The “little c” chronicles, Part 15: Carry on.

Hey, y’all, it’s my birthday! First one I’ve had without boobs in a few decades—and I gotta say, I don’t mind it. Who knew? I said in an earlier post that I wouldn’t go flat because it would throw off my boobs-to-belly balance, but I’m actually discovering that even with a little middle-aged “love” around my mid-section, I still kinda like being flat-chested.

Granted, these days, there’s still a little discomfort involved (not PAIN, exactly—at least not most of the time—but a weird numbness over the whole area between my clavicle and the bottom end of my breastbone, extending into my left armpit and down the back of my left arm to my elbow, all of which CAN get a little achy if I go all day without Tylenol) and, due to continued swelling in my left armpit (where lymph nodes were removed during surgery), I cannot successfully sleep on my left side for very long—but I gotta say, I don’t miss those suckers nearly as much as I thought I would.

Honestly, the physical “accoutrements” it’s been (emotionally) hardest to lose during this whole affair have been my eyebrows and eyelashes—which, along with my hair, are coming back, baby! (Interestingly, while I’m thrilled by the return of my eyebrows—watch out, kids, Mama’s facial expressions are back!—I’m so-so on the hair; I’m at that weird re-growth stage right now where it’s kind of unclear whether I’m intentionally trying out a Sinead O’Connor vibe, or growing my hair back after a health-related loss. It’s kind of like that stage of pregnancy where people don’t know whether you’ve just been hitting the Taco Bell drive-thru a little too often, or if you are, in fact, expecting. But I digress. Point is, the look I have going on now is slightly more confusing—and decidedly less interesting—than being bald.)

But before I go down another random rabbit hole, I do have a WEE bit of “next steps” information to share. I say a WEE bit because most of it is currently up in the air a bit, due to a bunch of moving parts. I’ll try to explain my understanding of this whole situation as well as I can, but it’s confusing as hell, so if you walk away dizzy, just know you’re not alone.

So a couple of weeks after my surgery, I had A LOT of appointments with A LOT of specialists to outline my treatment going forward—and here were my takeaways:

• The lymphedema specialist needed my surgical drains removed (alas, I did not make my goal of getting them out a week post-surgery, so I still had them in when I met with her) before she could work with me on exercises to improve my range of motion.
• The oncologist needed to know my radiation plan/schedule before deciding when and how to administer the oral chemo I’ll be taking for the foreseeable future (but he also said he’d be waiting until I’ve recovered a little more fully from surgery, so there was “no rush” to start the meds).
• The plastic surgeon ALSO needed to know my radiation plan/schedule before deciding when and how to fill up my boob expanders (because my right boob, if filled, could get in the way of the beams trying to zap my left side, where the tumor was, BUT the left boob should be filled as much as possible BEFORE radiation starts, because the radiation would make the skin more resistant to stretching with the fills).
• The radiologist—whom we thought was the linchpin in this whole operation, but apparently not—needed all kindsa stuff from the other specialists:
  • The plastic surgeon’s plan for filling up my boobs so that he can perform a radiation simulation in order to determine my radiation plan and schedule (which will take a couple of weeks after the simulation is done)
  • The lymphedema specialist to help me improve my range of motion so I’ll be able to get my left arm behind my head (which I can do, but it’s NOT comfortable) for the aforementioned simulation (and, of course, the radiation treatments themselves)
  • Precisely 32.7 ml of blood from an axolotl named Cleophus
  • And BTW, ALL of this needs to be done in time for me to start radiation treatments within three months post-surgery.

It’s all giving “Who’s on First?”

Nonetheless, so far I’ve made some—though minimal—progress towards achieving this goal:

1. I got my drains out (HALLELUJAH—or, as my littler dude says, “Hoo-RAY! Pa-TOWW! Wa-ka-ka-kahhh!” . . . no idea where that came from, but I love it and it’s kind of my new thing) exactly two weeks after my surgery.
2. I’m still working at home on the range of motion exercises they occupational therapist sent home from the hospital with me . . .
3. . . . in the hope of being able to break dance when I see the lymphedema specialist in a few days, so she’ll be impressed with my progress.
4. . . . and also (because why the hell not?) to be able to do pinup-girl poses when the plastic surgeon starts filling up my boobs (ALSO in a few days).

. . . and of course, I’m continuing the immunotherapy treatments every three weeks.

So that’s the news I have in terms of my continuing treatment plan.

Nothing equals the splendor

In other “Carry on” news, last weekend I attended another youth symphony concert for my elder dude. Y’all may recall that at the last concert, I waxed rhapsodic about their rendition of Rhapsody in Blue—but for THIS concert, they went in a whole different direction, and I was equally enraptured.

This time, the guest performer was Mark Wood (and the Mark Wood Experience), who joined them to bust out orchestral renditions of classic 70s and 80s rock hits.

And YOU KNOW this here Topeka girl belted out every word of this number! I mean, I repreSENT, you know’m sayin’?

. . . and, by the way, so does my son, who played most of this show IN PAIN, which of course twangs my guilt strings a little.

About a month previous, the kid went bowling with a friend and came away with a sore wrist. Like the good parent I am, I let his initial complaints float by, figuring it would eventually get better.

It didn’t.

A couple of weeks later, when he was still complaining of pain, I chalked it up to the P.E. class bowling unit they’d just finished, coupled with his participation in his brother’s bowling birthday party (obviously BOWLING is the problem here; I mean, it’s a well-known fact that BOWLING = PAIN, right?).

A week or so after THAT, however, when he was still complaining about the pain, I promised to make him an appointment with his doctor.

Which I of course forgot.

