Elusive Cancer

My mother was nine when she had her first brush with breast cancer. Her mother had one of her breasts removed. It was 1966 and many, many years before reconstruction would be standard procedure. The sandbag that she wore inside of her bra was heavy and uncomfortable, but she wore it, clinging to the shape that made her feel like a woman. Then, years later, she would have her other breast removed.

On trips to North Carolina as a child, I would sneak into my grandmother’s bedroom and play with (and let’s be real, sometimes eat) her fancy, pale green Clinique lipsticks. And over a chair or on the end of her bed, her giant bra and those smooshy, baby-powder scented faux breasts. They were as big as my head and were wonderful to squish and poke, retaining their shape.

My grandmother’s sister’s life was taken from this cancer. My mother’s sister’s life was never the same after her cancer, the treatments for her cancer wrecked her body and she lost her life a few years ago. As you can imagine, these events had a profound impact on my mother. She was always on the defensive, waiting for the monster to creep into her life and threaten to take it all away. She spent her whole life living in fear of breast cancer.

“If I ever have a scare, I’m going to just get rid of the problem,” she would say. A Prophylactic Mastectomy is not something many people are familiar with, but with my family history, it was my mother’s reality.

I found myself in a waiting room with my mother, women all around us in this tiny room and in little matching robes, waiting for their turn to have their breasts smooshed and tortured. All waiting for their names to be called. The rest of these women, I’m sure, would go home healthy, albeit a little sore. But not us.

After her mammogram, she redressed and we were ushered into another waiting room, this one much larger and empty. We sat in the middle of a row of chairs together in alternating spells of silence and my wise cracking comic relief. If I could make jokes and make her laugh, maybe all of this would be less scary.

They had found “something” and punched a hole in my mother’s breast to determine what it actually was in there, causing this lump her breast. Those same breasts that nursed me for over three years and nursed my brother and sister before me. I recall my mother’s silent tears rolling down her face, but no sound coming from her. She was, and will forever be, so brave.

In the end, they said that the something was actually nothing. Likely calcified breastmilk from twenty years earlier just hanging out in her tissue, like a really sick, long-winded practical joke. But my mother was resolved. She was going through with it.

It wasn’t until 1998 that reconstructive surgery was something covered by health insurance. You grow up thinking something is one way, watching my grandmother in her kitchen cooking with a great, big cavernous space above her round belly. I would sometimes catch her while she was changing and the lumpy, shoddy scars across her chest with no nipples just seemed normal. It was just the way she was. As an adult woman, with full, round breasts now, I can’t imagine what it must have felt like to live the last forty years of her life with no nipples, no breasts, no sensation. As women, we wrap up so much of our worth in our appearance. What would life be like with no breasts?

My mother’s reconstruction was difficult. They did a procedure called DEIP Flap Reconstruction wherein they split my mother across her belly, took out her round, wiggly bits there and used that tissue to rebuild her breasts. The incision was brutal and she had to go back for several revision surgeries. Ultimately, an infection left her with a 6″x8″ section of her abdominal wall removed and replaced with steel mesh. Steel mesh. My mom is like Iron (wo)Man. She has to spend the rest of her life wearing compression garments, holding her together. There is no more yoga in my mom’s future, nothing that could strain her belly.

But there is also no cancer and very little risk of that same genetic mutation creeping  into her life and threatening her again. There was no chemo and no radiation. She faced her fears and this monster head-on and now, she has breasts. Under her clothes, they look very different than mine or yours, but they give her that same full, found, feminine shape. They tried to pucker her tissue to make faux nipples, but that didn’t take. She had a quote tattooed, inked backwards so she could read it in her reflection, “The warrior within me emerged,” across one and, “she knew just what to do,” across the other.

And after her surgery, after this “unnecessary” procedure that many of her friends questioned, in the pathology report, they found cancer. It was there the whole time, elusive to the mammograms and breast MRIs. It was there and, deep down, she knew it all along.

By the magic of science, my mother’s DNA was compared to my grandmother’s DNA, leftover from pathology reports after her death. They were able to pinpoint the location of this monster and, using that information, screen my sister, Julie, and myself for the gene as well. She has it and I do not. It’s called BRCA1 and having this gene increases your risk of breast cancer by 87% and your risk of many other cancers is increased. My brother was tested later and he also has the gene.

So my sister started to develop her plan of action. She was slow to make a plan at first, not yet thirty years old when we all sat in that room at Emory University receiving our results. She had two children and a husband and wanted more children. I was in a really bad place in my life, reverberating from a terrible divorce, a single mother of a young son and desperately trying to find my way. I was angry when the results came for my sister. I’m the tough one. I was the one that had been to hell and back… I was the one was conditioned to deal with monsters, not my sister.

Last year, we had plans to all volunteer for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day in Atlanta. I broke my ankle days before the event and couldn’t go, but Julie went ahead with my mother and a few other friends. I wasn’t there to provide comic relief and, I wonder, if that was part of the magical course of events that prompted my sister to start her battle with this invisible monster. Maybe because I wasn’t there to crack jokes and make her laugh, she was able to really look into the faces of the women walking sixty miles with buttons on their lanyards, “I walk for my mother,” “I walk for my daughters,” and realize that these women either lost loved ones or were almost lost to this cancer.

