July 21, 2015 - ING

The data can be overwhelming, as I read paragraph after paragraph in preparation for an inservice I’m working on, but also in preparation for an upcoming appointment. The risk factors associated with the treatment of malignancy are numerous to say the least and continue to soar as time passes. The more your read, the more you wonder how in the world anyone survives anything at all. Radiation alone drastically increases your risks of secondary conditions: breast cancer (MRIs and mammograms every six month – or in some cases mastectomy), skin cancers (yearly dermatology appointments), colon cancer (colonoscopy every 5 years starting 10 years after your last radiation dose or age 35 – whichever is the latter), cardiac insufficiency (doppler and ekg 10 years after therapy end, echocardiogram every 2 years), pulmonary fibrosis (Baseline PFTs then routinely afterwards), and the list goes on. This doesn’t even begin to factor in those risks associated with chemotherapy dosing which only catapults the list into another realm.  As I continued to read, I could easily find myself overwhelmed at the numbers and wondering how in the world does one stay on top of all of that without falling into a spiral of paranoia at what might come.  I am also suddenly aware I am incredibly behind on my “routine” follow-up appointments. In fact, I had only met one task, mastectomy. So I’ve spent the last few days getting appointments scheduled and follow up calendars planned in an attempt at outsmarting fate. I most definitely see the needs for cancer patients to be enrolled in long-term care follow-up clinics and am wondering why I had not done the same for myself. It feels…fearful…knowing the data.

There is a fine line between fear and proactive, and I am working to maintain the latter instead of the falling prey to the former. I fully believe that God may have specific plans for my future in my health, just as he has used my mastectomy in so many ways, but I also believe he gives me a brain to try and circumvent medical mishap. So I choose to be purposeful moving forward in my medical follow-up. Dermatology appointment scheduled. Cardiology appointment in the works. Colonoscopy…..Ron, please hold my hand…also in the works. Pulmonary appointment, on the to-do list. And the others, I will get to you in good time. But first let me fit in a surgery to fix boob 2.2. First things first, right? Attitude adjustment in the works as well. While mastectomy created a good bit of disruption to my every day existence and that is ongoing in the immediate after each surgery, I would be a fool not to recognize the gifts it has brought in the process as well. Instead of embracing the bitterness of circumstance, I’m choosing to bring to the forefront the great. And I’m enlightened by how much better I know myself in the process. Isn’t it crazy how you absolutely know you have everything about yourself all figured out, but in the fast swoop of an unexpected circumstance you can find some undiscovered nooks and crannies of your personality? Or awareness of how much circumstance can mold you into something changed, could be better, could be worse, on the other side. My heart is much deeper for relationships here on this side. And my awareness of “what is on the outside is not always what is on the inside” is more finely tuned in my interactions with others I run into from day to day. We are continually morphing as we get from here to there. An additional little nugget I’ve gleaned is the appreciation of “while things can always be worse” that doesn’t mean I am not feeling every single moment of what I am in. Only you can measure how something affects you, there is no gold standard or bar to be set. Yes things can always be worse, but things are still your reality of here and now. And they may impact you deeply.

Navigating “post lymphoma” life for some reason feels pretty overwhelming right now. I am sure the breast surgery being in my immediate future might be the source of that, but also this preparation for preventing future medical mishaps which now clutters my calendar with no regard for co-inhabitants of the time slot. It all has to be worked in and it’s all for the good of me as a whole. It makes survival more active, less passive. Because surviving never really ends, does it? We will all always be surviving something. And while the event itself comes to an end (hopefully), we are left with the positive and negative aftermath that we incorporate into our everyday lives…forever…in some capacity each and every day. You never go back to life before malignancy, or divorce, or assault, or parenthood, or achievement. It’s there knitting its way into your decisions, and perspectives, and motivations, and fears. Conscious or not, it’s there influencing almost everything about you. And that is the way it will be each and every day moving forward.

Sometimes I feel better knowing the colonoscopy is NOT scheduled as that mandates the scope will never find an “aftermath”. But if I’m being truthful for myself, this thought process is choosing fear. And that fear is a method of survivorship I want very much not to embrace.

I am not a survivor. I am surviv-ING. It’s not a fixed point on the timeline, it’s the timeline itself. This, I finally understand.

Psalm 16:11 You make known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

July 14, 2015 - Return to Sender!

It was lying midway through the stack of mail, sandwiched between an overpriced clothing catalog and a reminder to schedule a termite inspection. But I saw it immediately – the over sized oblong envelope with royal blue writing. I can recognize that envelope a mile away by now, yet I still hold out hope each time that it contains an invitation to a magical masquerade ball, or a collection of forgotten snapshots from a recent trip. Yet it is never that. Not even once is it that! The return address immediately betrays the sender. Division of Plastic Surgery. Woe is me.  

Immediately, my funk returned. I do this every stinking time- the dread, the loathing, the sulking. I don’t know why I let this affect me like it does, but it seeps in from the outer regions of Pluto and finds itself right in the forefront of my mind. It only took the arrival of post-surgery documents to send me bee-lining straight from delightful to disgruntled. I really wanted to overachieve and postpone disgruntled until the night before surgery, but alas, the dang mailing. I am beyond grateful that I spent the last 5 months, for the most part anyway, putting this 6^th surgery out of my mind. I worked very hard to claim life in that very moment instead of dread of what was coming in early August. I definitely had “most improved” in that aspect compared to previous surgeries, but the mailing came super early this go round and now here I sit dreading August 6^th as if it contains the plague. Boob 2.2 will now be Boob 2.3. Ridiculous, I know. One, who names there implants? And two, ridiculous that two surgeries turned into six. (You can find the background for this upcoming surgery # 6  here (January 2015) and in conclusion here (February 2015). If you haven’t been keeping up, I don’t blame you a bit.) But I am very much aware that God is still the God of disgruntled and he will meet me exactly where I am.  Ron is still the king of best caregiver ever and he is all geared up for shoving pillows here and peaking under bandages there. And I am still the queen of distraction (ok, I totally over sell that attribute cause I’m really not great at that at all) but distraction is on the to-do list all the same…along with buying gauze, and alcohol swabs, and oh I don’t know, maybe ice cream!

The surgery mocks me in my waking hours. The pesky little sucker drain that now consumes me all because of an oblong envelope arriving several weeks early NOT containing an invitation to a magical masquerade ball. RETURN TO SENDER!

Double mastectomies almost seem common place now. Sandra Lee, food network host, underwent mastectomy just this week. And there barely goes a month that I don't hear of another person adding mastectomy to their medical list. Celebrities have made the mastectomy discussion more common place and the physical effects a little less taboo. Angelina Jolie braved that path publicly last year. Christina Applegate in 2008. Comedian Wanda Sykes and TV host Giuliana Rancic in 2011. Kathy Bates 2012. And then there is Sharon Osbourne, also in 2012, who chose mastectomy for prophylaxis after diagnosis with the BRCA gene. The list is growing not only for breast cancer but for prevention alike. No one is immune to its grasps it seems, yet we all find ourselves shocked when it lands on our doorstep. My heart gets a little heavier with each new announcement. I know how those moments feel, and I know how mundane life becomes quite un-mundane, if even for a few days, but more likely for many months after you emerge from the OR room. So for those of us not in the limelight of fame, mastectomy seems a little more do-able because of their open discussions of such. But at the same time, I want to shout it from the rooftops that it is the stories of the not so famous, not only of the famous, that better get me through mastectomy moments. These stories are a bit more relate-able for me with similar circumstance and day-to-day events and challenges. (Please know, I'm not saying celebrities are not every day people, I'm just saying they have resources and access to options that may vary from some of the rest of us. So their journey is different, though similar, even if in minute ways.) I imagine what wonders we could do if the celebrity partnered up with the not-so-famous to share both sides of this life. Mastectomy just may have a few less scars when approached with knowledge from someone who traveled the road before you.

And with that we keep trucking on and I see this next surgery in my headlights. Hopefully a little wiser with each passing one. 

June 16, 2015 - The Paper Weight

I find having breast implants ridiculously funny. I don’t know why but if they aren’t making me cry, they are really making me laugh. The lack of jiggle, the phantom nerve pain, the asymmetry -when they are synthetic so totally should be symmetrical, the fact that you have a card specifying what lot number your new breast is, the realization that they aren't flotation devices (flotation devices?) when one would think that they would be. Trust me, there is a lot to laugh at for me. But I am finding that not everyone with reconstructive implants finds the same humor quite so therapeutic.

