I have been struggling a lot lately. With little things and big things. I find myself not wanting to get up in the morning. Not wanting to put one foot in front of the other. Its the quiet times where I am not moving that are the worst. Its not anything in particular and at the same time, its EVERY LITTLE THING. When I play music, its at the highest decibel level. Its on repeat. Its loud and on repeat.
I got myself to a support meeting. It was next to impossible - being so far away and at Traffic Time. The honking, the screeching of tires, the rude drivers. The worry that I would be locked out of the building (it has normal office hour-type hours). I got there. Barely.
I sat around the circle and recognized two people. I got to introduce myself quickly and then the larger discussion about reconstruction and all the options available to new people were addressed. I sat across from a woman who had a double mastectomy for the same diagnoses as mine (DCIS- no chemo, no radiation). She had expanders in. She is deciding between implants and a deep tissue transplant (what I was originally looking into). Women asked questions, they answered questions and all of a sudden, it hit me:
If I had decided on the deep tissue transplant (using your own stomach fat to make a breast), I would just be able to move my arms (in terms of weeks of recovery) and I would be scheduling the left breast reduction. I wouldn't yet know that there is DCIS in my left breast. In the weeks following a reduction, I would find out that DCIS is there and I would need....a mastectomy.......and then....because I had the deep tissue transplant, that would not be an option for me. I would have to choose between nothing (no breast) and an implant. Which, was the very thing I was avoiding by choosing the deep tissue reconstruction.
MIND BLOWN
So if I had gone that route- the deep tissue - I would need an implant anyway. The very thing I was trying to avoid (an implant ("ew, gross, how could I put something fake in my body")) was the thing I would have ended up with anyway because of the tiny, undetectable DCIS.
One of the women at the support group told me that it looks like I made the right decision - she must have seen the look on my face as my brain processed everything. I cant believe I didn't think of that. I cant believe that it didn't even occur to me. I had made the decision and moved on. I didn't give it another thought -honestly, I didn't. I moved on.
And that is something that I have been having a ton of trouble with - moving on. Maybe it is because I have nothing to look forward to, at least not in the short term. I have another surgery to "look forward to." Though I have started thinking about it, I am scared to plan my "Cancer Free Party," in case I jinx it. I never thought I would be a person who thought I could jinx anything, but there you go.....cancer can alter your mind in so many ways. I want to be one of those people who believes so strongly that this is a Lump in the Road. But sometimes it slams me down SO HARD I can hardly breathe.
Today I am going to focus on stretching my arm so I can raise it above my head. And looking my kids in their eyes. Because I do not know what else to do to get through the day.
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