Counting the cards

My father taught my brother and me to play cards when we were very young. Many hours were spent sitting around the dining table at my grandparents' house in the country, playing hand after hand of '500' late into the night.

My grandmother clearly couldn't concentrate
for long enough to smile for the camera.

The game was frequently enlivened by the fact that our pack of cards had no joker; my grandmother, struggling to communicate with us in Franglais and subject to spasmodic lapses of concentration, regularly forgot that we'd substituted the two of spades. This threw my father's card-counting pedantry into total chaos. Often she played it as a discard, causing him to become incandescent with frustration. Once she threw it out in kitty, a fact only discovered after the playing of the last trick; I can still remember the sound of my father's chair being pushed back in disgust as my brother and I fell about laughing.

The levity was always welcome to me, as for some reason I've never been lucky at cards. Usually I'd be dealt hand after hand of complete crap; I'd spend the hours tossing out fives and sevens with mounting gloom. Thus was I introduced, painfully, to the origin of the expression 'I can't take a trick'.

And I've got to say, lately that saying seems particularly apt.

********************

I mean, take this blog post- really, the least of my worries. I was planning on calling it 'The gift that keeps on giving', a reference to the Freeloader's habit of tossing some new and delightful consequence of our illness in our path the moment we stagger to our feet after the last trip-up.

But right now I can't even take a simple little trick like that. Writing while depressed is a bastard of a thing, but I'm trying to keep everyone up to date, aren't I? I had to try. So I sat down, and started, and stalled, and stopped. Weary of trying to squeeze the words out, short of confidence, fearing my post was just a series of pathetic whinges strung together on a twist of self-pity, I took a break and went over to read the excellent and often hilarious breast cancer blog 'Boob in a Box'. And found THIS.

Trumped. It figures.

So here I am trying to hang my post off a new image. Gotta try. Five days and counting, when a post usually takes me less than an afternoon to put together.

****************

Four of diamonds. Five of spades. Six, seven, nine of hearts.

Finding that the name of my blog post was already in use is, of course, the most minor of irritations. As mock-cream icing on the sheepshit cupcake on my plate right now, it would be enough to cut through my self-pity and give me the giggles if I wasn't feeling so damn depressed. There's an awkward truth for you- depression has noooooo respect for the size of one's problems.

See, nothing that's happened to me lately is life-threatening. Very little of it, in the whole scheme of things, is earth-shattering. I feel supremely guilty for even mentioning the latest tripwires the Freeloader's laid across my path, given the genuinely deadly hurdles lying in wait for some of my friends. In my head I'm a two-year-old, protesting mama's failure to purchase a lollypop at the supermarket checkout.

I mean, I'm not dying, or not right now. I'm not in total physical agony. I know I have multiple blessings I should be counting.

But depression doesn't care about that. It just is. And on top of the screwed-up chemicals in my head, I feel like I'm being tossed hand after hand of crap. I've been stoically playing the hand I've been dealt (another of my father's favourite catch-cries) for two years now. Enough already.

So I'll play this round with cards on the table, and you can do the counting and judge for yourself whether this is really such crap after all. Just be aware that if you tell me it's nothing to be depressed about, I'll probably come after you with a length of 4x2.

Or cry, even.

Understood?

Perhaps I shall add some completely distracting photos in the margins, just to stop you being dragged into the mire with me. They represent things that have made me feel better, for however short a time. Honesty requires me not to keep the king of hearts up my sleeve.

********************

The first piece of rubbish dealt to me after the trip to Melbourne was a deep crack in one of my oldest friendships. I shall not shine a bright light on that one in public, but suffice to say that one of the two central pillars of my support system is no longer regarded by me as weight-bearing.

Cleaning out some old boxes of
photos, I found a picture of a
close friend from primary school.
We lost touch years ago.
Weirdly, within days she'd asked
to friend me on Facebook. Love
you, Viv.

Does that pillar need to be removed, replaced or repaired? I have no idea. Right now I don't much care. I'm exhausted, I'm depressed, I'm still coping with the fallout from surgery. I don't have the energy or the patience for the careful insertion of glue into the cracks of something that might, despite my best efforts, be beyond fixing. My trust has never been easy to mend once it's fractured.