I was laughing this week about how anyone with implants or who works in breast reconstruction should keep a “high profile smooth round gel implant” on their desk as a paper weight. Right?!?!?! Wouldn’t that be a hoot simply because you can? (Yes, I have no doubt this is not Shark Tank worthy, but it has the potential to be...well funny...to me anyway.) It’s like the tshirt slogan “Yes they’re fake, my real ones tried to kill me!” I like to find fun in the not so fun. It keeps me from falling apart in circumstance. Usually as I find myself in any given circumstance I try to be sensitive to others there with me on the boat. But as I was chuckling at the idea of the implant weight out loud on the phone with a colleague while I was shoving paper away from my desk fan, I realized for many people reconstructive implants are probably anything but humorous. Looking death in the face can very easily change your vantage point and I need to be careful to keep that in mind. So I’m trying to be more mindful that not everyone uses laughter to get though life and that some people may very seriously love or detest their implants for exactly what they are – implants – nothing more nothing less. Simply a necessity to get from this side of mastectomy to the other.  And that my vantage point may be a bit irreverent, or harsh, or selfish. Not that this changes my perspective, just that my perspective may need to sometimes be….less...or simply maybe more selective in how, and when, and to whom it is verbalized. Thankfully, I do consider my blog a safe place in that people can choose to read or not to read, but I need to remember that when discussions occur in person, choice is removed.

I may have made a snafu (it was really hard to tell if I did or not). I’m back peddling. And I’m teachable. 

(But I would buy the paper weight! And I would laugh every time I saw it orchestrating gravity on my desk. I just might not choose to let everyone see it, particularly if they underwent mastectomy. See? Teachable.)

(And if this is the first blog post of mine you have read, please choose another as I promise I have better words to provide.)

May 12, 2015 - Survival

She is in surgery this very day, removing the cancerous breasts and awaiting replacements. She has had a long fight being nearly 6 months since diagnosis and today is the day she wills herself to part with the old and unite with the new. The question comes as I suspected it would -“Do you have any advice?” 

Every single time I hear this question, my stomach rolls a bit in anxiety and fear of what to say or what not to say. I've eluded to it once before (link to post) when asked what I would tell someone facing the choice of prophylactic mastectomy. That question in that scenario is tough enough, but the question carries a different scenario and meaning when asked by someone with cancerous breasts. It’s like comparing apples to orangutans on several dimensions, but you also realize in a side note that the similarities are there. Removing a breast is removing a breast when it comes down to it. But one being removed in preventative choice carries a different vantage point than those removed in a reaction to a diagnosis. I won’t go into greater detail here for sake of key stroke, but it’s different…and the same…and different.

Since the question keeps arising from various scenarios I feel as though I need to get past the anxiety of providing a response. It’s not that I don’t know all the caveats in and out of my own thoughts around the procedure, it’s that I fully recognize my words may be utterly misguiding and useless to someone else in a different or even similar circumstance. I could tell you to go this very minute and purchase a foam wedge for your bed so you may find some comfort when trying to sleep with 4 drains in tow, but you may find that is a useless purchase. Or I could advise you to not look at the scars early on as healing and a drastically improved appearance come with time, but you may find that inspecting them in great detail the day after surgery may be the one thing you need to do in order to move forward. Or I could tell you that post procedure you may find yourself weeping for no reason at all, yet you yourself don’t shed a single tear. We are who we are and we experience what we experience. But as I have said before, I know you will experience SOMETHING, but what that will be exactly remains to be seen. And therein lies the anxiety of useless advice. Maybe all you need is gentle reassurance. Or just a presence of friendship. Yet the questions still come and therefore my anxiety should be overcome for the sake of the one asking the question.

Surely there is some advice that would be applicable to all that I could offer with the purest of intents and that will ensure some general application of good will?  For example, you most certainly don’t want to clip your drains (that dreaded D word) to your waist band. I feel positive you will find the wisdom in that advice the first time you head to that bathroom, forget you have the drains clipped there, and then pull your pants down. Everyone in the household at that very moment will also remember that piece of advice given with the most sincere of intents. But even this seems like strange advice on the day of surgery when you are simply trying to get yourself through that OR appointment with sanity intact. What do you need at that moment in time when you ask me that question????

As I search my heart and my experience, I recognize I have a great need to know people are there. Not only in kind words or prayer (I am very purposely focusing on myself that I will never ever say “my prayers are with you” unless I truly intend to pray otherwise this is a slap in the face of God as well as to my walk), but also an assurance of physical proximity. There are times when you just need a smiling face or a reminder that a dear friend is just a phone call away. That would be my advice to friends of someone going through mastectomy. Don't say what you won't do, and do you best to be there in the first few weeks post procedure. Drop by with brownies. Offer to walk their dog. Show up with the lawn mower. Pull out the hose to water some plants. Send movies and books. And if she isn't up for visitors, which surely could be the case early on, drop a note in the mail or leave something on the doorstep, ring the bell, then go run hide in the bushes (fun for all involved!). I am the first to admit that this "action" of service is hard for me and it is something I am working on in present state, so I am trying to heed my very own advice here as a friend to others going through tough moments. So friends who are supporting someone through a moment, be the sincere kind of friend we would want to have in the same circumstance. Now, to the woman herself in mastectomy, after past reflection on my experience I would want to hear this encouragement  (I first heard these words recently at church and have since traced them back to Casting Crowns): “We are not supposed to merely survive, we are supposed to thrive.”

“We are not supposed to merely survive, we are supposed to thrive.”

“We are not supposed to merely survive, we are supposed to THRIVE.” I need to let that sink in. I need to mull over its goodness and grace and realize this nugget of truth can be be applied to any and all events in life. Why can't I master this? I spend so much of my time simply trying to get through a moment with all my appendages still attached (survive) while I complain about its every second, doing nothing but watering down its purpose and intent while simultaneously ensuring the misery of anyone within ear shot of my words. I dig and I dig to get my head above the soil. I spend each waking moment simply trying to survive. Then that is exactly where I stop...after I have sulked it to death and made everyone else around me miserable. I complain and I survive. I've mastered that! I can only imagine how much better serving I would be if I somehow managed to focus instead on not only the aspect of survival of each and every event in life, but to also thrive! Can I find a  way to let grace seep into all the nooks and crannies of my experience and in turn find a way to make myself something more useful and worthy of this breath of air on the other side? Could I not only survive, but thrive into being more of what He wants me to be when all is said and done? What if I took those words of complaint and instead magically morphed them into words of testament of provision in the difficult times? What if I sought to find a way to turn a downtrodden mess into an accolade of faith? What if every single time I claimed it to be exactly what it was intended to be….an opportunity…to be more…on the other side? I'm not saying our current moment is not hard, it is REAL and it is HARD. I've spilled many tears in mastectomy, and lymphoma, and heart break, and loss, and on and on. We still feel the struggle to our cores and we hurt beyond belief. Emotions will happen. And I’m not saying this has to happen in real-time (though I fully believe it could for some), but rather that this becomes part of the process of healing that happens as you go and as you grow. It's simply put an opportunity to redefine pieces of myself that would, in result, propel me into breaking the shackles of feeling “plagued, burdened, worried, anxious” (and this list goes on of all the things we claim during hardship). THIS is who I want to be. A person who finds a way to thrive. Mere survival is for those who have no hope, but look around you at all the people who chose to thrive and find a way to get there. I think of a friend whose husband was killed by friendly fire while she was 8 months pregnant and how now she spends her time advocating for and with other military widows. Then of the mother who lost her 2 year old son to a diagnosis and now she had an annual golf event that raises thousands of dollars ($42,000 this year!) to give back to the cause. And the young girl, sexually abused, who grew up to open a school for ladies leaving the life of prostitution behind.  Then the divorcee who now leads a support group in her home for young wives who find themselves alone. I dare not attempt to define what this should look like for you, because I think it is each to their own as seen in these tangible examples here, but I do know that when you purposely seek something out, it has a way of finding you where you are. Being open to the concept of thriving in and of itself makes it a possibility and thriving completely changes the outcome. It takes purposeful action and a willingness to rise above circumstance and allowing Joy to find it's way back into your every day. It’s learning to find that silver lining and letting it propel you into a better version of yourself….and it takes time. I'm still learning to thrive in each of my circumstances, but I am on the road moving forward all the same.

So this is my advice (albeit now admittedly borrowed from a nationally known musician), find your way to not merely survive mastectomy (divorce, loss, unemployment, financial woes, wayward children, infertility, etc.), but to THRIVE in mastectomy. Whatever that may look like and in whatever timing that may occur in for you do everything you can to get there…on the other side…a better version of you. And when you are feeling lost in survival, grab on to someone who has traversed the road before you. They know the way. They can help get you to the other side.  Then tag, you are it. Go thrive!

Psalm 143:8 
Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love,
    for I have put my trust in you.
Show me the way I should go,
    for to you I entrust my life.

