The Big Picture "Cure"

Here is the overall plan:

I'm doing the general Breast Cancer Trifecta: Aggressive Chemo, Double Masectomy and Radiation.

Then, specific to my cancer, I am having a year of Herceptin plus some other meds for being estrogen and progesterone sensitive.

I am choosing to do all this because I want the coffin door closed and nailed shut. I really do not want to have to do any of this again....

What that means is on January 5th I go in for my double masectomy (the breast are coming off as well as a few lymph nodes in my left arm) followed immediately by the reconstructive surgery. Doing reconstructive surgery right after the masectomy has better aesthetics results AND I only have to going to the hospital once for major surgery. (oh, and for all of you people out there who have read the New York Times article, I am being gifted the new, longer DIEP surgery that most doctors do not offer because it is too time consuming. Once again, I am getting the Red Carpet Cancer Treatment! I'm getting the best and newest surgery for free!)

2 weeks after the surgery I start a years worth of another drug: Herceptin. Because I am positive for a protein called Her2, the good news is that taking a drug called Herceptine for a year, infused through my port every 3 weeks keeps the cancer from growing. The bad news is that I have to go into the infusion center every 3 weeks for Herceptin. It is painless, there are no extream side effects like the chemo, but I am still a sensative being, and it is still drugs in my body - and it means my travel time is being limited to the time in between treatments :(. No big long roadtrips for me this year...

I start radiation at the end of January and have 10 minutes of it 5 days a week for 6 weeks. The fear is that my new left breast will get all leathery and burnt up from the radiation. Because I am not having implants (thanks to the new kind of reconstructive surgery), there is a minimal risk that will happen. I've also been given a bunch of creams from other women who have gone before me, and I hope to god they work! Coz having reconstructive surgery again would suck big time!

Then I have about 5ish years - maybe more - of some other drugs because I am estrogen and progesterone sensitive. Again, these drugs help the cancer not grow. And the length of the the drugs will depend on whether I get my monthly cycles back or stay menopausal.

Basically, I spent the first 40 years of my life not needing medical care, and now it seems as though I will spend the next 40ish years going to the doctor and taking drugs.

I'm letting myself be present with the idea that my new way of being includes lots of doctor care. I am slowly integrate this new information.

I am not resistant to the process of drugs, doctors or hospitals. In fact I'm grateful they are around both personally and professionally. I'm just tired and find the whole thing a terrible inconvenience to my life! I want to go back to perceived freedom I had when my body didn't have the cancer diagnosis!

And I'm sad.

And I don't understand how this is going to work long term.

I don't like the fact that I get colds now.

And I will never go back to where I was physically before the diagnosis, in the same way that I am not the same person I was before the diagnosis.

And still, I feel the resistance to the fact that this IS my life. This IS who I am now.

Not better. Not worse. Just different.

I'm not angry, just miffed.

And then - thanks to the chemo - I forget it all.

And then I remember my favorite Rilke Poem:

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves ... Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

rainer maria rilke

Sigh

I check in with my intuition, I collect my trust, I ground down into my choices, I touch my breasts, and I know I love myself even in this confusing place of not knowing.

And then I saddle up and move forward into my day as a good looking bald chick whose jonzing for a really good cup of coffee, right now.