Finally, an update

Pre-surgery selfie, taken under the influence

of some really nice narcotics. 

Yikes.

It's been, like, awhile since I've updated this thing. It was never my intention to be such a slacker, but writing about this stuff is hard. To start, I don't like writing about myself. Throw cancer into the mix and you get a good dose of resistance.

But, to pick up where I left off: I finished chemotherapy two months ago. That last round punched me in the gut, literally. Tums, I learned, are a wonderful and cheap remedy for gnarly stomach acid. They come in fruit flavors, too. I was popping those things like candy. It took nearly four weeks before I was feeling semi-normal and then the clouds parted, the sun came out. It was glorious—and I don't mean that lightly. There's nothing better than feeling better after you've felt crummy for so long. I'm still stoked by little things like being able to run up a flight of stairs or drink a glass of water without it tasting like stale toothpaste.

My original schedule had me getting permanent breast implants on June 6. But, those plans were foiled by an infection that almost put me back to square one and moved the surgery up by three weeks. Here's how it works with a mastectomy (if you opt for the type of reconstruction I opted for): after the breast tissue's removed, the surgeon places tissue expanders under the pectoral muscles. The expanders have a small, flat valve-type thing located on the surface and a few weeks after surgery, you start going in weekly to have (in my case) 60cc's of saline added via a large need inserted into the valve. It doesn't hurt because you basically have no feeling in your breast at that point. This slowly stretches the muscle and creates a pocket for an implant.

I did three "fills" and was done with it. The best reason I can give for stopping is that I have a blouse that I really like that I used to have to secure with a safety pin—it was a bit big small in the boob area. Now it fits. So, there you go. If someone asks my bra size, my response is 300 cc's. (If you're wondering about the math here, the tissue expanders had 120 cc's in them to start.)

Between the end of September, when I had my mastectomy, and right before chemo started at the end of January, the tissue expanders went from feeling like I was wearing a bra made from coconuts to feeling like I was wearing a bra made from cardboard. Most of the time, I forgot they were there. Then chemotherapy happened, which seems to target any place on your body that might cause pain. That tennis elbow that bothered me in high school? Chemo rolled out the red carpet for its return. I had my tonsils removed when I was 19, but it felt like they'd grown back. The tissue expanders were the worst. The muscles holding them in place punished me endlessly. Jerks. It felt like someone was tightening a metal band around my chest that sometimes had small pins in it. Needless to say, getting them out was nice. Now it merely feels like I'm wearing a snug bra 24/7. I can handle that.

Friends have been asking how I'm feeling. When I say "Good," I mean it. I haven't had a bad day in several weeks. Talk about perspective. As for the future, I just have to check in with my oncologist every three months and report any weird aches or pains. For the next 10 years, I'll be taking a drug called Tamoxifen that can cause some unpleasant side effects (so far, the worst has been that my hands feel a little arthritic in the morning) but it works to starve any stray cancer cells. I'll gladly trade stiff hands for a long(er) life. The type of breast cancer I had tends to take some time to recur—if it's going to come back at all—and if it does, it's terminal. That's scary. My mom fought breast cancer for 12 years before it spread to her brain. But her sister is a 20-plus-year survivor. Because this was genetic (BRCA2), I also need to consider getting my ovaries removed due to a heightened risk for ovarian cancer. But, right now, it's something I'm not really thinking about. Or trying not to think about.