April 29, 2015 - Over a salad plate

It’s the question that plagues us all, those of us who are Christ-followers, when we so very often find ourselves tangled in the web of deciphering God’s will: “Which way would he have us go?” This question comes up for me time and time again!  And because I am a “pleaser”, so very much wanting to be what He wants me to be, I often find myself paralyzed by this question. I have no struggle with knowing and embracing that His will is ALWAYS better than my own (I’m blessed in that attribute) but this is likely the root cause of my constant pursuit of deciphering how to remain on the path he chose for me (and note that my knowing this truth, doesn’t mean I am always successful in choosing Him over me). I am fully cognizant of my ability to mess stuff up beyond recognition and my fear of that is a constant motivator. So I take very seriously trying to choose what God would have me do, maybe even selfishly, to ensure my joy. And because he has yet to audibly speak to me, I’m left to figure it all out as go.  I need that burning bush. I crave that shout out from the mountain top.  And where is my Gabriel messenger? Does he not know I would follow his words because I so fully know his way results in so much more joy than my own selfish-chosen path through this life? He has proven that time and time again to me. I could be an ideal candidate to receive that stone tablet, as I truly don’t envision a lot of kicking and screaming on my end to abide by his mapped out plan. But what happens when his plan is not obvious to me? The turmoil of the deciphering is exhausting.

I’m holding the vacuum hose up to the ceiling while standing on tiptoes and teetering in arm-exhaustion trying to keep it perched “just so” in the seam of the freshly spackled ceiling as Ron is up on the ladder with sandpaper in constant movement. And at that moment I’m in awe of what we are doing. It’s  9:45 at night, exhausted, and we still have several more tasks to complete before the following morning. Here we are doing something that just 2 months before seemed unfathomable. Our forever home, not our dream home, but our home that we chose purposely to take us into the frailty of geriatrics, is about to be sold. And as we repair and paint the last ceiling divot, I stand there mesmerized at what was about to unfold. A quick reminder of “never say never” and the uncertainty of the “knowns” of life. In recent weeks God, on numerous occasions, has prompted our heart to be open to transition. This willingness to give up our comfort zone in a trade out for the yet to be determined was knocking at our door. We felt this very strong pull to sell our home and move instead into something…different…with no place to go, a much smaller budget, and against the stream of this American Dream. On paper it seems bizarre and in contrast to everything we understood for ourselves in days of past, but in our hearts there was this understanding of some not-yet-defined purpose and intent. Many were calling us crazy, and some were watching our every step in anticipation of how this would fall out. Even we couldn’t answer the questions of those around us. We simply knew we were being prompted to go…to someplace to be determined. An in that there was this indescribable peace. This understanding that should He ask you to go, you pick up your mat and you go. And what would lie in your tomorrow, no matter how different, or less, or confusing it may seem, it would somehow result in so much more. Now let me stop here and say that this came over the course of many weeks for me. Ron somehow found himself on that bandwagon very early, but I did a little hokey pokey dance in my commitment level. One foot in, next day the same foot would be right back out, then the arms following in the same in and out jig. But as I prayed and prayed and prayed, and revisited the moments of past of God’s faithfulness in my life, I found myself leaving my foot, my arm, in the circle for longer periods of time until one day, almost without awareness of what had happened, I found myself “all in”. Next thing I knew, I was standing in my closet, on my tip toes, holding the vacuum hose at the ceiling in the closet where I had just recently discovered the true condition of my heart when trying to part with just 1 of 13 sweaters. In that same closet I found peace in the understanding that my goals would not always align with His and that His would trump mine every single time. Those of you that truly know me and have seen my failures and accomplishments in this life know this is a huge thing for this infiniti-driving, silver-spoon carrying, women of privileged standards. Only God could have transitioned my self-serving vain heart to seek him over my desire to have the comforts I have so purposely collected. Only God could have provided me a peace in the elements of this wide open slate of selling our “forever house” where we didn’t even have the very first inkling of how and what? And in my exhaustion while holding a vacuum hose, while my husband sanded away at the excess spackle, I felt in tune. 

The next morning, while I sat having lunch with a group of mentors, my husband sat in the middle of our bedroom in great prayer for guidance and wisdom in this decision we were pursuing as his heart had suddenly gone from peaceful to anxious. While my peace became solidified in a conversation over a salad plate, Ron’s began to unravel. In the span of a few hours we were trading places and the answers to our prayers becoming more evident. While I had prayed for peace to do what would be difficult and for acute awareness of the condition of my worldly heart, Ron was praying for wisdom and guidance as the leader of our household as to how this would all unfold. And as the days passed and the prayers became more intense, his peace with moving began to unravel as God started to answer his prayer for wisdom.

So you ask me, Sally, how was this an answer to prayer? And I can easily say that God was working on Ron and I individually knowing the states of our individual hearts. I have to wander if this journey was all about me and the need to re-align my goals and pursuits in this life. God bringing me to a point of surrender and then to an incredible sense of peace broke the stronghold this “stuff” of the American dream had me under. His allowance of anxiety in Ron’s heart as we approached this “sell date” spoke to us that this was about the journey of being willing to give things up, but that he wasn’t yet calling us to the actual decision. (Genesis 22 for full story- Abraham, take your son and lie him on the altar. Abraham, in your obedience as you carried your son to the altar, I now provide you instead with a substitute sacrifice to take his place). I think this process was about us discovering what we held dear and to get to a place where we “could” and “would” walk away from it all if needed. I don’t know if the full purpose of this exercise will be understood anytime soon. But I do know it is in preparation for “something” and that I am a better specimen of humanity today than I was in the days of yesterday as a result.

So while the lock box was removed from our door handle yesterday as we ended our pursuit to sell and chose to stay in our current house, the condition of my heart became a little less self-focused and a little more in alignment with the Sally He intended me to be. And the bond of our marriage became stronger as we sought, in unison and persistence, his plan for our lives and trusted him beyond our understanding of “what next”. Some of the most mentally exhausting weeks of our recent years, but some of the most fruitful and eye-opening in return. Thank you, Lord, for getting me past the ugliness of Sally and showing me once again that your way is the only true path to Joy. 

(And now to find a way to ensure I hang on to that for more than a month!)

April 24, 2015 - Old Made New

My mind is all a jumble. Swirls of this and that like oil drops skimming across a leftover rain puddle on the driveway. Just when you think you have the pattern figured out, the loop transitions just as quickly into a new pattern of blue, green, and red. You stand there mesmerized by the variations, but still unable to figure out the pattern and making sense of what is what no matter how hard you look. Constantly moving, shifting, swirling. We are in all sorts of disarray. Nothing serious, just this and that mingling us into a to-do list of enormous magnitude and complexity.  We took a week off for my birthday a week ago and headed to the Caribbean for some R&R and while that was relaxing and a great release from the here and now, we returned to find our plate even more scrambled. I'm longing for that beach side cabana chair again where the only thing that plagued our minds was if it was time to reapply sunscreen and how long had it been since our last nap.

I've shared with you some details around our house- to sell or not to sell. And while each day grew us closer to a decision to sell (to the point of meeting with agent, settling on a list price, and having a pre-sale house showing to someone who heard we might be selling all in 24 hours after returning from our trip), these past few days have that turned up topsy turvy again. We so desperately want to honor God in this process and as such have prayed for and sought wisdom and clarity with a ferocious tenacity, yet at the 23rd hour things again came to a crashing halt. Previously for me, this time for Ron. We live in a market where you put your house on the market that morning, that afternoon you have 6 showings, that evening you have 4 offers. So very awesome for sellers, so very terrifying for buying. Ron and I have worries about being able to find a house with us working full time and houses going under contract the day or two after they list. How can we keep up with that pace and working full time? And living in an apartment again until you can find a new house. Woe is me and my vain self.  But we know God provides if and when God calls. What a journey this has been as we learn about ourselves, our prayer lives, our dependency on each other, and even our vanity and lack there of. I honestly have found myself in a place I never could have imagined and it's a place where I have much more trust in myself and in God's ability to take something old (me) and make it (me) something new and better than before. His grace surely is enough to sustain me, and these 4 house walls are of the here and now are no longer a sustainer of my heart's content. I've learned I truly can part with these earthly items and that contentment comes outside of material gain. NOW, to see just how far God is going to take this for Ron and I. I have a lock box on my door, but have not yet committed to the sign in the yard. He has something in store, this I know, and I realize this process in and of itself may have been the true goal. I have so many of your praying for us in this, so I wanted to give you the update though I realize it is not all that informative as of yet.

