Game On! Phase 2!

Well, surgery is officially scheduled. Seems it will be October 22 - my surgeon won't do this any sooner than 4 weeks after my last chemotherapy treatment - he says he wants me healthy and ready - makes sense I guess. I was seriously wanting this sooner, but if this is what it must be - than it will be. It was a pretty uneventful meeting to be honest - not that I expected the red carpet or anything (that would have been lovely actually) but I guess I expected something. It was literally like a 10 minute meeting. He came in, he hugs me, he checks out my rack, he asks if I've decided on one or two, I said two but what did he think, he says it's a personal choice and for me to discuss it further with the reconstructive surgeon, asks me to book the surgery with his nurse, then hugs me again and out he goes. That's all she wrote folks. So when I went out to his nurse I said that I had already decided that I wanted a double - so I had to sign a release for each - one for the left, one for the right, stand up sit down FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT! Anyhoo, we're all scheduled for that day. I guess I will look at the next month as a time to really get my strength up and start feeling better after my last treatment on Wed. PJ and I were talking about this and I realized that my sense of 'feeling good' is really skewed right now - I think I've become accustomed to what I 'perceive' as feeling good right now - I can't wait to see how good I really start feeling once treatment is over.

It seems that stupid little emotion called 'fear' has been creeping up in my subconscious again. I met with my friend this evening an she put it so eloquently, she said "fear isn't handled once and then it's gone. Fear is like an ex-husband you had children with - as much as you'd like to put him out of your life completely, he just keeps showing up, and you just have to deal with him. He also knows you well, so he knows how to get to you." Isn't that the truth? I think I honestly did think that I had tackled this monster already, but it will keep showing up in different forms as my circumstances change. I just need to keep handling it the way I've been handling it. So hard, and unfortunately, it's going to be something I'm going to have to deal with for the rest of my life.

On my drive home this evening, I started really reflecting on the past 7 months since this thing started. And I got really pissed, and angry that my family and I had to even deal with this - I started to try to imagine what that time would have been spent doing if we weren't fighting cancer. Then, I started being very thankful for my life, that none of us knows if we're going to be here tomorrow, next month, or next year. How blessed I am for my life - and if I had to go through the past 7 months in order to keep my life, I'd go through it 7 more. What I have, and what I have learned, make it well worth the fight.

It's pretty late and I've got doctor appts for both of my girls tomorrow (just check ups), so I best be signing off. Real quick though - something that PJ and I were laughing about in the car today on the way back from Phx - was how cancer has turned me into an old lady. We listed all the things we could think of that are old lady things, that have happened to me since I was diagnosed:

I own & actively use a shawl.
I wear Walmart pajamas.
I have hemorrhoids.
I'm tired all the time.
I'm bald.
I drink prune juice.
I take stool softeners.
I have a weekly pill dispenser.
I can't feel my feet and fingers sometimes.
I sweat then 2 minutes later I'm freezing.
I'll ask a question, PJ will answer me and I'll forget what I asked him.
I crave coleslaw all the time.

Who knew this part to this journey, eh?

God Bless all -