It's a card that lots of us have been surprised to discover in our hand, this breaking down of supposedly secure relationships after a life-threatening diagnosis. Partners who cut and run when the Freeloader gets his hooks into their loved one. Friends who suddenly turn on you when you're at your most vulnerable. Sadly, they're a dime a dozen. But it's the first time anything of the sort has happened to me. It's a huge shock, to have the rug ripped out from under me when I haven't even walked all the way to the end of the Freeloader's stinking red carpet. I really thought that one was glued to the floor.

And that, says the little critic on my shoulder, concludes a despicably mixed metaphor- but I'm beyond caring about that, too.

********************

Then there's the small matter of living with my redesigned chest. What chest, one might ask; there's a five of spades if I ever saw one. I have a scarred hollow where the left and right bower of hearts used to be. Almost every item of summer clothing I own now looks ridiculous on me, and when 27 degree temperatures started to hit this week, I discovered that I have almost nothing cool and comfortable to wear. Or rather, nothing that isn't likely to send small children running screaming for the safety of their mothers' skirts.

Meet Suzie. She doesn't care
what my chest looks like.

Getting ready to go out now involves about eight failed costume ideas, safety pins, swearing and tears, followed by considerable discomfort for the duration for the excursion. Unless, of course, I'm prepared to feel publicly humiliated by the discovery that my newly vacant top is gaping open and showing my scars in all their puckered and tagged glory.

Or perhaps my soft tits have ridden up to my chin while I've been talking to someone. Is there any polite way to reach into one's clothing and pull one's bra back down to a semi-normal position? Discuss.

And as much as I tell myself this is only temporary, the fact remains that unless I take to the burqa, I'm going to feel ugly every time I have to go to town until after my reconstruction. Don't even start on buying myself a new wardrobe. Hours prowling the op shops resulted in more tears (there was one vertically gathered pink top which really did succeed in making me look like a turkey carcass), and finally, ONE rather formal summer top with the right cut to disguise the damage.

I suppose I could just wear that one everywhere till it stinks and falls to pieces. And even with that one, I still have to safety-pin my ah-bra to my undies to stop the pretend tits popping out the top. (Try it sometime. Wedgie city.)

Call me vain; I'm not good at feeling ugly. It just makes me want to curl up under the doona and cry. Or perhaps demolish the Swiss GNP in chocolate- I've somehow managed to gain back too many of the kilos I'd lost, in a lot less time than it took to lose them. That's what happens when I'm not able to exercise for a few weeks and feel pole-axed by misery to boot.

The wistaria and jasmine are out. The smell
is intoxicating.

Oh, I did try to get back into the exercise once I'd recovered enough from surgery. And then I turned away from the laundry sink too fast one day and banged my knee on the washing machine- another triumph of clumsiness- and could barely walk for a couple of weeks.

And did I mention falling off my bike when I tried to dismount, the first time I rode it after surgery? No? I'd forgotten how careful I had to be since Taxotere killed some of the nerve endings in my feet.

And then- probably because I was still sleep-deprived- I forgot my tablets a couple of times, which immediately gave me joint pain because there's only fish oil standing between me and screaming heap, and then when I started taking the damn Arimidex again I got all the side effects double-strength all over again. And then the friend thing with my bestie came to a head after festering for ages, and then another friend's disease progressed, which I found completely devastating because it's so fucking unfair, and then the depression came down around my ears like the sea closing over the Titanic, and all in all, well, four of fucking diamonds all round.

**********************

To top it off, when I was drying my feet after a shower the other day I glanced at my chest and realised I had what looked like a misplaced booblet growing at the bottom of my rib cage.

I distracted myself from myself
by making a mosaic panel for
the bathroom wall. Note that
the mirrors are small enough
not to reflect my chest.

Oh, relax, it's not cancer. Just bloody lymph gathering in the wrong place. But it shouldn't be there. Off I went to Miss Sunshine to get it checked out.

Yup; lymph reading up to six, still normal but as high as it's ever been. Cording in my left arm, which explains the pain shooting down my forearm when I bend my wrist backwards.