I turned forty (absolutely no reflection on my mental disarray. smile). Yes, it happened. It is here and now it is gone as I guess I officially start my 41st year. As we all ask ourselves at this time point, "how in the world did we get here?" It seems just 5 years ago I was sitting in a wooden desk in a classroom trying to figure out if x = y then z = whatever it equals. Long gone are my blond pigtails and scraped up knees. Hello, wrinkled necks and floppy bellies. This week while sitting in a cafe, the waitress, in her 60s, was telling me about a plot with her 3 sisters to draw a line down the center of their chest and measure who has the saggiest boobs (I seriously don't know why she shared this with me but I think my telling her I just turned 40 started it. And how could I NOT share her story with you as well?). I almost broke out in a version of "do your boobs hang low..." but I quickly pulled myself together before embarrassing both her and myself. I got a great chuckle at this genius embracing of mid-age, and then got an even greater chuckle when I realized I certainly would lose (win?) that sag contest with boob 1 and boob 2.2 perfectly located where they should be ...well sort of, considering one implant has slipped out of place and the other is constricted up in a death grip of scar tissue. But all of that will be taken care of and I will soon be back to the victor of un-saggy impostors. Yep, another silver lining of mastectomy reconstruction. Still I encourage all of you to participate in this game of hilarity with your gal pals. Get out your magic markers and draw that line! Acceptance and tons of laughter. It sure does free up life for more important things!

Surgery #6 is approximately 3 months away (I could tell you the exact count-down but that would reveal it's role in my every day life, and I certainly don't want to admit defeat). It's not the dread of the procedure itself....ok, Sally, Shut up! It totally is the dread of the procedure. That stinking drain! My arch-nemesis. And then those stitches with Ron having to inspect the area every day to look for problems. The no showering. The surgical bra that turns into sports bras for weeks on end. The month long lifting restrictions.  Blah, blah, blah. One would think that after 6 goes at this I would be much more embracing, just as I was lecturing to you just one paragraph above. I definitely can claim "most improved" in that, but am far from certified in this task. I do in fact dread this the least of all the surgeries, maybe that is a numbness of here-we-go-again, but it still sits on my mental calendar every day. I only thought about it twice on vacation so I am making strides which I openly celebrate.

Three months away - and somehow we might fit in selling a house, moving from a house, (moving into an apartment?) buying a house, and moving into a house all in that time frame before the lift restrictions come into play.  Ron and I sure know how to keep things exciting (as we went to bed at 7:30 for the last two night in sheer exhaustion. Ok, so maybe we aren't all that exciting after all)! Thank you for your ongoing prayers for us as we seek out our role in God's plan.

Each month brings something new.

April 9, 2015 - The Big D

I had set a calendar reminder. I'm very guilty of doing the things "experts" suggest I don't. I use my email inbox as a to do list and have such great satisfaction in clicking "delete" after I finish a task. "Write orders for admission". Delete! Great satisfaction. Jovial delight. And for things that are not a specific time/date dependent, I send myself an email with the task in the subject line. "Send thank you note for the gift". Delete!  I'm not afraid to admit it's kind of a highlight of my work day. Delete! Sheer excitement with a matching grin across my face. "Pack for trip". Delete!  It's the Big D word that propels my day into greatness. (And I don't agree with the email experts of the world - us type A folks need this structure for sanity.)

The calendar reminder popped up on my screen and read "Contact Surgeon to confirm surgery date". I had no trouble with this task. Open up my email box. New message. Draft the question "Greetings! You had asked me to touch base with you in April and confirm the surgical date we had set for August. Is this still a go?" Sign and send. Open calendar reminder. Delete! One more thing off the to-do list for this week. And move on to item number 4 of the day "Print documents for meeting".  Delete! The Big D word was working quite well for me today and I was on a roll!
This day is certainly a success! Flash in the lower right hand of my computer screen - incoming mail.

Hi Sally:

Just confirmed his summer plans last week.

He is here and the time is available on Thursday August 6^th. 

The surgery will be at the same location with a drain tube that will likely come out the following Wednesday 8/12.

Did you see it? There it sits. Yep, right there on the screen to where now all the other words are now without meaning and obsolete. 

Hi Sally:

Just confirmed his summer plans last week.

He is here and the time is available on Thursday August 6^th.

The surgery will be at the same location with a DRAIN tube that will likely come out the following Wednesday 8/12.

The other Big D word. The MOST IMPORTANT D word that I know ever since August 7, 2012. The D word I thought I would never have to embrace again. The D word that didn't come up when we discussed plans for this upcoming surgery.  Mercy me, there it is right smack dab in the email staring me in the face without any room for
Deniability. Reply:

That all sounds terrific (minus the drain! But I totally want to have a drain if that is the best outcome). Thank you as always. This will be the last one. I'm sure of it, so i can do a drain one more time....my mental pep talk.
Sally

Hit send. DELETE! This time a tad less satisfactory and now questioning whether this email calender reminder is such a great thing after all. No reminder = no checking in = living oblivious to the Detail. Defeated, Deflated, Disgusted, Dreading, Down-right Dog-gone Down. I had a lot of new Big D words crossing my mind at that moment to surround the true Big D word in a crushing Disdain.

I will pull myself together in Delight again next week. This week, Disgruntled.  I allow myself 72 hours to mourn this Drain. Then I refuse to think of it again! Disclaimer: I realize it will sit there just under the surface. Dread it; loathe it.

March 31, 2015 - Swimming in the storm

As I sat on the stretcher with a grimace splattered across my face, and as she sat at the side of the stretcher relentlessly jamming a needle in and out of my calf, I started to get the inkling that every day life is not always compatible with the faint of heart. Am I really sitting here in this cubical choosing this procedure? And how come the paper work didn't describe this  intense pain that felt as though you had been hooked up to an electric probe? And was I really sitting here listening to her describe their last Disney vacation and all its hour after hour small world fun while she jabbed the "electricity" on again and again? (she's delightful for sure, I'm just stressing the surreal moment.) Dry needling, also incompatible with the faint of heart.

Each day we wake up, rolling out of bed (some more energized than others), not sure what we will find on the other side of the bedroom door. We may even have it all mapped out. Shower, breakfast bagels, makeup, morning commute, premium parking, meeting number one, paperwork number 45, phone call number 15 all before lunch. But just as sure as you get the first 3 hours inked on to the memo pad, you inevitably find something unexpected barrels its way into your moment. It's a constant up and down and right and left and anyone with any sense of type A strategic personality will quickly find themselves prey to the mayhem. And even those whimsical NON type A (how do you do it?) persons find themselves being pulled involuntarily into another unexpected moment of life. You may mind a little less, because you didn't have a to-do list to begin with compared to those of us who strategize every waking hour, but we all find the unexpected moments unsettling.

I started this blog as a memorial to my now mastectomized breasts. They are gone, but never forgotten (ok, well by me anyway). They've gracefully, rather not so gracefully, been replaced by two almost endearing imposters. And that storm of life is now rather a rainy mist of days gone by. Temporarily anyway. But wouldn't you know it? Just when you think you have one storm off the radar, one glance on the horizon and you see the assembly of cumulonimbus fluffs. You quickly gather your wits enough to know opposing forces are beginning to clash. Drop, drop, drop. Plop, plop, plop. Scanning the horizon for shelter and quickly finding it's 25 raindrops too late. You are smack dab in the middle of your next storm. If it's not mastectomy, it's dry needling for combative calves. If it's not unemployment, it's struggling to get all 3 kids to the right place at the right time on any given day. It's exhaustion, it's presumed failure, it's a diagnosis, it's circumstance. All of them are life's storms and we are all simply learning to swim instead of sink.

I'm finding we are drastically over critical of ourselves in those moments. We hold up an imaginary-poorly calibrated-designed by Mrs Perfect- measuring stick which should be set on fire and thrown out with yesterday's trash. Yet we cling to it with every fiber of our being trying to measure up to something we certainly can't be every moment of every day. Did we pray enough? Did we cry too much? Did we fumble at every yard line? And then we call ourselves "failure" for not doing or being enough. I recall those moments in mastectomy where I wondered if I let it get too much of me. Did I give my natural boobs too much credit? Was this really that big of a deal? Well, what we need to do is dump every inch of that doubting measuring stick in the trash for above all else, His grace is enough!

I want to reclaim life not as we know it and design it to be, but as God knows it and designs us to be. I want to swim in every storm not with perfection or accolades, but with faith and grace with strong strokes when I can and doggie paddle with a sideline of true friendship when I can't. Doggie paddles still get me to the finish line, right? And I want to claim God's provision in every storm and come out on the other side a little better than I was going in. I'm choosing to swim. I'm choosing to equip myself with tools that make my life compatible with any storm. I may look like a wet labradoodle paddling his heart out, but I know a labradoodle will jump in every single time and come out smiling and wagging his tail!

