Pop goes the Expander
These past few weeks of recovery have been extra challenging. I've started writing this entry at least a dozen times, and nothing quite feels right. Sharing this journey has always felt important because I hope it helps someone else. I hope it encourages women to get checked, to take control of their health and to prioritize their own well being.
That said, the journey isn't all inspiration.
Lately, I've been feeling VERY uninspired, and quite honestly, I think I'm medically burnt out. I don't want to go to any more appointments and I absolutely DO NOT want to have to call and schedule them. It's to the point that Matt has to book the kids appointments because I just don't have it in me to call another office. Which then leads to an epic level of mom guilt, which I know is bullshit because he is a completely capable and participating partner.
My appointments are all now focused on recovery and reconstruction. Don't get me wrong, I am SO grateful I am no longer dying. The cancer that was going to try and kill me is all gone and that is absolutely, without a doubt, a wonderful thing. But now that my life is no longer hanging in the balance, can I at least have some normalcy back? Can I maybe get 2 boobs while I'm wishing for unlikely things?
I think we experience loss and recovery on such a strange scale of justification. At the beginning, all I wanted was to watch my kids grow up. Now that I got that, I find I'm constantly trying to bargain for more of my life back. Whether that's fair or not doesn't really matter. It's the current thing I'm struggling with.
Surgery was a wild success. But one of my expanders has sprung a leak and now I'm walking through life with one boob, lopsided as fuck and I honestly don't even feel like I'm in my own body. This body still has limited shoulder mobility, 6in chest scars and one side is horribly disfigured where the deflated expander will need to be cut out and replaced. This body has lost so much strength and the nerve damage that covers my full chest and upper arms is such a strange thing that makes it feel even more foreign.
I know I will need to embrace this new body, be grateful for what it has survived, and be proud of what it's done so far. I am still allowed to admit that it's been really fucking hard getting here (and I'm still not THERE). Maybe there is no "THERE" and I will always struggle with this body I find myself in. I hope that's not the case but I have also learned that what we expect is not necessarily how things will pan out, and accepting that is something I'm working on.
It's not a perfect update, it's not super inspiring but it is my current reality. My goal was to share the sides of this journey and the reality is that the side I'm on now is hard.
I don't want to spend my work days in the hospital waiting rooms with my laptop. I don't want to drive 45 minutes to Hamilton, to wait an hour for a 10 minute bloodwork appointment and then wait another 5 hours for another 10 minute oncologist appointment. It's a lot of what feels like wasted time, when some basic administrative scheduling could save me a full day.
And yet again, I don't want to sound ungrateful. I'm constantly being told how lucky, blessed, thrilled I must be. And I get it. I understand that well meaning people say those things because they think now that surgery is over, now that there's no disease, I must just be over the moon, feelings be damned. The reality is significantly more complex than that.
Comparing the situation I'm in now to where I was pre-cancer is the big picture that people don't want to look at. Where I am now is infinitely better than where I was this fall with chemo, or where I was in January with surgery, but it's still not great. It's so far off from the healthy and vibrant life I lived before breast cancer, and now that I'm starting to feel healthier and striving to recover, I'm grieving the loss.
I don't know what makes this better other than time. I assume as I get closer to finishing reconstruction, I'll get into more of a rhythm with my appointments and feel less of a time suck. I'm not naive enough to think I'll be back to "normal" then though, because I still have 45 more weeks of treatment (1 every 3 weeks). Normal is going to evolve and adapt as it goes, but I cannot wait to start feeling it.
Here's hoping the next update is a bit more positive and inspiring, but until then, I'll just be here (or in a waiting room) waiting on an extra surgery while trying to hold onto some semblance of my old self.