And just to make it clear to you that this is, indeed, the should-be-joker two of spades, reneged and then played illegally as a discard:

The reason for this sudden reversal of my lymphoedema fortunes is- yup, you got it! A little extra gift from my BRCA2 mutation. (All together now: Fuck you, cancer.) I spend HOURS of my life retraining the lymph from my left arm to move across my chest to my right armpit after the first mastectomy, and the second mastectomy goes and puts a bloody great wad of scar tissue in its way.

Jesus wept.

So it's back to the massages and exercises every day for me. So much for getting my life back. Oh, and did I mention wearing the damn anaconda sleeve on my arm till it settles down?

There's a fashion statement to distract you from my gaping top and wedgie.

(Just reminding myself: There are worse places to be depressed. I know I'm depressed because this doesn't fix it, and it should.)

*******************

So there you go. That's my life right now. Whatcha think of that hand?

Sorry. I know open misere is such a bore for the other players.

Look for the small joys

In the absence of before-and-after
photos of my career, here is one of
my favourite trees as I remember it.

From my cancer support group:

Forgive me sisters for it's many a month since I have been to this site. I'm back because only all of you will understand and have some insight for me as to where I go from here. I own a business or two. I love one of those businesses. On 13/3/13 I walked away from that business, returning only to do the pays and whatever else I absolutely had to do. 13/3/13 is my cancerversary. In the mean time a worthy band of stalwart staff have manned the fort and done their level best to look after my baby. However there are some serious slips in procedure and day to day running that are costing me big time. Now, a year and a bit on, I am supposed to be doing better. I should be making decisions left, right and centre and picking up slack. I am, in all reality a blubbering mess . I don't know if I used to be different or I should be listening to the angry me who says the C word a lot and wants to lay down the law. Even when I was much younger and probably really bad at it, I was super confident at staff management and HR in general. Now .............I say the C word a lot and enjoy doing so. I want someone else to solve my problems and accept that I can no longer lift heavy things. WHO IS THIS PERSON?

The same tree, destroyed by fire. Yep,
that looks a lot like my career.

Dear B,

Your question rings so true to me. I recognise where you are instantly, because I've been there too. There we were, the ones who could do it all- so competent, so confident, without a doubt the brains of the operation. And then the bomb dropped on our heads, and when the smoke cleared we truly believed that we'd be able to pick up from where we left off. It just takes time, right?

But we can't. We can't, because the person who created our empires- the career empires on which our self-esteem relies so heavily- that person has been changed forever. They're gone.

We don't, as you say, even recognise ourselves.

Cancer doesn't just rob us of our body parts. It robs us of our careers and abilities, it robs us of our self-esteem, it robs us of our sense of certainty about both the big things and the small things.

This is how your problem looks to me:

The nice round white peg has been wrenched out of its nice round white hole where it belonged, turned sideways, chopped into a weird and unrecognisable shape, bashed with a mallet till it's splayed and flattened, painted pink (god help us all, because we seem to be pink for life) and thrown into a corner.

Now you want to pick up that flattened, mangled, beaten-up peg and thrust it back into the same old hole and- holey moley, it won't fit!

Well might we throw the C-word about with aplomb.

********************

(Oh dear. All the other nice white pegs are in shock because we said the C-word. White pegs don't say that, right?)

(But pink ones do.)

********************

B, you and I and many of our friends are now splattered pink pegs for life. Being a neat, round, white peg is a distant memory. So what the roaring fuck do we do now?

I guess the first thing is to accept that we're different, and it's permanent, and it's time to grieve what we've lost. That's where counsellors come in. Find a good one, and when you do, say the C-word to her as many times and as loudly as you want.

I did.

Acceptance isn't easy. I've spent quite a few days trying to sort through my stuff from my old childcare career, trying to throw or give away the things I know I'm not ever going to need again- because that person who could lift babies and children safely and juggle five expectations at once in her head and vacuum floors and put out twenty beds is gone, gone, gone.