So I don't know what the next blog page will bring, but I do know I want to continue with transparency where I can. God has brought me so much closer to many of you through this journey. And he has brought me closer to him as I shared those moments with you.  Right now we are in a moment of deciding whether to sell our house or stay put (see previous blog post to catch up) and also trying to figure out the timing of that (if we decide to move) in light of another surgery coming up this summer. This has been a very challenging month for us as we seek to hear his plan for us as he grows our hearts for becoming "less". I'm hopeful we have it all figured out soon...for this too does not feel compatible with the faint of heart. It is tugging our pride, greed, and comfort in so many directions and challenging me to faithfully sit still and listen. It's a storm that needed to take place and will no doubt prepare me for something else on the horizon, but until all is made clear, we sit. And we listen. And very soon I know we will swim.

March 20, 2015 - My house is not my home.

I can't adequately explain the timing of this picture, which most have you have seen by now via my social media page, but to say it had a profound impact on me in my "tiny enormous life" adventure (see link here to catch up Enormous Tiny Life) would be an understatement of grand proportions. I wish you could have been in my head the many minutes prior to opening my garage door that morning (anxiety, selfishness, greed) and then again in the many hours afterwards (hope, trust, faith) in seeing this view. That moment of "voila, I make all things whole!".  My mind: the contrast as of speckled to solid, gelatinous to sturdy, wavering to confident, pitiful to whole. I, in a stark moment, became acutely confident of God's sovereignty when he calls to you to trust in him.

Ron and I have been seeking clarity and discernment in an issue that matters all to much to me. In our quest to find tiny, we are being prompted, asked, tempted(?)  to give up something quite precious and comfortable. Our house. My perfect little house of the exact proportions suited to my needs. The right level of comfort and content and location. My dream house of reasonable dreams. The house that made perfect human sense for the state of life in which I find myself.  And to my introverted self, my haven. MY home. What???

Being prompted, asked, tempted (?) to give up your home can bring you to your knees in a few seconds flat. Take my sweater - yes that one that I couldn't part with in my closet because I wore it twice last year - as it is certainly now very easy to give up in comparison, but do not take my home. Everything is relative, right? And yet there it sits, the prompting, the asking, the tempting, day after day as I find myself swinging from greed, to trust, to disbelief, to pride, back to trusting, then straight to the greed of square footage funneling in the vat of mindfulness all in a span of 3 minutes. This confrontation of faith versus self is seriously challenging and takes a toll on every moment of your day! Give up our home? Anything but that. I'm happy to offer you my material anything else.

What started as a prompting to be more purposeful in our days, and more in tune with having a little less of the American dream, became a prodding of minimization and freeing up our finances and lifestyles to whatever was around the next corner for us, not by our planning and manipulating, but by God's choosing for us...whatever that may be. There wasn't a stark revelation, but rather an underlying current moving us to toward less of this and more of that. A desire to be more aligned and better tuned so that we were simply better at life. It's murky in that we have no idea what that will look like, but very clear at the same time that only good will come of that. And in that process our "movie screen" paused on a picture of our house, something we held very dear. (I blame Ron. He started all of this. Wink). My house, which represents everything my soul does not. And it holds my everything. Every tangible possession I've collected throughout. It's my treasure collector. It's my safe zone. It's how I shut the rest of the world out after a frustrating job-filled day with one closing of the garage door. And there the question was being brought to the forefront "can you give up your house?". It was a definite change in events and out of left field. It came screeching around the corner in Amtrak Speed and precision. But it was certainly not on our schedule and surely it wasn't pulling into our station. With one sound of the train whistle, the movie plot got play-dough thick.

As we continue to sort through the current character development plot, I am finding that I'm not entirely sure if it is a specific outcome that is to be reached. I'm not sure this house or that house is the end point. Current square footage, lesser square footage, more square footage. Current zip code, different zip code, no zip code. I believe it all can bring great things when you heart is aligned. But I am quite assured instead that this process of trying to hear God's voice is growing Ron and I in ways that had not been measurable before. Am I WILLING to leave it all behind? That is the first most evident question we are being asked. This short month of contemplate is taking us places we had not traversed in the 6 years prior, and the richness of that is astounding. For our marriage, for our trust in God's provisions, for our view of the world around us, and for introspective searching and revealing of the condition of our hearts.  I'm not confident God is commanding me to leave my home, this structure of plank and nail, but rather revealing to us the whether we love him enough to do that which we would have previously considered absurd if he were to ask us t, particularly when the outcome is not yet known. Our pride and greed had us in a fingertip grip of massive proportions to the frame of our dwelling door. And in that we are finding that living a life fully devoted to him is willingness to leave it all behind if asked. And to recognize that not only in that will you find content, but you will find fulfillment and joy beyond anything imaginable in plank and nail. This house is not my home. The planks of wood not my confident. This garden tub not my sanctuary. And I'm beyond certain that my life through him is my eternal reward. So step away from me, luxury granite counter top! You shall have no hold over me!  (....though for full disclosure just last night when viewing another house, I was desperately embracing my 2 car garage. I'm trying, I'm not perfect. It's a struggle that is very real for us all.
)

Our conflict seems absurd on a secular level. Most of those around us will find us idiotic. And that is not lost on me. (Who leaves their "perfect house" when there isn't a reason to? No job loss, no relocation orders, no need for more space.) It makes no sense. We certainly aren't all on the same path here in life. But he path for Ron and I is ours and we are right in the middle of it and it's our Here and Now. Are we willing to let our faith be our walk? I know not where I will lay my head 4 months from now, but I know where I want to lay my heart. May I be more in tune tomorrow than I am today.

__________________________

Disclaimer: Before you abandon this blog ship, I do realize these past 2 posts have drifted quite a ways from the blogging of mastectomy. And for that I offer awareness of my faux pas. Mastectomy is a piece of my whole. Surgery #6 in August will bring us all back around in no time. For now, I am basking in a few months of life outside of mastectomy and giving you a glimpse of the rest of me. Maybe next week I will be back to the hilarity that can be found in my adventures at the grocery store. Commitment issues don't bode well when picking out fresh mozzarella (or new houses for that matter!).
__________________________

For extra reading that landed on my plate this week: 

1)  Homesick - by DesiringGod.org)

March 17, 2015 - The enormous tiny life

I'm on a tiny journey. I'm not even sure how I got here. It's been a process over the last 6 months or so but becoming more readily apparent in the last few weeks. It's a movement of an enormous life becoming less enormous. I'm pulled here, I am pulled there, constantly filling my schedule with this, with that, buying one more table to fill that tiny hallway space, hodge-podging life, its circumstances, its possessions, to make it "more" than it was 3 minutes before. Unfortunately, more has made me feel like so much less. I feel weighted, dragging, bogged down with the ins and out of this enormous life. I've made it to my worldly goal, but in that accomplishment, I find little rest. Instead, I am seeking yet another goal after goal after goal to stay ahead of the time tables. As I watch everything grow, I'm being squashed out of what I was intended to be. 

So if growing this enormous life is making me feel so tiny, could the opposite be true?  What if I could make life so tiny that in fact it began to feel enormous, but in an entirely different way - full of purpose and content? I don't know if this mastectomy played role in that. I'd have to say it did, as every life shaking experience brings an inward evaluation. It propels you closer to the clarity of a God focused lens and away from the fogged up spectacle of humanity that we so easily embrace. So yes, maybe in some ways, Ron and I leapfrogging through mastectomy, the death of a parent, job transitions, and such all piled up into a 2 year span became a springboard for this process of re-evaluation of what this enormous life really meant to me. And realizing that focusing on becoming smaller could in fact merge me into something better - a whole different kind of enormous.  In that smallness maybe we could find depth.

As Ron and I started feeling this stir, we had no idea exactly where it would go. In fact, we still don't know. But we are finding that the life we spent the last 6+ years nurturing and fabrication together piece by piece is filled with things of the here and now. The stuff. The gunk. The life-fillers that bring me closer to someone else's dream and less to that of what we think God placed us here for. As we spent our time making life bigger, we found we were missing our intended mark of making life smaller. More purposeful. More focused. More you focused. Less me focused. Less driven by someone else's standards of life. And there we sat, supposedly happy as a lark, in the defines of the Johnny Joe's standards. Three bedrooms two baths - check. Two cars - checks. Eight winter coats - check. Six pairs of jeans - check. More money coming in than going out - check. Job advances- check. But "happy" was becoming more transparent and that transparency brought about a reality. Was this what life was intended to be? Did this checklist of someone else's goals create in us a joyful and purposed reality? Was I more of a person today because of that newly acquired bracelet? Did my heart for other people grow when I added one more calendar event to my schedule? 

