they truly feel like they are part of me but I am SO much happier and more comfortable in my skin since this surgery.

Since that surgery was the last big event that I will have to endure in the eradication of this cancer I have been seeking a way to tie this whole experience up with a pretty pink bow and punt it from the back of the swiftly moving vehicle that is my life. 

I want to write about what cancer means to me. This is hard because I was so lucky to have never felt sick from the cancer itself and caught it early enough that the surgical steps we took allowed me to not go through chemotherapy. These are the two things that come to mind first when I think of cancer. The stereotypes. While those things were not part of my experience (I never have really fit the mold eh?) I did experience pretty radical treatment. It took amputation of body parts for me to beat this monster. It takes the daily struggle with the Tamoxifen to keep it away. 

This insidious demon has taken so much from me that I now must fight to regain. I was proud of my physical strength. That I could climb trees, dance, dig holes, swim… Having cancer took that from me. I have been back to work now for 2 weeks and by the end of each day I want to run to bed from exhaustion. With each passing day I feel a little better, a little stronger, a little less sore and tired. Patience…

Worse than the physical strain I am angry that having cancer has made me selfish. It had to be that way though for a while. My whole world revolved around getting myself well. It had to. While that was happening though I feel like I wasn’t able to be the friend, the partner, the sister and daughter I wanted to be. For that I am truly sorry. Not sorry that I had to turn my focus inward because as I said, I had to. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to take part in life events, to have conversations that didn’t include cancer, to listen with more of an open heart. This is the part I want to fix right away. I am ready to focus on the joys and pains of others and not myself. It’s high time I look out, away from me, away from cancer, away to strength and new bright days ahead. 

I don’t not have words enough to express my gratitude to everyone who has surrounded me with love throughout this shitty ordeal.I am a lucky girl indeed.