October 4: 6 days until surgery

Another 4 am wake-up call from my brain, which has snapped me out of a restless sleep to remind me to wake up, because if I'm not paying attention, this plane is going down. 

Sorry for the mixed metaphor. This is why I can't sleep on planes, though. 

**

I've been going through the motions at the bookstore, trying not to notice the minutes slipping away, each one bringing me further from the life I know and into some other dimension, with hypotheses leading to unknown conclusions. If they find something in my lymph nodes.. If I have to do chemo... 

And so I've made coffee, shelved books, scheduled social media posts, made a dozen or so vendor payments, chatted with old friends, processed online orders and managed to pretend for a few precious hours that all is well. 

It feels like I'm living life on a treadmill. Or maybe a hamster wheel. 

**

A short list of things that has been removed from my body: 
--four wisdom teeth
--an ovarian cyst
--tendrils of endometrial tissue, wrapped around my organs including
--my appendix
--my gall bladder
--bits of torn meniscus
--a hunk of basal cell carcinoma, excised from my back
--and on Friday, two breasts

I am not scared about my body, I tell my prehab specialist, who has been helping me use resistance bands to strengthen my arm and chest muscles. This feels like a very brave thing to say, although the minute it's out in the ether, it's untrue. It's just that I haven't considered all the ways I will need to be scared about my body, not yet, not with a long to-do list between now and then. 

I've been focused on the immediate aftermath: the drains, the discomfort, the worry that I won't be able to shower, the fact that I'll have to sleep in the supine position, propped up by pillows. I'd sworn off Amazon, but in a crunch, I find myself ordering all the things: the husband pillow, a mastectomy pillow, body wipes, a shower seat, lotion. I'm trying to anticipate all the ways I'll be uncomfortable, foresee all the things I won't be able to do for at least two weeks and likely more. 

There has been no time to think of my body, afterwards.

**

Up until now, I've avoided Dr. Google. This isn't like me: when I tore my meniscus, I looked up every possible meniscus-related thing. I looked at pictures, strange X-rayed images globby with white tissue. I read articles. I prepared myself by knowing everything I could know.

Tomorrow, I need to organize my cancer binder. So far, it's a messy collection of papers from every visit to the cancer center -- my test results and information about procedures and lists of resources. There's a spiral bound notebook titled "My Cancer Journey" that presumably will answer the questions I haven't known to ask, but so far I haven't been tempted to peek. I'm skeptical of this whole damn journey.

​I'd give anything to not be on it.