Whatever it was, she came home different. She came home determined. She made a plan and now, four months later, she’s packing her bags and headed to Charleston to one of the best breast cancer reconstruction facilities in the country. She’s following in my mother’s footsteps, facing this beast and telling it, “Nope. You’re not going to get me.” She’s taking her life in her hands and making sure that there will BE a life for her to live, for her daughters and her son to have a mother well into their adult years. And to never have to let her body be ravaged by chemotherapy and radiation.

I’m so proud to be a part of this lineage of women, even though this cancer lives inside so many of us. I think about the different sort of life that my sister’s daughter’s will have, growing up with a courageous mother taking the power of modern science and telling this cancer what’s what. My sister’s oldest daughter will be nine year this, the same age that my mother was when breast cancer first came into her life. Statistically, at least one of my sister’s three children will have this gene as well, but the entire course of their lives will be different than my mother’s life was. I’m not a religious person, but I can’t help but thank God for this chance.

Remember How I Needed Music?

My boyfriend sent this to me in an email this morning. I immediately loved it because it was happy and cheerful and made me want to go get in the car and put the windows down and drive around in the sunshine.

Then he told me to read the lyrics… It was over, after that.

Here, just give it a listen and then a read:

All my life I had this funny little feeling
It came and went time and again with all my daily demons
Call it a deficit, an emptiness inside
Why is true love hard to find? Why does true love hide?

But now I found you and I know that we will be
So very happy, if you could only see
That I was made for you and you were made for me

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
If you are willing, well, I think I’m qualified
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

I’ve got a plan, you know, I’ve got it all worked out
And all you’ve got to do is pack your bags and check your doubts
You come around and you will see just what I am
A true love through the worst of times, a true love til the end

So now you’ve found me and you only gotta see
How complementary we can really be
‘Cause I was made for you and you were made for me

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
We will be stronger if our forces are allied
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

We’ll take the ride as far as anyone can go
We’ll brave it all, yeah, hand-in-hand and toe-to-toe
I’ve got it all worked out, don’t worry ’bout a thing
Just give your hand to me and here, put on this ring

The road in front of us is long and it is wide
We’ve got beginner’s luck, we’ve got it on our side
If you are willing, well, I think I’m qualified
And with beginner’s luck we’ve gotta take the ride

I am frowny faced

And I really shouldn’t be…

I know I have a metric shit-ton of things to be thankful for, that this is probably one of the greatest periods in my life… Everything is moving along effortlessly, I’m happy, healthy…

But I’m grumpy.

I realized today that I’m going to get a total of four hours with my boyfriend this week. I haven’t seen him since… Sunday, April 17th… Or maybe that Monday morning. IT WAS SO LONG AGO I CAN’T REMEMBER.

And I’m pouting. The reason we get so little time this weekend? Work.  (more…)

You Are Not A Lot of Things

A little something to my single mom friends

YOU are not defective.
You are NOT defective.
You are not a product of your circumstances.
You choose the path you travel.
You are in charge of how you feel.
You are the only one that can filter for your heart.
You might be broken.
You might be hurt.
You could have been burned or wronged.
But YOU are NOT defective.

YOU have all the power and capability in the world.
You are stronger than you think.
You will likely be pushed to the brink, your very own edge…
You will have to suffer great things before you realize your strength
But it exists, maybe just below the surface…
Maybe down a few (hundred) layers.
But it is there.
The gusto. The power. The strength.
The stamina. The willpower. The chutzpa.
You are the strongest person you will know but,
in order to learn this, you will have to fall to your knees and let yourself be beaten.

You do not have to repeat history.
You do not have to feel regretful for your mistakes.
You DO, however, HAVE TO learn from your mistakes.
You can’t control everything
But that which you CAN control, you must master.
You will make more mistakes, no doubt.
You will offend, upset, alienate and then move on from countless people.
And in the end, the people around you are the real-deal-folks.
You must appreciate their love and support.
You will need to depend on their guidance and input.
You will look back at the pressure you’re under right now
and you will smile sweetly, remembering the woman you once were.

N00bcation, Day 1

There are landmark days in everyone’s lives… Days when you do something you’ve never done before…

Today was one such day for me for today, I took my son on vacation.

Seriously, it doesn’t seem like THAT big of a deal but my son is eight year old and I have never been on a vacation, just me and him… It’s always been the two of us with my parents or my best friend or something. I’ve always been in such a financial bind that I’ve never been able to afford to even take the time off from work, much less afford to PAY for a trip.

This is one of the benefits of moving home last October. I’ve been able to dig out of debt and squirrel money away so that we can do something fun… So that we can make memories! So yes, treasure. Big deal. Huge deal. ‘uge even.