We feel our hearts shifting to something smaller. I want to be in a place where there is more of me to give. Less of me to take. Though I don't yet exactly know what that is going to look like. I begin by standing here in the center of my closet with my 15 long sleeve t-shirts. And my 8 pairs of flip flops. And my 12 skirts (all the numbers being reasonable estimates). And as I struggle to purge down to 5 sweaters, I become acutely aware of my shallow heart when I can't bear to part with something I wore only twice last year. And if my heart couldn't part with a poly-blend sweater, how in the world could my heart part with anything else in a quest to make my life fuller? That closet, with the sizes too small or too large that I hope (or don't hope) to one day return to could instead be a new outfit for that single mother of 6 looking for a job with nothing to wear to the interview. As I sit frustrated in my closet day after day trying to find something among the 100 items to wear, there she sits trying to find anything that she could get her hands on without taking food off her table. And that drawer full of blankets, did I need 5 just in case North Carolina becomes a frozen tundra in year 2235, while she would be grateful for just one blanket so they all could sleep in their own bed? My "just in case" was a reflection of my stingy heart, while her "wish for" was a stark reality of how selfish I could be. 

With that realization (and many others over the past so many weeks) came the motivation to purge, and as I watched my material possessions becoming smaller after this prodding of my heart, in great proportion my inner peace was growing larger. It all started with the closet, and I am eager to see where it goes next as I evaluate where my heart is for all matters of life. My schedule - being selective and purposeful with what and who gets to fill a time slot. My relationships - adding more people that fill me with wisdom and peace so that I may focus on giving that in return to those seeking the same. My home - making it a place that is safe so that people want to visit and that they may leave feeling full. My job - bleeding optimism and encouragement instead of pulling coworkers down into my negativity. My health - becoming a better me so that God may use me wherever he needs a vessel. My perspective - this world isn't about becoming great, but becoming small so there is less of me and more of you. And in that I hope you find there will be more of me to love and more love for me to give in return. I share this not as a testament of "look at me", but as a reflection of where I want to go and the prayer request to help get me there. May he finish the task he has started in me, and may I not be so stupid as to get in the way.

I'm giving thanks for moments like mastectomy where focus can be better tuned and a tiny life more enormous.

Click  www.tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com to access other posts. 

March 6, 2015 - "Why"

What is your “why me” story? Which moment in your life did you find yourself seriously questioning the reality of your most recent unwanted “calendar appointment”? What had you digging through the recesses of your mind wondering what in the world you did to anger the “upper management” so much so that they sent you “reprimand”? It’s so easy, even to point of being comfortable, to go through life looking for the cause in such great minutia that if not found in rapid pace, the event is almost missed altogether due to our compulsion and addiction of finding blame. We've become a human race obsessed with knowing why. We feel self-entitled as an outright constitutional right to know the “why” so that we can, with great detail and self-righteous commitment, offer justification or blame.

I remember several such moments in my life where this saga of “why” came to my forefront. One was a particular breakup of my youth. I remember very specific and incessant thoughts of needing to know why I wasn't chosen over the other. I couldn't accept the outcome of rejection until I had analyzed the path into unrecognizable shreds of pitiful becoming self-absorbed, bitter, and paranoid of being “less”. It consumed me. In hindsight I can now see that not knowing “why” was almost more harmful to me that the reality of breakup. (I now know why and find myself so grateful God leaves some prayers answered in opposition to my own will.)

A second event carries a bit more weight. The room was very dim, I’m assuming out of necessity, but it cast an eeriness over the moment. I can still see what little light there was reflecting from the steel (?) arm, supposedly carrying the cure, craning above me in a parallel to where I lay. I lay below it naked on a rotating table of steel and discomfort shamelessly padded with bed sheets as a miserable excuse for padding. The light was cast in the room from the right side, steadily growing dimmer as it cascaded to my left. Linoleum tile created the floor below, and mirrored above the steel arm hang a checker board arrangement of 20x20 ceiling panels. The room lacked color. It was a blah collection of steel and beige scattered with a smattering of sterile this and that. A few steps away, behind a lead lined wall containing single square window was the technician, whom had just gotten me settled onto the mobile table. He evidently controlled the cure. Yes, a he (some days a different she), and yes me, naked on a table. A quick click of a remote control had him sending me and the table into parallels and latitudes. Over-estimating sent me right back into the direction I had come to a lesser latitude. Again, again, there. And then similar traversing with the steel arm above only this time there were red laser pinpoint beams shooting down from the steel arm. The beams were navigated this way and that to line up with tattoo dots on my chest, abdomen, under arms, chin. Then silence as the arm and my table end their romantic swaying dance. Over the speaker: “Ok, Sally, hold still, we are ready to go” followed by 8-10 seconds of this rhythmic clicking sound. I can’t believe I have forgotten the time count. Was it 8 seconds, 12? 15? And after you counted in your head the beats of the seconds you finally hit the moment when there was no sound at all. We were done, until tomorrow, when we would do it all over again in the exact same order as my mother sat out in the waiting room listening to horrific music (which she adored) and putting together jigsaw puzzles while she nervously waited my return.

Nothing about the moment was normal. Everyone else I knew of any merit in my current world was sitting in English class, and then algebra, and then French. No steel arm, no padded table, certainly no nakedness, and I’m absolutely sure cliffs notes on Keats or Thoreau, instead of invisible doses of radiation, were their cure. There was no sadness in that moment for me (that came earlier). There were no frustrations (that too came earlier). A previously abnormal moment, after 30+ days of such, was now a very normal moment for me, and even that was abnormal. But, on one specific day as I sat counting the clicks that the machine regurgitated into the stillness of the room, I recall for the first times in the past 2 months the word forming on my lips… “why?”. Why was I the one on the table? Why was I stripped down to nothingness lying on a table when I could be commiserating “if x = 1, then y = 3” with the rest of the sophomore class. There were plenty of “mean girls” that could easily take my place, right? There surely could be a better substitute for me. That was the mind of an immature 16 year old processing the events of the moment. I may have uttered the word “why” before that very moment, but I don’t recall it. I am also sure my parents had uttered the word “why” on some occasion of this trauma, though I wasn't privy to it. But now, for whatever reason, as I lay shivering on a padded mobile table while counting clicks, the word “why” became my here and now.

There sat a grapefruit-sized tumor in the center of my chest, to the right of my heart, several inches down in depth from the surface, nestled on my lungs like a nest holding its prized egg. I don’t know how long it had inhabited its space, but its picturesque likeness on the grayed-out screen left no denying its existence. I carried a scar of tumor biopsy at the base of my throat and a jagged seam reflecting spleen removal at my abdominal center line. These signs were there pointing me to the reality of the situation, but I could find no tangible merit or guarantee of the “why”.  And there the “not knowing why” sat…with me…in the darkened room…on a frigid steel table…under the talkative steel arm carrying my cure. And it sat. And it sat. Fully exposed just as I was in the center of the beige cube.

It’s as if we can question something out of existence. If we can discover and then in turn discredit the reason, then immediately, in response, the disastrous earth-tilting event no longer exists. It will dissolve itself into nothingness the moment the “why” is deemed faulty. If I could prove I was indeed not worthy of a lymphoma diagnosis, then at that very moment the tumor would recognize its mistake,  fill out forms of relocation, and make its way down interstate 40 towing all of its blood vessels and ick in tow. If I could prove I was on my way to model appearance, he would stick it out. If I could show, I was without fault, I would still have that employment. No tainted words, no broken friendship. Knowing the “why” would propel me into perfection. But nowhere on that CT scan of my chest was anything that remotely resembled “why”.  And no amount of pondering, digging, begging could produce it. How can I blame someone if I didn't know the “who” behind the “why”????? ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH! And this consumed me for several weeks, each day as I climbed back up onto the table and under the steel arm.

I’m learning in my adult years that there can be great fault with this incessant discovery of “why”. The prodding and poking for the purpose of discovery, and in turn blame, carries little more than profound long-living bitterness. “Why” for the sake of blame, while it carries some relief initially, as time goes on, it equates each moment in life as a negative effect of cause. I admit there are moments when finding the “why” brings great revelation and truth, but in the case of blame it becomes a burden of worry and strife while we continue to obsessively plow our way to its discovery. I don’t want to discredit the value of knowing “why” when there truly is a fault of your own because you then have the opportunity to do self-growth in correcting possible a flawed behavior. I've had moments of that where I would have been much better off not uttering the harmful words to a friend. Recognize, growth, think with a heart of love before you speak. But in most moments of true calamity, I am finding the incessant and belligerent searching for “why” only duct tapes myself in paralyses in the moment, preventing me from embracing and overcoming better on the other side.

I was 16 and likely failed miserably at any form of triumph on this area. I fumbled the ball with each passing day becoming self-absorbed in the teenage years. But over time I did go on to accept and embrace having had a cancer diagnosis. It can bring about miraculous things if we let it. And even in death, it can bring about miraculous things for those around us, if they let it. That’s choosing the outcome instead of floundering in the “why”. It’s choosing joy over bitterness and blame. It’s encompassing light despite circumstance and despite the possible bitterness of “why”. I’m working to flip this switch in my thinking with greater frequency and success.  

