A simple request

I know that many of you have been praying for me, or thinking healing thoughts, or sending love and light my way, and I appreciate this very much.

My simple, if selfish, request today is to please, please keep doing it.

As October 15 draws nearer, I am not feeling any better about this mastectomy. I'm grasping, trying to remember how I finally found peace about this last time, but I'm coming up empty. Maybe I had more adrenaline last time, and now after one surgery, one new house, and two weddings, I'm all out. Or maybe the urgency last time of the need to get the cancer out kept me going, and without that this surgery lacks the joy of the last, but lacks none of the pain. Whatever it is, I am discovering that it doesn't take much for me to suddenly find a lump in my throat (though thankfully, not a lump in my breast!). My demeanor can change in an instant. How many times have I been my happy, chatty self, and then suddenly I am crying, and no one saw it coming.

As we draw nearer to the date (two weeks from today), I feel more desperate to find peace about this, and in my desperation to find that peace, that joy, it falls further from my grasp. I need to relax, but it is usually when I relax that the tears come. Dag-nabbit.

If I'm so troubled and anxious about this, why do it? I have thought about this many times. The biggest reason should be for my own health, to take away the ever-present risk of developing breast cancer in the right side, too. But go figure, after three bouts with cancer, I still have in my head that I'm invincible. I figure if I get it again, I'll deal with it again, and we'll move on, just as the pattern has shown. I know how stupid this is, I know how many times we have rolled the dice and lost, I know what a beast cancer can be, and yet I still think this will be the case. I won't die of cancer.

So the reason, really, that I'm doing this, and the only thing that brings me any joy about it, is that once that breast is gone, Michael and I can think about getting pregnant, and fulfilling the dream of having children. What joy would that be! And yet, this troubles my heart, too. I have put so many eggs in that basket (pardon the pun), so much hope in that possibility. I am giving up so much for that hope to become a reality. If I didn't so desperately want to try to have biological children, I might not do this second mastectomy, at least not right away. But I do want it, and so I'm going all in to make it happen.

And then, when I really think about trying to have children, I realize how terrifying that prospect is. From the possibility that we won't be able to conceive, to the possibility of a miscarriage, to the possibility that our child will have some debilitating condition, to the possibility that he or she will have some sort of mental illness, or take after mom and get cancer all the time... Truly terrifying. I'm giving up so much for this; what if it goes terribly wrong? I'm sure lots of people go through this when they think about getting pregnant, or when they are pregnant. That's part of parenting (I'm told). But selfishly speaking, what if I go through all of this, give up all this, and then am faced with even more problems?

I can't bear the thought right now. I know that if that is the case, we will manage it together. We will figure out something else. We will have each other and we will have a loving God to keep us from falling.

But... well, I return to where we started. Please just keep praying, specifically that I might be able to find some peace in this mess. Thanks.