May 16, 2009

I am sorry not to be at Bindy's life celebration this afternoon. I have been cleaning out my old e-mails and thinking a lot about what it is going to be like on Monday after the surgery. There isn't anything in my life that I can compare this to. For some, the experience of having an arm or a leg amputated might compare. I read that women frequently have phantom breast pains after mastectomies as do amputees. A lot of friends have said, how can you be so calm? The reality is I have no choice but to do this surgery. No amount of hiding under the bed (what Anne said her reaction would be), or agitating about what is going to happen doesn't change what I have to do.I have to have this surgery.  So I have chosen to do it calmly. Rigdon said he really wasn't surprised when the diagnosis came in, however we were both flummoxed when the second tumor was discovered. There has been a lot of "female" cancer in my family so I wasn't surprised either. 

The good new news is that Alexis will be arriving on Monday morning and will keep Rigdon company during the surgery wait and will be there when I leave the recovery room to go to my room. Alexis will stay until Wednesday morning and then Christopher takes over.  I feel like I am in a huge cocoon with family and friends embracing me from all around. Amy's gift of cranial sacral massage was perfect and the left side of my neck has relaxed because of her healing hands.

Another thing that has made me very happy is I had my car tuned and detailed at the Volvo dealer last week. It looks gorgeous, I had all the stickers removed and my next task is to get my front seat fixed which has ripped from the multiple times over 13 years I have slipped in and out of it. It has almost 100k miles. When I visited the Ream's last week, Chris Ream carried something to my car for me, looked inside and said, "My god, your car is a pig sty." And he was close to the analogy including the bits of straw in the back from runs to Toby's. So I thank Chris for pointing it out, the clean car is a real upper. go figure