So I ask myself again. What is my “why me” story? Which moment in my life did I find myself seriously questioning the reality of my most recent unwanted “calendar appointment”? What had me digging through the recesses of my mind wondering what in the world I did to anger the “upper management” so much so that they sent me “reprimand”? And I hope that as the years have gone by that I can identify less and less stories where the why even mattered at all. Instead of focusing on the forefront of my story of cause, I can instead relay in much greater detail the saga of joyful outcome.

Therefore
I ask you, surgery #6, what joy do you bring me next?

February 6, 2015 - "Surgery #6, I KNOW what I would do..."

If I've learned anything at all, it’s to “never say never”. It’s so easy to find yourself thinking you know exactly what you would, or more likely wouldn't, do in any given situation. You watch your friend going through a life struggle and you have it all figured out for her even before she finishes telling you her challenge. It is so easy to think we have it all figured out or we know what is best for us (and for everyone else around me!). I know exactly how to raise YOUR kids. I know if he is the one you will be with this time next year. I know what you should say to your boss when he comes down with new demands. It’s amazing more people don’t consult me, right? In all honesty, deep down, I also know that if I sit back and really give it merit, I actually don’t KNOW any of that stuff at all. I certainly may not KNOW what is right for you. I may have inklings and discerning moments, but I never TRULY know what is the best path for someone else. Now, when it comes to ME, I certainly KNOW what is the right thing to do, right? Well, I’m even finding in that, I am not always as certain as I would like to be. Sometime life isn't so black and white and you just have to do the best with what you have at that given moment. It’s not a crap shoot. It can become an educated faith-approved selection after a period of time seeking wisdom and truth.

 So there Ron and I find ourselves at a decision crossroads. We have to decide what to do with this surgery decision. Surgery #5 had not resulted in correction, and we are left facing a more invasive repair. I admit that initially I was paralyzed by the task. I had told Ron back in November, when we discovered the issue, that I would have to be pulled kicking and screaming back into an Operating Room ( I KNEW exactly what I would not do. I was not going back to the OR.) And now faced with that decision in reality, clarity of what I KNOW was nowhere to be found. Frustration ruled my roost. Disappointment fueled my furnace. A swirling concoction of “are you kidding me?” rolled up with a fresh coating of “only in Sally’s world!” and a sweet and tangy glaze drizzle of “I just don’t want to. You can’t make me!” lay on my plate. This consumed me for days while I endorsed the avoidance approach of decision making. You’ve been there haven’t you? Staring a decision in the face but finding yourself so paralyzed by the decision itself that you end up falling into the passive decision abyss by not actively choosing anything at all. It’s very comfortable and yet quite uncomfortable all at the same time. Comfortable at really not having to make a decision at all, and uncomfortable at awareness that you chickened out in avoiding the decision all together. Avoidance is very unusual for me and in contrast to my instant gratifier approach to decision making. Seek wisdom-weigh the pros and cons- pick one-move forward-don’t second guess-don’t look back. This is how I do life. It’s my thing. I’m actually pretty good at it. I am rarely paralyzed by anything. So how come I was finding myself courting frustration paralysis and teetering on that abyss? And why now of all time? The only thing I could do was bundle myself up into a prayerful cocoon and wait it out. I waited for clarity and rational to arrive at the doorstep with discernment and confidence in tow. And I waited.

Surprisingly, only after a few days, it became very clear to me that waiting wasn't the track I should take. I was getting nowhere. Frustration will still planted on my welcome mat and it wasn't producing anything of merit. Get over it, Sally! The facts about surgery are there. They aren't going to change over time. No amount of waiting will change the pros and cons. I became acutely aware that frustration and disappointment was not to be waited out. What I needed to do was to make an active decision to put those negative influences in hindsight and choose purposeful clarity and rational thoughts. To me, this was to be an active process, not a passive one. Choose to let my emotions control me or choose to control my emotions. It was amazing how quickly God brought me peace in that, not only about the process, but also about the outcome. I was being nudged forward. It was almost as if the moment I decided to not let the emotions consume me, God replaced them with confidence and clarity. He made himself known reminding me that this is his story, and all I needed to be was faithful. Sometimes faithful takes you to place you might not would have chosen to go. And always does faithful trump anything you could come up with on your own. I’m not claiming faithfulness as in God chose for me to go through mastectomy surgery #6. I’m claiming faithful in that I will not make decisions under irrational fear or disappointment or frustration. I sought him when I started this journey so I will seek him now with next steps with how it unrolls. I can have confidence in the outcome and know that taking the easy passive route is not always the path to joy.

We became active. We put it all out on the table and flung away the fear and dread of another procedure. We got down to the core and let the rational juices flow. We didn't fear the drains or incisions (though I still readily admit a very strong dislike of them) and we landed with embracing them one more time. We tried the easy, which wasn't successful, and now we choose the more difficult and ask for God to be there with us. So to you, Surgery #6, we allow you to join this story. We know not what you hold but we ban you from inducing negative thoughts, fears, or frustrations. And if and when they seep in, we claim faithfulness, and joy, and wisdom, and discernment have been my guide. You have no power over me.

 Six more months to be surgery free and recover from this past surgery. I started in August, I hope to end with Surgery #6  in August when I will step into the arms of mastectomy and reconstruction just one more time. You make me weary, but you make me wiser.

(For more information on how we got here see previous post from January 22- “When Opposites Don’t Attract”. http://tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com/2015/01/january-22-2015-when-opposites-dont.html

January 22, 2015 - When opposites don't attract.

I have to admit I was really torn about releasing this post. I knew I wanted to write it, for myself and for clarity seeking, but I wasn’t sure if it was one I would put out there for others to process. Also, I didn’t know the correct timing of the post. Is it too soon to put information in front of others, particularly when I am still in the “sort” stage? But I wanted, at a minimum, to capture my immediate raw response. As I read other blogs about mastectomy, I see circumstance (this happened, that happened), dNates, time, places, facts, but I don’t often see emotion and I think recognition of potential emotions, risks, complications involved is important when evaluating whether you yourself want to choose this mastectomy path. I promised myself I would do what I could to open myself not only to recording the timeline of events but also how it impacted me as a unit and us as a family. That’s risky, I know. It opens myself to judgment of pity-seeking, or intense scrutiny of decisions, or floating thoughts of “who does she think she is?” all of which too often plagues the female community, but in contrast it also opens yourself to the kindness of great people. More importantly, it moves me closer to my commitment to God to do whatever he wants to do in all of this, including my writings. So I choose the latter two outweighing the inherent risk of the former several. My mother offered me the kindest response to my most recent hurdle when she said “…and my advice is, for me not to offer you any advice at all” followed by all the love a mother can offer. Ron and I want to sort for a bit, but my best advice to myself is Be still, and know that he is God. Then, the reminder of trust him in this story and let my faith be bigger than my fears.

Earlier this week I found myself back in that Lead Plastic Surgeon waiting room. This appointment had been planned for a 3 month follow-up from my most recent surgery. And there still, as if I hadn’t miss a day, sat the many faces of breast cancer. I’m very observant in this particular waiting room as I know I am absolutely surrounded by stories of hope, fear, passion, intensity, struggle, triumph…and the list could never end. I so very much want them to see the “you can do this!” in my eyes, and not the anxiety i was facing. So there I sit, just taking it all in. To catch you up, this past October I had a procedure to repair a “slipped implant”. It is the goal of an implant to stay exactly where it was placed. An implant tooth? You certainly don’t want it to find its way to your esophagus. And cochlear implants should be nice and cozy in your ear. So I could only assume a breast implant should want to stay on the breast where they were intended to be. That is a reasonable goal, right?

Back in November, I noticed something seemed “off”. As a reminder, last summer I had noticed my breast implant, while technically in my chest region, was subtly and then not so subtly traversing (slipping?) down my chest thus creating and ‘drunkard off kilter” appearance compared to the opposite side. It alone wasn’t so problematic because it almost made it more natural looking on that side (as opposed to the perky perfectly round boobs found in bikini swim suit shots), but because we have TWO breasts, you certainly want each of them to reside in the same general vicinity – not one up and one down. I reached out to the surgeon who confirmed that yes, the implant was not well supported by the chest wall and it was starting to slip (See posts from July 2014 if you want more details). So we planned a surgery for this past October to “tack up” the implant in a relatively simple procedure, knowing there was no guarantee it would work, but hoping it would so as to avoid a more invasive option which would increase my risk for infection (been there done that already the previous year).  What I didn’t divulge to you in much detail was the status of the opposite boob. More on that in a few.

