Thinking

A couple of things have happened since I last posted that have gotten me thinking. The first is that a girl from my high school graduating class died just under two weeks ago. She died of breast cancer. Since my class had over 600 people, I didn't actually know her. I saw some postings about her death on Facebook, and when I read them, I sat at my computer and cried. I cried for her because I know what she faced as this horrible disease slowly sucked her life away. And I cried for her family who is feeling cheated because someone they love was taken from them too soon. And if I am honest, some of the tears were probably for myself, because this evil has touched me and left its ugly fingerprint on my life.

When I was first diagnosed with breast cancer, my encouraging and loving friends said many things to me, like, "At least they caught it early," and, "Breast cancer is so treatable - it's not a death sentence," and, "Even women with positive lymph nodes end up being completely fine." All of these statements may be true on their face, but I am surrounded by stories, like the story of this girl from my class. Or the story of my Aunt Ruth who died of breast cancer in June, 2009. Or the story of the woman I prayed for at church Sunday whose breast cancer has metastasized to her bones twelve years after her original diagnosis. Breast cancer is a sleeping giant. Unlike other cancers, it can lie dormant for several years and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, rear its ugly head. For anyone who has been personally touched by this villain, life becomes an eternal game of watch and wait. My doctor expects me to do a self-exam of my chest wall and axillary and super clavicle (under the arm and under the collar bone) lymph nodes every WEEK. What exactly I'm supposed to feel, I don't know. It feels lumpy and bumpy to me because my anatomy has been completely altered, and I have scar tissue. When I tell my doctor this, he says what I am looking for are changes. So I find myself thinking - Oh, oh - was this bump here last week, have I felt this before, is this new, has this changed? I've decided the anxiety isn't worth it, so I simply don't do the exam.

The second thing that has happened is that I had my final medical procedure for breast reconstruction. It has been a long road starting with my cancer surgery in March, 2007, and ending Wednesday with surgery number seven. It was surgery per se, but it didn't even involve cutting. I had areolas tattooed onto my body - something I never really envisioned happening, and didn't even know DID happen until it happened to me. As I stand in front of the mirror and look at my 'new parts', I wonder, is this really me? Did this happen to me? I feel far removed from the brutality of what I went through. When I hear someone else's story, for instance, a woman facing a mastectomy, I think, "Oh, the poor girl, how is she going to cope with that? Oh wait, I did that. I'm okay." It's almost as if I forget (almost). Or when I pray with someone who is facing cancer and all that means, and my eyes fill with tears and I choke up, and I think, "Good grief, what is your problem? Oh, right, I've been there, I know what they're facing."

When my husband and I sat in the restaurant after my first plastic surgery appointment, we felt shell shocked. It was hard to grasp that I was going to be dissected and put back together like Frankenstein. I now recognize that the emotion that so overwhelmed me outside my doctor's office, that I wrote about in my last post, was grief. I was grieving the loss of my body, the loss of control, the loss of my life as I knew it. But at that moment, all I knew was that I felt raw, ripped apart, beat up. When I compare that with the distance I now feel, I am thankful that God has created us in such a way that our memories fade, become soft around the edges. We can go to them and pick them up, when we want or need to remember, but for me it's like I'm remembering someone else's life, or some story I read. I no longer feel the horrible, overwhelming emotion. This is good, it's a part of becoming well.

And so I've been thinking. I choose not to be filled with sorrow over all I've lost, or anxiety about what might lie ahead. I try instead to be filled with joy, to obey the command, "Rejoice always!" My mantra is Find Your Joy, and so I find mine, in my family, in my friends, in my faith, in my Lord, in small things, in kisses and "I love you," in togetherness, in laughter, in hope. Where do you find your joy?