Then, in the middle of the Saturday afternoon rehearsal immediately preceding his Saturday night Tribute to Old Farts (like Yours Truly) concert, he texted: “Hey, did you ever make me a doctor’s appointment?”

Which was his way of saying, “MY. WRIST. STILL. HURTS. Why don’t you love me?” (That may be the guilt talking, but I mean, what was the point of asking me that, in that particular moment, other than to point out my failures as a parent?) And because of all the extra cello playing (a Friday evening rehearsal, and a Saturday morning private lesson happened previous to the Saturday afternoon rehearsal wherein he subtly questioned my fitness as a mother), he was starting to suffer from this particular nugget of neglect.

Love Tank, however, came to the rescue by whizzing to the nearest CVS to pick up a wrist brace, and running that—and some ibuprofen—up to the rehearsal venue. He spoke with both the kid and the conductor, and all agreed that if the pain got bad during the concert, the kid should stop playing, in order to avoid exacerbating a potential medical issue.

However, although he said his wrist started hurting really badly after the first song his group played (I saw him grab it a couple of times, when the musicians stood to bask in the applause), my boy decided the show must go on—plus, he was concerned about confusing the cellists around him by suddenly stopping his own show—so he dug in and kicked ass.

As a reward, I treated him to a FOUR-HOUR Urgent Care experience the next day. He got an x-ray (which showed no abnormalities), a splint, and instructions to rest the wrist for five days—which got him out of a week’s worth of P.E. and orchestra activities, so it was practically like a tropical vacation!

At any rate, I gotta say, I am consistently blown away by the collective talent of this group of baby musicians. And the fact that my dude is among them is pure magic to my soul.

Take a look, it’s in a book

The other magic for my soul (which, as you may recall, was in need of a little salve after the semi-crappy news that came out of my biopsy results) has been—of all things—reading cancer-related memoirs.

When last I left you, I was about to start (re)reading this book, thinking a little levity around the subject of cancer might be just what I needed.

And sure enough, it was.

While I recalled having enjoyed this book when I first read it, I suspected (correctly) that it would, as the kids say, “hit different” now that I’m going through this shit myself. I got some genuine LOL moments out of it this time—including a couple of . . . well, not ROFL moments, per se, but some definite UL (ugly laughing—I’m making it a thing if it isn’t already) moments. Sister was HILARIOUS. If you (as many of you claim) enjoy reading this blog, I think you’ll REALLY like Lopsided. Give it a try if you’re so inclined.

From there, I didn’t really INTEND to continue reading memoirs about cancer, but—thanks to the Amazon algorithm which, because I ordered Lopsided, was like, “Oh, so I see you’re into true stories about people who died of cancer! Gurl, we gotchu!”—I stumbled across this book, which sucked me all the way in with its crazy-ass premise:

A medical emergency forces a brilliant Harvard oncologist to reveal that she has been hiding her advanced breast cancer for a decade. Her husband—also an oncologist—must set aside his anger and feelings of betrayal so that he can care for her during her final year of life.

I mean, what in the entire fuck, right? So once I was done with Lopsided, I bought In Sickness and dove right in—to discover that the Amazon synopsis was only the first of many times I’d mutter, “What in the entire fuck?” in response to this book.

Here’s what I’ll say: The writing is good (engaging, descriptive, flows well), and I did find the story fascinating (for a lot of reasons). However, if you are a person who has a zero-tolerance policy for questionable decision-making (and many of the people I love most are such people—you know who you are), WALK AWAY. You will have no patience with this narrator, and will end up chucking this book across the room—or worse, you’ll hate it so much you’ll make your own questionable decisions, and end up setting your expensive new curtains on fire trying to incinerate this bad boy.

IF, however, you’re someone (like me) who delights in armchair psychology (but who does not actually STUDY psychology, in which case you’d probably find the narrator’s (and his wife’s) behavior utterly predictable from a DSM perspective), you might be fascinated by this book (as I was). You’ll walk away with more questions than answers—but the food for thought will keep you burping for days.

Now that my gas has subsided, I’ve picked up this book. (“Yo, wanna read about MORE cancer?” Amazon said. “OK,” I replied.) I’m not very far into it, but my impressions thus far are:

• The author wrote this book (which grew out of a blog) because she felt like what was missing from a lot of cancer stories was humor; and OK, maybe expecting this book to rise to the level of Lopsided humor isn’t quite fair—but so far, I’m not getting a ton of chuckles.
• Also, I’ve already come across a couple of instances where she kind of seems to contradict herself. It could be that she needed a better editor, or it could be that these contradictions are part of her particular brand of humor, and I’m missing some subtle tongue-in-cheekiness, but twice so far, I’ve been like, “Wait, but three pages ago, you said . . . “
• ALL that said, I’ve already encountered a couple of passages in the book that make me feel like this person and I should be total best friends, because we appear to share a brain (or a right hemisphere, anyway). On the one hand, this tells me I’m not the thought unicorn I’d like to be, but on the other, so much “OMG, SAMESIES!” that I’m starting to wonder if it would be weird to reach out to this person and invite her to drinks (leaving aside the fact that she lives on the west coast).

OK, who knew this blog post was going to turn into a BOOK CLUB? (I do think after I finish this book, though, I’m going back to thriller fiction or Amish romance or something; I’ve had enough cancer for now.)

At any rate, my boys (who are out fetching me a birthday cake—you know I’m the weirdo who, although I delight in making homemade birthday cakes for my offspring, LOVES LOVES LOVES storebought cake) will be back soon, and then there’ll be dinner (take-out of my choice—Hoo-RAY! Pa-TOWW! Wa-ka-ka-kahhh!), so I’m going to wrap this up now. But I’ll share more after the upcoming week’s doctor visits, and as always, thanks for hanging in!

Y’all are all the present a gal could ask for.