This afternoon, we left our sweet little Atlanta and voluntarily climbed into a metal tube hurtling through the sky a bajillion miles an hour. We landed in Philadelphia. I’m very proud of the two of us… We found our hotel shuttle without trouble… We found our hotel easily (and it’s cute! and nice! and right next to Rittenhouse Square!). We threw our stuff down and recharged (and recharged my phone – Contrary to what they tell you, if you accidentally leave your phone on when the plane takes off, it won’t crash. Woops.). Then we went and got pizza, noms. Froyo, noms. Then walked around Rittenhouse Square. Took pictures, acted like silly tourists.

Man, I love spending time with this kid.

Tomorrow is the highlight of this trip. We’re taking the Chinatown Bus from Philly to NYC and then staying overnight in a hotel in the West Village, The Jane. On the agenda for tomorrow: The American Museum of Natural History, traipse around a bit, dinner somewheres, traipse around a bit, Times Square for the M&Ms Store (seriously, this might be the kid’s only must-have event, lol) and then, hopefully, by then it’ll be dark. I want to buy something from a street food vendor and I want to walk around a fully lit-up Times Square with my kidlet and show him how big the world can really be…

But in order to do all of THAT… I had to print our tickets. So we slid our shoes back on and went downstairs to the business center and found…

This…

This… Asshole.

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Aggressively Happy

I think that my generation was probably one of the first ones to benefit from the compact disc. When I was eleven or twelve years old, my sister and I shared a bedroom still… And she was in lurrrve with this boy and their song was “Heaven” by Bryan Adams. I recall laying in bed in the dark, giggling while I asked her questions about boys and dating and all of that and then, when we were finally ready to go to sleep, she’d press play on her previously-queued up cassette tape and we’d listen to Heaven before bed.

Moments like that really make me appreciate my family and my childhood. I don’t have any awful memories of childhood, really… Save a few incidents with shit-smear mean kids or dumb broads along the way… Any time I hear that song though, I am instantly transported back into that upstairs long, narrow bedroom and I’m in the day bed and Julie is on the trundle. We are only four years apart, but growing up, it felt like such a larger space in time… I think I always felt like I was right on the edge of where she was… Always trying to scramble to stay in her shadow. I have looked and looked and looked, trying to find a copy of that cassette tape to give to her for no other reason than to hear her laugh. (more…)

It Seemed Like A Great Idea

But somehow… we ended up stuck in the mud. I wasn’t really scared, probably because I’ve never been stuck in the mud but Colin said that as soon as our tires went off the pavement, he felt the whole car sink into the red clay.

And it makes sense. Last night, there was a serious rainstorm and it poured down in sheets. The ground was ripe and ready to swallow our little rental car up in one big, dirty gulp.

Or you know, just get us good and stuck.

You see, what had happened was…

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I feel like…

… that person that shows up unfashionably late to a dinner party. You know, the one that appears after the dessert has been served and then rudely says something about being hungry even thought SHE missed dinner because SHE was late.

I suppose I should apologize for my absence as of late… In my flurry of juggling eleven-teen thousand balls at once, I have neglected my sweet little spot in the blogosphere. You! I’ve missed you!

Come! Let’s sit unreasonably close to one another on my couch and gab like teenage girls about what has been happening in my life lately! You’ve missed so much! (more…)

Insert Home Alone Style Cussing Here

I’ve been something of a gypsy the past few years… I haven’t lived in one place more than a year, some places often, less than a year. I got wise (so I thought) a few years back and started having all of my mail routed to my work address. I didn’t have to worry about filling out the change of address forms at the post office… I didn’t have to worry about mail getting lost in the system or delayed because of mail forwarding. It was nice. I thought I was being smart.

And then… Today, I realized what a colossal doofus move that was.

You see, I went to renew my tag today… (more…)

I Shouldn’t Be Shocked

It happens more often than I’m comfortable with… And I’m not sure if it’s happening more as I get older or if part of the wisdom that I’m earning as I get older is a more sensitive ear to it… But we live in a world that is still so racist.

No, thankfully, we don’t segregate public bathrooms anymore. It’s not as outward as it was sixty years ago… It’s an undercurrent and, same with the ocean, the undercurrent is the one you really have to watch out for. If we’re not careful, the secretly sweeping subtle racism will tangle around our feet and pull us all back down under. (more…)

Shoes. OMG, Shoes.

I hate shopping. I hate schlepping from store to store. I hate carrying big bags. I hate having to repeatedly undress and redress myself, after episodes of wrestling my self loathing fat ass into clothes that don’t fit, aren’t flattering, or are just ugly when they’re actually on you.

So, I shop online which is harder in some very different kind of ways… I mean, you don’t have all of the standard pains of regular human shopping, but you’ve got other obstacles. The biggest one is that in order to make sure you’re going to be successful shopping online, you’ve got to buy two (sometimes THREE) of each size to make sure that you land your winning ass in a pair of winning jeans. Or in a superior dress. Or skirt. Whatever. You know what I’m saying. (more…)

Why You Haven’t Heard From Me… A Post With Pictures!

We might be a little crazy...

I know how painful it is for you guys to constantly check in and see no new updates here… I know it’s causing you to wail and gnash your teeth… The physical pain that I’m causing you is making me you know, kind of whatever. Hurt or something. (more…)