In her place is someone who isn't ever quite certain of her arm strength, who gets confused easily and forgets words and names, who can't do a lot of physical work without collapsing from fatigue or turning bright red and ripping off her clothes before she expires from heat exhaustion. Someone whose bullshit detector is constantly on high alert, who's impatient with the less enlightened members of the human race. Someone who really wants nothing more than her old life back, and doesn't appreciate having how changed she is rubbed in.

It has to stop, B. We have to stop trying to jam that peg back into the old hole, because it's just hurting us more.

**********************

My grandfather used to have a saying whenever one of us kids was complaining. He'd say, “Look upon the doughnut, not upon the hole.” So I am obliged to point out that sure, we've lost a lot, BUT. Because of our illness, we are better people. Not more competent, confident, capable people- but better people.

We have knowledge that you can't buy or learn from a book.

We're more compassionate to those who genuinely deserve it; we're much better at sorting those people from the wailing #firstworldproblem arrested-development pseudo-teenagers who've never had a real challenge in their lives.

We know how to really support our friends, the ones who've been through the mill alongside us, and we understand them in a way nobody else can- and vice versa.

We know how strong we are, because we walked through the fire and came out with dragons on our shoulders. (Sure, those dragons say cunt a lot. You get that with dragons.)

We don't live in denial any more, because a part of us knows how uncertain life is, and that we will die. (Perhaps soon. Perhaps not.) We know there are no guarantees, no matter how many soursop smoothies we drink and how many kilometres we run a week.

So what can we build from the wreckage of our old lives and the precious knowledge we've gained?

********************

First, we have to throw away that feeling of needing still to be competent at the old stuff. WE AREN'T. We are competent at much more important stuff now. 

Can we use that to make something better from the wreckage? Is there a way to use what you know now to improve the business you loved, while passing on the things you can't do to someone who can (and looking away till they learn to get it right)? Can you work fewer days, take a different role? Can you lose your inner control freak (yeah, yeah, I have one of those too) and let something new evolve?

And if not, can you look at it more coolly, be less involved, wave goodbye to it and find something else to make the new you feel good? Nothing stays the same forever, and it's a mistake to try to make it so. We're not indispensible, we're not perfect and neither are the people around us. Our career 'babies' eventually fall apart, even when we haven't had a life-threatening illness explode in our faces. Our replacements make horrible mistakes that make us want to cover our eyes and scream. (Think Apple after Steve Jobs.)

There was a time when I worked in one of the best music education schools in Australia, and it was my life; I loved it. It was everything to me. But the staff around me changed, ideas were manhandled and mangled, the whole thing started to build up downhill speed and there wasn't a damn thing I could do except get out of the way. I left. And I'm glad, now. Nothing stays the same forever.

The music teacher: gone, gone, gone.

Maybe it's time to open the door and get out of the way.

******************

And listen: you have permission. You have permission that you never had before. If you say it's not what I want any more, who will dare argue?

What? It IS what you want? To bay at the moon for something that's gone? I don't think so. It's gone.

What, then?

It's okay to do some of the things you'd thought about doing later. You have permission. You know, my mother was going to spend her retirement writing a book; she died 25 days before her 60th birthday, the day when she was entitled to draw her superannuation. 

Too late.

Sure, don't spend yourself into poverty. We don't want you eating cat food next week. But maybe it's time to prioritise different dreams. I don't know what your dreams are. Maybe it's time to travel the world. Maybe it's time to work on getting your relationship back to something that makes you sing inside. Maybe it's time to dump everyone who makes you miserable and start again, knowing what you know now about the human race and life itself. Wise people make better choices.

***********************

What? Not enough money?

Have you thought of downsizing? Is all your stuff really making you happy? Do you need to be where you are, spending as much as you are just to stay still, to be happy?

Is there a simpler way of life that would free you?

I don't know what your dreams are. I do know that it feels good to me (despite the manifold disadvantages of being miles from anywhere) to have no mortgage, to be in the middle of nature, to be able to spend time alone if I want, to enjoy the simple moments. The quiet at night, the bird song in the morning, running with the dogs, sitting on my veranda with a coffee in the sun. 