Ok, so the procedure took place in October and now fast forward to November when I notice that the operated boob seemed a little “off”. While there were some things that were better, the overall “slipped” appearance remained unchanged- more specifically it  looked almost the exact same after surgery as it did before, minus a few improvements, thus I was suspecting a less than successful surgery. I promised myself to put it out of mind because we were entering the holidays and quite frankly I just needed a break from it all and would re-evaluate at my next appointment scheduled in January. There wasn’t a thing I wanted to do or confirm until then.

Now I sat in the waiting room with Ron for my follow-up appointment and then we get called back. My suspicions were correct, unsuccessful procedure, with the exception of a few minor improvements that I won’t really go into here. Stepping back to big picture, it wasn’t so much the slipped boob that was the issue. What I didn’t really divulge before was that it was so noticeably slipped because in fact the OPPOSITE side was starting to constrict upwards because of the formation of scar tissue at the incision sight. So when you put those two together, you had a slipped boob 1 on one side and a constricted scar tissued boob 2.2 on the other thus making it an unsightly mess. I could give you all kinds of mental images on the constricted side, but I will spare you. 

The goal was to fix the slip, because this was the easier and least invasive option with the least risk, with hopes of evening things out and also preventing worsening droop. We were successful in stabilizing the implant to prevent worse droop, but it didn’t lift up like we had expected. (Have I lost you yet? Hysterical! I am picturing your faces all scrunched up trying to follow all of this. See, I can still laugh at this if I step back to the 4500 foot level. I’m still very weeble-wobble-humpty-dumpty in the booby area. I'm pretty sure these impostors won't be making an appearance at mardi gras this year, though lead plastic surgeon gave me the complete go ahead. Rest assured, mom, it will never happen.)

Now that you are totally up to speed (or maybe wanting to stick forks in your eyes because this description is so confusing), to say I was a bit on the sad side would be a gross understatement. In contrast, to show how simple I can be, my prayer request to my mother prior to the appointment was not that God would fix the implant, but that he would give me the oomph to hold it together without crying during the appointment. It’s the little things, right? I admit I failed there, but that wasn’t God’s fault, I got the emotional crying gene when it comes to things like this. I am 100% hold it together in a high tense emergency situation, but stuff like this can make me tear up. I honestly simply felt the wind knocked out of me (which is strange because I already suspected this outcome), but the confirmation of my suspect had some definitive effects: sadness and the feeling of defeat. Then there was the anger of a wasted surgery and the realization of it having been a 5^th surgery. Not exactly wasted, some things were improved, but it still felt less than purposeful on many levels. Insert a little conflict on balancing choice, and on and on. My emotions were raw and I have difficulty trying to define those to you here, but I wanted to acknowledge them to show what an emotional roller coaster this mastectomy/reconstruction process is. However, I could claim faith in what I already knew – that those raw emotions would be temporary, the initial 24-48 hours of response, and then the rational would follow.  It always comes and clarity is approaching.

Now that I am approaching a more rational state, our very frustrating decision to make is to decide if I am willing to do the more invasive option, which we were originally trying avoid: open up the constricted breast, remove the implant, breakdown and remove the scar tissue, and put back in a new implant. Way different than just taking the skin and tacking it up as we did this last time on the other side. I have to weigh out the risk and benefit and make a choice, and if chosen determine when that timing would be (I need to go 6 months without a surgery! Is that too much to ask???),….and very simply just traipsing through another surgery. I'm frustrated!!!!

Clarity and wisdom. Putting that on God’s to do list. And also appreciating that my sphere of life feels lighter today than it did yesterday.Isaiah 40:31

"But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint."



Click  www.tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com to access other posts. 

December 30, 2014 - The club you never wanted to be in

I opened the email to read that this very morning she had been tested for the BRCA (breast cancer) gene. Her mother had breast cancer in her 40’s and the daughter’s gynecologist recommended she get tested. Insert that dreaded feeling of having sent off for a test and now waiting the weeks for a determination. Not a fun few days, I imagine. I was surprised to find that the email was asking me for words of advice. My reply was a simple “no words until you have a definitive answer” and uttering on about panties in a wad for no reason, hoping for the best, may be a moot point. But the email had my mind pondering. What WOULD my words of opinion be?

A few summers ago I pondered this question for myself in a blog post titled “The Burning Question” (http://tradinginthetatas.blogspot.com/2013/05/may-5-burning-question.html). I recall asking Ron “did we make a mistake in doing this?” As we dissected that question and in turn wrote the words on the screen, I realized regret would not be in my vocabulary of this experience. I don’t want to answer that same question from someone else regarding what path they should choose. It is a personal decision that no one can really walk you through or to. We can share our experiences, but a choice to undergo prophylactic mastectomy is not a decision I want to help you make. Not because I don’t deeply care for you and want to support you, but because I don’t want anyone to ever look back with regret and think of my words of advice. Nor do I want you to find yourself grateful for your decision and think back to my words of advice. Instead I want the decision to be all yours but based on being informed either through the eyes of my experience or that of someone else you may know on this same path. You may fly through with flying colors, or you may find yourself status post multiple surgeries and complications. I simply want you to know that each surgical outcome is individual and not necessarily predictable. You may find yourself consumed with emotions or you go in the OR one day and leave that same day all the same. It’s not predictable. And experiences are certainly not transferrable.

In prophylactic mastectomy:

·        You may feel guilt. As one person put it “we just picked up our ball and went home before the game even started.” We chose to dodge the bullet instead of facing the beast. There’s guilt in choosing that path as so many women face breast cancer. You can at times feel lesser of a woman as a result. But as another friend put it “no one looks down on you for saving your life”. There is no shame in being proactive.

·        You may feel vain. You lop off both boobs in a life sparing measure and find yourself maybe not totally loving their reconstructed counterparts. It would be less vain to remain boob-less indeed, but as I learned in mastectomy, these things carry a powerful sense of self that you would never guess until they are no longer at home on your chest. Sure we banter and prod each other with jests of sag and droop and sizes of miniscule and boulder proportions, but the minute they are no more, you find that sag and droop was absolute perfection. These breasts that use to be a nuisance now carry with them a sense of womanhood and you find just how endearing they can be when you choose to make them no more. My one point of advice I will offer, if given the choice, do immediate reconstruction. If you don’t have that choice, just know you may feel some things you have never felt before during the waiting period. And it’s normal.

·        You may feel pride, and that emotion will surprise you! There is a sense of pride when you can bring yourself to choose removing your breasts. Kind of a feminine empowerment. Or maybe a sense of if I can do this, then I certainly can do (insert whatever you want)…. It’s subtle, but it may be there underneath the other emotions that take forefront on any given day.

·        You may feel financial burden. Even when covered by (and even encouraged to pursue) insurance companies still only pay the majority. The reminder is still rather pricey. So know this in advance. Ask questions up front and get price estimates and quotes from your hospital. Insurance companies are required by law to cover reconstruction if they cover mastectomy, but it still isn’t 100%.

·        You may feel frustration. You will have many restrictions immediately after surgery. You can lift this, you can’t life that. You can take a sponge bath, you can’t shower. You can’t change your own bandages, depending on where they are. You can’t change your clothes by yourself when you can’t lift your arms. And for risk of being too blunt, you may or may not need help in the bathroom. You will have to rely on someone to help you in many areas and for those of you that are super independent, this is incredibly frustrating.

·        You may feel a strong need for a female friend. There are going to be some female things your male counterparts just won’t understand. My husband recognized this early on and called in my mom for reinforcements. Find yourself a gal you want to do life with and put them in your mastectomy pocket. There will be plenty of moments for female laughing (and maybe crying).

·        You may feel indecision. No matter which option you choose, removal or not, you will wonder if you made the right decision. Particularly when things get tough. But as with any choice in life, you do the best you can with the information you have on hand at the time. Do your part to educate yourself, choose, then don’t look back.

·        You may feel nothing at all.

So instead of advice, I can only offer up this 130+ page blog of the triumphs and trials of boob 1 and 2.2. I don’t regret my choice, though it was plagued with 3 more surgeries than intended at the point of the decision, as I am wiser for it and now most certainly to be breast cancer free. After all of this uttered on the many preceding pages of screen, I still would lay down on that table as I did August 7^th. But I know many may not choose that same path given the same experience. In fact, I still haven’t found another woman who chose this fate in my same circumstance (though I am sure she is out there), but I have met many who have chosen his path in response to a BC diagnosis or a BRCA gene confirmation. If you choose to “go for it”, these are women who can share their perspective with you because though we all had very different and similar journeys into mastectomy, I know not one who won’t choose advocacy for you and yours. It’s a club you never want to be in, but once you find yourself inducted, you most certainly feel loved and supported as we all learn the boob is much more complex than we realized and an envelope of skin is never just that.