Life in a pressure cooker - a new recipe

It's been a rough 24 hours living in the pressure cooker that is our lives right now. On Sunday, after two worship services and a choir concert, I came home absolutely exhausted and eager to talk to Michael about some things that were on my heart and mind. He wasn't able to come over and I was unable to move... and I completely lost it. Very unlike me. I found myself thrust back in the anger stage of grief. Suddenly, after all this wonderful processing I had done, and everyone's kind comments about how well I'm handling this and my great attitude... I could not bear the thought of it anymore, and I sat on my couch and wept (and Klaus licked up my deliciously salty tears). In the midst of my uncharacteristic break-down, Michael asked, "What do you need me to do?" and I thought about it, and finally replied: "Make me not have breast cancer anymore."

If only he could. After another cry-fest as I was trying to fall asleep, I finally did sleep, and woke up with puffy eyes, but ready to face the new day. Off I went to work, where my mortgage originator called me. We've been trying to finish getting pre-qualified for a mortgage, and I was eager to get some questions answered. She needed a few more documents from me. Okay, no problem. I asked what we would qualify for... and she quoted something much less than we had expected based on online calculators. Oh dear. (After the initial shock of this, I realized that with the money we can contribute from our savings, it's not really all that much less after all... but still less.) Then I mentioned that we were thinking about getting legally hitched before the surgery, but we wouldn't be living together yet. Was that okay? "If you get married before the house is purchased, you won't qualify for first home club anymore." Oh dear again. With our combined salaries, we make too much to qualify for the $7500 grant. We have to be all done buying a house by our wedding on Aug. 3 if we want that grant money. Read: the pre-wedding is off.

And I lost it again, right there on the phone with the mortgage originator. Poor girl, probably thought I was crying over the stress of buying a house. I wanted to explain to her that I'm not usually like this, that I usually keep my chin up and can handle things like this, that it wasn't so much the house as it was that every carefully laid plan we made seems to be backfiring, and I was getting really tired of my hopes and dreams being compromised. She tried to console me, saying that it's usually about a 60-90 day process from offer to ownership, so we should be fine, since we'll be making an offer on a house in the next week or two. The next week or two??? We only just found out that we have been looking at the wrong houses! We have a few showings set up for this week, but what if we don't like them? And did I mention in addition to finding a house, we both also work full time, are planning a wedding, and are preparing for what is an extremely emotional and life-changing surgery?!? (Like I said: pressure cooker.)

I texted Michael what was going on, and he immediately leapt into action. (As he said later, "Those were problems I could fix!") He sent me several lovely houses that are in our new price range. He said and did all the right things. I thought he was going to break down like I had, but instead he stepped up and my heart just beamed with gratitude. What a man.

Last night, we finally got a chance to talk in person. He came in saying, "I have an idea." There's just so much big stuff in our lives right now - we were handling the house-hunting and wedding just fine, but a major and emotional surgery is a lot to throw in that bucket! So we looked at what could lessen the pressure. The house piece could, and we could rent like most newlyweds... but then we lose the grant if we get married, and since we suddenly also qualify for much less than we thought we would, that $7500 is looking pretty great right about now. Shame to throw away free money. So then, pushing the wedding back could also allow us to push the house purchase back... but for one thing, we don't want to. The wedding isn't causing us all that much stress (hooray for our mutual desire to keep things as simple as possible!), and having to cancel and move everything and reschedule AGAIN would be much more stress at this point. Pushing the surgery back until later isn't an option... 

...until we realized it actually is. One of the options we had was for Dr. Skinner to do another lumpectomy, and get the cancer out. Then I can do the mastectomy in the fall - after we are wedded homeowners, and hopefully fairly unpacked and settled into our new home. There are several pros to this:

* It takes off a load of pressure and allows us to fully appreciate and enjoy these other two very exciting events.
* Because the mastectomy would happen outside of the pressure cooker, I would be in a better position to go into it more calmly, and focus on healing instead of trying to do wedding planning and house-hunting/purchasing while I'm also trying to heal and process everything that just happened to my body.
* Similarly, I would have more time to prepare myself for it emotionally and medically. Because I feel this pressure to schedule it soon to get the cancer out, I'm only getting two opinions from plastic surgeons (I know some women who got nine!). I know there is another very renowned plastic surgeon in town who does another kind of procedure I may be a candidate for. (Dr. Langstein doesn't do it.) One of my more emotional reactions to mastectomy/reconstruction is knowing I will have something foreign in my body for the rest of my life, as well as the various risks and upkeep that go with them. He does a reconstruction using tissue from the thigh - and I've always felt that my thighs are one of my best endowed body parts! I'm not sure that I would do this, but it feels a bit irresponsible not to look into it, and I think if I didn't I would always wonder why I didn't at least ask about that. This is a pretty huge decision not to check out every option. So putting off the surgery until fall would allow me time to do this.
* Michael and I would be married legitimately, under God and the law, in the church, and living together when the surgery happens. This helps with family medical leave for Michael, but also in case something happens (which it won't), he will actually mean something to the law, and have rights he wouldn't have as a mere fiance.
* Michael's vacation time starts over in July, so he'd have plenty of days available.

There are also some cons, of course:

* Medically, this isn't the preferred route. It seemed silly to put my body through an additional surgery for the sake of having real boobs for the wedding (when fake boobs would fill the dress just fine), but it seems much more reasonable given all the other things going on. Still, now we are looking at one major in-patient surgery and two out-patient surgeries in a year (lumpectomy and swapping out the expanders for implants), plus the two I had last fall! Part of me wants to just get it done and be done already (even as there is another part of me that loves the idea of putting this on the back burner for now).
* It's not as easy a time of year to manage. September is Michael's busiest month at work, it is much less feasible for my mom to come out for an extended time since school will just have started, and who knows what dad's class schedule might be. Michael is going back to school in the fall (though it is all online classes, so he would still be home), and my church program year is starting up again. If we push it out too late, it means I'm coming back to work right as Advent starts, which is not a great time to ease my way back in! Though of course I could plan ahead to have someone else do Advent programming, or we can combine with another church or something like that. There are ways to make that work.

So... We're letting this idea sit today and will ask Dr. Skinner what she thinks at our appointment tomorrow morning, and of course Dr. Langstein in the afternoon as well. Never a dull moment, huh?