This morning a flock of lorikeets descended on our place, perching on a dead tree, diving into the animals' drinking trough to bathe, singing their crazy screeching song of joy the whole time. If I'd been chasing my old career I would have missed that. I would have been long gone, out of the house, on the road, heading for a place which was only going to bring home to me all over again how not me I've become.

My advice to you: stop chasing unhappiness. Accept, let go, rethink. Look for the small joys. Then the big ones might just have time to find you.

Three steps back

It's while I'm running the filleting knife down the rib cage of the freshly slaughtered turkey that the analogy hits me between the eyes. I am, for all intents and purposes, performing a posthumous mastectomy on this poor creature.

It's hard to get every last scrap of flesh off those ribs. The only thing at stake, in this case, is household economy and my own idiotic perfectionism; the older I get, the more I become aware of my underlying OCD. Dr Goodguy, on the other hand, would have been leaving me vulnerable to recurrences if he left a single strand of breast tissue in place.

Just as well he's the surgeon and I'm the amateur butcher.

The knife slips, slicing into my left middle finger. Fuck. I'm covered with little nicks, thanks to the Lyrica making me sleepy and uncoordinated. I reach for yet another Band-aid, pushing away the knowledge that I'm meant to avoid breaking the skin on any part of that arm.

This is reality. I can't sit here swaddled in cotton wool for the rest of my life. We still have to eat.

**********************

The human breast that Dr Goodguy filleted away two weeks ago is definitely better gone. My ovaries were as pure as the driven snow, and for that I'm immensely grateful; changes there are symptomless and frequently deadly. But the pathology on my right breast did show some small aberrations- not anything that could be classed as pre-cancerous, nothing to cause undue concern, but any changes at all make me damn nervous after the year and a half of crazy I've endured. I think of the white spots on my last mammogram, which didn't set off the alarm bells in anyone but me, and know that we've cut off the Freeloader at the pass this time. He won't be slipping any messages into Paul Revere's saddlebags, bound for my lymph nodes, before we even know he's arrived.

And there's that, isn't there? My last mammogram. I have no regrets about a future in which my sexual parts will not be slammed between two icy plates and flattened till I wince. For long, long minutes.

Honestly, men complain about a finger up their arse to check their prostate? Been there, mate. No comparison. Come, let me take my hair straightener out of the freezer and apply it to your nuts, and we'll talk.

But I digress.

*************************

There are things I'd forgotten about post-mastectomy recovery. The scales tip this way and that; to balance the load of crippling fear I carried through the last mastectomy, I have my brand new and total lack of tolerance for being ill or incapacitated. In hospital I ran on equal parts of adrenaline and denial, refusing pain killers completely by the second morning so that they sent me home on day three with nothing but a drain bag and a cheerful wave. It felt like a win.

Bloody-mindedness continued to be my friend for some time. I spent the first day at home sort of in bed relaxing, then normal service was resumed as I started to cook and do a few chores around the house. Realising I wasn't sleeping all that well- I blamed the annoying drain in my side, which made lying down singularly uncomfortable- I dug out an old packet of Targin and started dropping one each night.

It didn't help much, but still the penny didn't clang on the bottom of the piggy bank and bring me to my senses.

Day seven, and the drain came out with a cheerful 'see you in six months' from Dr Goodguy. I am Superwoman! Nine days out from the operation I was walking four kilometres to our creek and back on my own, bush-bashing and climbing trees on the way.

And still not sleeping.

Well, that was only to be expected, right? I haven't been able to sleep on my left side since the axillary clearance- the ache in my arm becomes unbearable within minutes if I lie on it. And obviously my right side was going to be sore after being filleted. I'm really not a back-sleeper- I've always curled up on one side or another, or even slept face-down (not an option at present). So of course I wasn't sleeping well.

Ten days out I started to crash, as the sleep deprivation hit me. It finally struck me that the pain over my new scar was getting worse, not better. I checked for redness, but no- it all looked perfectly normal. But anything touching the wound was agony, and that included clothing. (Sadly, running around nude in the middle of the Bungy winter is not a viable option unless I want snap-frozen spare ribs. Very, very spare ribs.)

But wait. Anything touching... where have I heard this before?

