As many of you know, I have been incredibly busy since Michael and I returned from our honeymoon. Every week has been a wedding or a funeral or both, Vacation Bible School, starting up Sunday School, another wedding for us and the house guests that go with it, students returning to Michael's school district and the long hours that go with that (he's an administrator), still trying to settle into our home and our lives as a married couple. My mastectomy has of course been on the radar as well, and I have taken steps toward getting ready for that, but I've hardly had a chance to really think about it. This changed yesterday. I went to our monthly conference ministerium, a gathering of Lutheran clergy from the area, and we were talking about some big events coming up, most significantly the bishop election in June and the lead up to that. As we looked at dates on the calendar, I realized I will be on medical leave for some of the big dates in this process that happens every 6 years. I want to be a part of it, but alas.
As conversation continued among my colleagues, I got more and more discouraged. I don't even want this stupid surgery. When the first one happened, everyone stepped up and wanted to help, and it seemed like a huge deal. This time, people have offered to help, but there is not the same energy around it, for me or for anyone else. It's like there's a big news story one night, and then a similar but less dramatic one the next night and everyone says, "Too bad..." but they aren't as concerned about it as the first story. I have been telling myself and everyone else that this will be easier, and require less time off, and be less of an emotional strain, partly to convince myself that all this will be true, and partly because I feel like having another mastectomy is yet another terrible inconvenience to people, and I want to inconvenience people as little as possible. Where I didn't regret earlier that I had tried to save my second breast, believing we had made the best decision with the information we had, now I feel like that was a dumb oversight (even as I know it wasn't), and now I am suffering the consequences of a bad decision. Where the decision to now remove the second breast was clearly the right one back in May, now I am doubtful that it is (even though I still know it is right).
As I processed some of these emotions yesterday, I realized that what it comes down to is that I like my boobs and don't want them to go away. I read a thread on a forum about women who guiltily admit that they miss their boobs following mastectomy (there is NO guilt in this, by the way!), and one person said, "I miss squishy hugs." Yes! I hate hugging people on the left side, with my saline-filled brick-boob and I favor my right when I hug - I won't have that option anymore. Klaus crawls on top of me and I'm fine on the right, but hate it on the left - I won't have that option anymore. Turns out, I thought the emotional baggage around this surgery was going to be less, but it is far, far more. The last one was joyful - I was getting rid of cancer, but holding onto some of my other dreams. This one doesn't come with as much joy, except that after it we can finally move on to non-cancer things. I didn't realize the emotional effect this would have on me. It's not just about bidding a final farewell to the possibility of ever breast-feeding. I grieved that, and I'm over it. It is Everything Else. I have noticed more and more how I favor my right side, even how I look admiringly at my natural, intact breast, never touched by cancer, thinking how it never betrayed me, and now I'm hacking it off, too. Nothing left. Nothing to fall back on. All will be lost.
Last night, Michael and I tried to go to bed early, and to both of our surprise, this all came bubbling up, and suddenly I was crying. He stayed awake to comfort me as long as he could, but I continued to cry another hour or so after he fell asleep. And I was left alone in the silent darkness of our bedroom. It was sort of nice, I admit, because the setting seemed to echo my heart. I considered calling someone on the west coast who would still be awake, but I didn't want to talk. I wrote a rant on a breast cancer facebook group, to which some people responded, so that helped. Finally, around 1am, I went to sleep.
There is something nice about being so busy as we have been - I haven't had time to feel all these feelings. But I find one moment to feel them, and now I'm totally derailed from the other tasks I need to tend to. I look forward to the day when I once again find joy in everything I'm doing, instead of "just getting it done." I look forward to not being drained and dragged down by something so dreadful always looming over me. I guess instead of rejoicing over cancer being removed this time, I can rejoice over the removal of something like this dragging me down. We got rid of the physical disease; now let's get rid of some of the emotional disease, too.
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