It's Almost Time

August 12. It's coming up fast.

A recap of the plan: Left mastectomy, right tissue expander removal, bilateral DIEP flap reconstruction. BreastRestoration.org has some lovely diagrams, if you care to learn more.

It's not exciting.

It's not "Yay, new boobs!"

It's 3-4 nights in the hospital, with one-on-one nursing care every hour to make sure everything is healing as it should.

It's 3 months of putting life on hold, and then gradually working toward "normal" again, whatever that looks like after completely rearranging your body surgically.

It's not lifting my kids - not lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk. They love to take turns being held during worship on Sunday mornings. Will Jay be "too old" to want to praise Jesus with me, when I am finally strong enough to lift him again?

It's not putting my kids to bed at night, because I can't lay by them in their beds like we do every single night.

It's most likely missing out on walking Jay to his classroom on his first day of school. 

It's opting for more scars, bigger scars, in an attempt to look and feel whole again. Will I feel like me, or like some Franken-barbie?

It's juggling pain meds and stomach problems.

It's dodging my boys' hugs and snuggles because they're BOYS and gentle just doesn't come naturally to them. At least now, I can gently and discretely redirect their hugs to my left side, my strong side as Jay has called it. I won't have a strong side anymore.

It's trading in sleeping next to my husband for a recliner for a while. 

It's sacrificing my autonomy in many areas: personal care, running my household, raising my children, participating in MOPs, driving.

Yeah, it's "optional" and I could just continue on like I am now - there's no real reason why the status quo can't continue, at least for a while longer. Except that an expander is a temporary thing, and I don't want to risk having to go through this again because of the other side.

It's hard to recover from a surgery, feel normal and strong again, and opt to do it all over again, with an even more intense recovery this time.

I'm scared out of my mind. I'm sad at what I have to give up and miss out on. I'm a little mad, because I don't want to have to go through this.

But being brave is being scared and still moving forward with what you know you need to do.

So, brave it is. Let's do this.

It's All In How You Look At It

The last couple of days, I've been doing some house stuff. Nothing major, mostly just trying to clear out the clutter that always seems to sneak up on every free flat surface. 

I've also been razor blading around my baseboards to remove some tiny remnants of tape and contractor paper that are left from our Harvey repairs. I've been looking at those bits of paper since December of 2017, when we rushed home before James was really ready for us to be back in the house, because I just couldn't take it anymore and needed us to be home for Christmas. I would look at the bits of paper and be annoyed, because it was a reminder of all that we'd been through, but I was always doing something else so I never took the time to take care of it. And James had done SO much to repair our house, I wasn't about to nitpick something so insignificant, especially when I was capable of doing it myself.

So fast forward nearly a year and a half, and I'm finally getting around to it.

And you know what? I'm excited. It feels good to do something uncomfortable, something that kinda makes your back hurt a little. It feels good to have the energy to crawl around and do work (even if it's not all that hard).

I am thankful to have the energy and the capacity to do this little thing to care for my home. 

This story is NOT to highlight my accomplishments around the house. It's about my mindset - my new mindset. I don't want to take things for granted, I want to notice and appreciate things I overlooked before. Things that were a non-issue, I just want to take a second and appreciate them before I go on with my day.

What can you find to be thankful for today? Bonus points if you can find a new way to look at an obnoxious task!

Do all things without grumbling or complaining. Philippians 2:14

Today

Today was Infusion #17.

The end. The last one. One year's worth of going every three weeks, and I AM DONE!

Herceptin and Perjeta are the two meds I've been taking. These are smart meds that stop any straggler cancer cells from reproducing, by blocking a specific protein that would tell the cells to divide.

I've been very fortunate to not have hardly any side effects from these meds. They can cause pretty substantial digestive issues, but thankfully I dodged that bullet.

I absolutely could not have gotten this far in this crazy journey without you walking alongside me, praying for me, and encouraging me.

And God. God is so so good, y'all.

A Year Ago Today

A year ago today, I checked in for surgery. The plan was a single mastectomy with immediate DIEP reconstruction, which means taking tissue from the abdomen to recreate a breast. It's a long surgery - 8-10 hours - with a long recovery - a solid 3 months of zero lifting, and then quite a bit more time before feeling totally normal again. But, a year ago today was going to be the biggest hurdle in my road to recovery, and then I was going to close the door on that chapter of my life.

A year ago today, I woke up too soon.

I remember laying in the hospital bed, my mind foggy from the anesthesia, and seeing the bright sunlight and struggling to make sense of the clock on the wall.

I don't remember what time it was, but it was around lunch time. Much much too soon to be awake for a surgery that started around 7 am. And there was James, sitting by my bed waiting for me to wake up, to be the one to tell me that things hadn't gone as planned.

A year ago today, I learned that my battle was just beginning.

