To a New Year

It's been over a year.

It's been over a year since diagnosis, since the fear and the confusion of last fall.

It has been a year since I shaved my head.

I am still standing. My hair is growing. I have two perky boobs thanks to the final reconstruction surgery that had to be moved up after two not so comfortable infections.

I feel more like myself, but the definition of me has changed.

Things seem good right now. I feel good. People tell me I look good, although I am totally rocking some sort of 70's mom hair with a flip in the back and some serious feathering on the side.

I have more energy and continue to do all those things I did over the past year, grocery shop, work, pick up at gymnastics. I have tried to think less about framing my life in the context of cancer and just enjoy the life going on around me but everything is just a little bit tainted because my timeline has changed.

I am trying to plan ahead without worry, without the anxiety that comes with the what if?

There have been bumps on this road. There have been scans and more scans, there have been tweaks to medication and treatments. There are side effects, minimal in the scheme of things, but enough to impact my days. There have been days that are entirely too dark that have left me at times feeling unsure and afraid.

There are also good days. Days where I play with the kids, laugh out loud, and days that seem so mundane and ordinary that I can almost forget. Almost.

So there is nothing left to do but live.

I am planning vacations for the summer. I am signing QT up for nursery school in the fall. I am believing with all my heart that this year will bring with it some changes that are a long time coming and that will enable me to live the life I've imagined with the people that I love for a very long time.

Scantastic Results and Surgery

I am done with chemo.

Six months, six cycles, side-effects.

It was a bit anti-climatic, especially since I still have to go every three weeks for the "maintenance" drugs, but I am happy to not have to deal with the exhaustion, the sleeplessness, the steroids.

I feel better.

My hair is growing back pretty quickly. I am going to have to actually go to a salon soon for some styling advice since it has transitioned to something that resembles a nun's haircut and is starting to grow in over my ears.

I started running again (I am slow).

I am taking Bikram yoga (it is hot).

I am making summer plans (please invite us over, especially if you have a pool).

I was rescanned in May. My third time. I now consider myself a bit of an expert on the art of the PET scan, I arrived with loose clothing, no metal, I removed my earrings, and my wedding rings. The technician couldn't find a vein, he asked me the awkwardly uncomfortable question of what I was doing there, my shoulders cramped in the long narrow tube. I wanted so badly for these results to reflect what I have hoped so much for since that cold October day. That the treatment worked. That the cancer is gone.

And the news is good. There is nothing left in the hip. They see nothing anywhere else but there is still something left in the breast.

I got another mammo, another ultrasound. I got a call from the doctor and we are going to do surgery.

He said the best way to totally remove the remaining cancer from my body is to cut it out. So that is what I am going to do.

I had to wrap my head around it. In the beginning before we knew anything, before things were so aggressive, so advanced, surgery was an option, then it wasn't. I have to admit I was a little jealous of those other women in the treatment room, women who had options, who for them surgery would be just the fix they needed to put this all behind them and move on.Women who would worry if and not when.

I also have to admit that I never really entertained the idea of a mastectomy. When we first talked surgery it was going to be a lumpectomy, remove what was left, throw in an implant and move on.

Let me assure you that there is nothing that I won't do to ensure my chances of a longer survival. Breasts are great, my breasts are great, but they aren't working for me the way they should. So we are removing one, putting in an implant, and much to my delight giving me a bit of a lift on the other side.

I am lucky that both the surgeon and the plastic surgeon can do the procedures at the same time. One surgery is better than two. The reconstruction will happen right after the removal and that makes things easier for me in terms of recovery.

The plastic surgeon kept on telling me that we were going to have to make the boobs smaller. I kept on assuring him that this wasn't an issue. I mean I breastfed three kids, gravity isn't kind.

So that is where we are. I will go in for surgery in a few weeks, continue to go for monthly treatments, readjust to life post-chemo, and hope days turn into weeks and then years and years and years.