October 25: Two weeks after surgery

Time is not a real thing. 

On September 9, I was diagnosed with invasive ductal cell carcinoma. On October 10, I had it removed. 

**

Some life updates: 

1. The surgical drains came out (a solid 8/10 on the pain scale), the tape holding them in place was removed, the threads tethering my nipple covers were carefully snipped (I couldn't watch), and I was cleared for *very* light activity.

2. I went to the grocery store for a few things, and then had to recover with a 2.5 hour nap. 

3. I took my last antibiotic from the two-week course. 

4. I showered on my own, standing up, only a few strategic areas of my body taped, listening to an audio book. A big improvement from a week ago, when I stood still in the kitchen while Will circled my chest with saran wrap.)

5. I walked the dogs up and down the block, since Will is back at work. This is not technically on my approved list of things to do, but I moved carefully, using what my Nurse Practitioner C calls my "T-rex" arms: no reaching, lifting, pulling, pushing, yanking. Fortunately, the dogs complied. 

** 

I am at the stage of recovery where I'm bewildered by all of it. Talking to my therapist A on Friday, I said I felt that I had "cancer-lite."

What do you mean? she asked. 

I thought of all the women who have reached out to me in the last few weeks, and the women in my own family from recent and long-gone eras. I have heard their stories: invasive, non-invasive, HER2 positive, triple negative, stage 3, stage 4, lumpectomies that later became mastectomies, months of chemo, radiation burns, eventual (or still waiting for) reconstruction, remission, recovery, relapse. It is impossible to think of them without awe. And also, not a small measure of guilt. Didn't I get dealt an easier hand to work with?

By choosing a mastectomy, I avoided radiation. Because my Oncotype score is low, I dodged chemotherapy. For reasons I don't fully understand but deeply appreciate, Dr A was able to put in my implants as part of my surgery. (He had warned me in advance that this was extremely unlikely; in only about 10% of patients did this work out.) I am that 10%. I woke with implants and no need for a second surgery down the road.

While C, the nurse practitioner, snipped the threads of my nipple covers (and I looked carefully at a poster on the wall), I asked her tentatively how I should refer to myself. Am I in remission? recovery? 

"Girl," she said with a decisive snip, "you are cancer-free."

"You see what I mean?" I said to my therapist A the next day. "Cancer-lite."

A didn't think this was a particularly helpful way to look at it. Cancer has huge ranges, depends on dozens of factors, is experienced differently by everyone it touches. She counsels women in all stages, and they have nothing but support for each other. "You had a diagnosis and major surgery," she said slowly, letting each word land. "You're going to be doing years of hormone therapy, and right now we can't say how that will affect you. This has forever changed your life."

But do you see what I mean, about the guilt? It's completely non-helpful, but it's there, alongside a healthy dose of relief. Typing this, I'm bawling. I'm grateful, I'm not deserving, I'm a big whiner to have such a small slice of this experience and still be reduced to tears whenever I have to talk about it. 

Mine is one story out of many. It's not the most dramatic. It's not even particularly interesting, except to me. 

**

On Saturday, we gathered for my mom's 80th birthday, seven months after my dad passed. We'd initially booked a condo near Monterey for the weekend for the five of us girls, plans my sisters graciously rearranged after my surgery date was set. Instead, it was all of us Californians plus B from Washington, a noisy group of twelve that took over the wing of a lovely restaurant in Oakdale. 

I wore a real bra and was self-conscious about it, but my sisters insisted everything looked "normal." (It doesn't feel normal -- but more on that another time, maybe.) The four sisters huddled to one side and shared all our body stories, because this is what women in perimenopause do. We laughed and commiserated. The teenagers played on their phones. The men chatted, the server moved around us politely, gathering plates and utensils. My mom kept saying how happy she was that we were all together, that this was all she could have asked for. 

Me, too.