A few minutes after I woke up, one of my two surgeons came in to explain.

"We found cancer in one of the four lymph nodes we removed."

Translation: Tissue expander instead of reconstruction. Chemo. Radiation. More surgeries down the road. Three months of not lifting my babies now, and three more months of not lifting them down the road, after reconstruction at an as-yet-undetermined date.

I knew going into surgery that this Plan B was a possibility, but we all thought the likelihood was very slim.

A year ago today, I learned more about cancer than anyone wants to know.

I learned about hormone receptors and lymphedema risks and wigs and hats and asking for rides and radiation creams and natural deodorants and paraben-free beauty products and physical therapy and more about digestive medications than anyone ever should know.

A year ago today, I learned how to ask for help and accept kindness without feeling guilty. Most of the time, anyway.

A year ago today, I learned that gracefully letting others help is a blessing to them. Turns out, people like feeling helpful and needed.

A year ago today, I learned the value of surrounding yourself with positive, God-trusting people. When your feet are knocked out from under you, these are the ones who lift you up and tell you to keep moving forward. They're the ones who fill you up with the positive words that you'd tell yourself if you weren't so down.

A year ago today, I woke up too soon.

Lookin' Good, Feelin' Good.

I hear it all the time: You look good. Really good.

And I respond with: Thank you. I feel great. Really great.

That's usually where I change the subject, because I get a little self-conscious. But in reality? I should keep talking. I should say that the reason I look so good and I feel so good is because God is so good. 

Because He cares for me. 

Because He strengthens me and encourages me. 

Because He gives me peace on the inside when the storm rages outside.

Because He shows me how to find joy when I feel like I'm drowning in sorrow.

Because He lavishes his love on me, through family and friends who love me well.

Because He gives me wisdom and guidance as I listen to my doctors and sort through all the information out there.

Because God is so so good, I can look good and feel good.

So next time you see me, and you think I'm looking good, and I tell you I'm feeling good, now you know - it's not me, it's all God's doing!

Choices

I've been having trouble sleeping lately. Either I can't fall asleep, or something wakes me up and then I can't turn my mind off long enough to fall back to sleep for what feels like hours and hours.

A could of nights ago, as I was laying awake, the word CHOICE popped into my head. Choose, choice, imaging myself choosing something - I could just feel the essence of a choice right in front of me.

You have a choice, I heard. What are you going to choose?

Okayyyy.... I choose sleep. Sleep, I'm choosing you! Where are you, my dear friend sleep? 

Nothing. 

Well actually the opposite of nothing - lots and lots and lots of thoughts just continuing to flow. But sadly, no sleep.

Part of the problem: the overarching theme of that barrage of mental images and scenarios playing in my head and keeping me up at night is fear, worry, anxiety.

I've never been one to say I have anxiety, never been diagnosed with any sort of anxiety disorder, but the more I learn about it, the more I feel like anxiety has been a monster under my bed for most of my life. Most times, I do really well at ignoring it and going about life as usual, but sometimes I can hear it scruffling around under there and I'm paralyzed to do anything but wait it out.

But back to the other night. So clearly, I felt that *I* am to choose. I'm not 100% sure what that means, but that night, it meant tuning out the images of what ifs and problems and choosing to focus on something good. I chose the lyrics of a worship song, and now I don't even remember which one, but I just focused on one chorus, over and over and over, and before I knew it, it was 8 am and I had been sleeping peacefully for the rest of the night.

Something else I struggle with is waking up in a good mood. Or I should say, being woken up (by anyone or anything) often puts me in a bad mood. I don't know what it is exactly, and it doesn't seem to matter how much or how little sleep I've had, or whether it's a reasonable time to wake up or not. I just tend to not wake up in a good mood.

Back to that choosing thing... I can choose what kind of mood I wake up in. Or at least what kind of mood I continue in. Because if we're being honest here, sometimes when I wake up grumpy, I cling to that grouchiness long after events of the morning should have cheered me up.

I'm not saying I can choose for my problems to disappear. But I can choose the attitude I'll have when facing them. I can choos to focus on the problems (real or imagined) or the source of peace.

I choose peace.

Brief

Teach us to realize the brevity of life, so that we may grow in wisdom.

Psalms 90:12 NLT

This is my daily Bible verse on my phone app. If I'm being honest, I ignore the app about half the time, and many other days, I just barely read it as quick as I can before dismissing the notification, with hardly another thought.

Life is short, y'all. That's such a common phrase, and most of the time it's used in reference to slowing down, enjoying the good times, making the best of the time we are here, and so on and so on. 

But you know what? It applies to our struggles and trials, too. Whatever it is you're going through today, the "brevity of life" means that it's only a season, and it too shall pass.

So chin up, friend! Look for the wisdom as you walk your walk, and remember it's only a season.