I'd forgotten about the nerve pain that accompanied Round One, making it impossible to even rest my poor gutted wing on the arm of a chair. I'd forgotten about it to the extent that I didn't recognise the sensation that was driving me crazy as nerve pain, simply because it was in a different place- under the arm and across my chest, rather than running down from shoulder to elbow.

And so, back to the Lyrica, which makes sleep possible at night and turns me into a zombie by day. If I only take the evening tablet, I can sleep at night and sort-of function during the day.

Sort of. If I don't count cutting my fingers to ribbons while processing a turkey.

********************

Along with the zombie mode which lasts well into the morning, along with the deep reluctance to get out of bed, comes the Black Dog sniffing around my heels. You're failing, he snuffles. You're backsliding. You're lazy. Knowing it's bollocks doesn't help me when I'm this flat. I can't even shout at him.

I know exercise would help, but I just can't find the ergs. Riding my bike seems too risky; breaking the scar open would set my reconstruction plans back to zero. Walking seems too slow to make a difference to my mood. My motivation feels like it's gone in the incinerator with my fine sections.

I get on the scales to see how much ground I've lost, but of course I'm well over a kilo lighter thanks to the missing breast; small comfort when your two steps forward are surgically achieved. Should I be trying to lose the rest of this weight? Should I say fuck it and just turn back into a pile of lard on the couch? Should I try to find the middle road and somehow maintain this weight till the reconstruction surgery?

And that, of course, is a whole new can of worms to deal with; another surgery, at this moment, seems as desirable as an anchovy and Vegemite sauce on my ice cream sundae, but I know it has to be arranged. My reconstruction requires a whole day in theatre, and if I don't book that theatre well in advance I'm screwed. Within a week of the mastectomy I'm on the phone and lining up the reconstruction for November 21st.

"What's the hurry?" grumps the Bear. "You've just been through one surgery. Why the rush to put yourself through it again?"

Because I hate the way I look. Because I'll have to pay another excess on my health insurance if I wait till next year. Because I want this to be over. I have many genuine, heartfelt and logical responses, but none of them fix the real problem at the heart of this conversation: my Bear is at breaking point. He's had enough. Three rounds with the Freeloader in his life, killing and maiming his women, and he wants it to stop. No more hospital, no more anaesthetics, no more surgery and recovery and watching people he loves in pain. He's started to believe he's cursed. He's started to believe he's caused it somehow, and seeing me go through this shit all over again is undoing him.

"You're not your boobs," he says to me. "You were blessed with wonderful breasts and I enjoyed them, but they're not you. It's you I love." And he's saying all the things a dream man would say in these circumstance, and I can't fault a word of it, and it's never going to change my mind. Because that's how I am. My body, my decision.

I'm even dreaming of having breasts again. I wake devastated to find it was just my subconscious playing tricks. I drag myself to the bathroom, look at the wasteland of my chest in horror. The slashes, the knobbly ribs- I look like a goddamned turkey carcass. I may as well feed myself to the dogs and be done with it.

Dressing to go out, I put on an ah-bra and the old teddybear tits long before I should be putting any pressure over the wound- just to feel normal, just so people don't stare, just so I don't hate my own reflection. At the end of the day they've ridden up to my chin, and it's hilarious and ridiculous, and under the laughter I feel like a freak.

And so we're sinking together, my Bear and me- him from sheer emotional exhaustion, me under the weight of our combined physical and mental pain and my desperate attempts to keep our relationship from imploding. One step forward, three steps back.

Throw me a lifejacket, someone.

Make 'Em Laugh

WARNING: This post contains some full-on photos of my surgical work. If you don't want to see, don't look!

***********************

Back in the days when I was teaching classroom music full time to sometimes unwilling adolescents, my long-suffering colleagues and I used to give ourselves the odd 'time out' by educating (!) our Year 9 students about old musicals. (And yes, I confess that often meant turning on the video player- remember those?- and sitting on our exhausted arses for the last forty minutes of the day while the next segment played to a restless and clearly indifferent audience.)

Snorts of derision were the stock reaction to most of the old-fashioned and over-sentimental songs which drove the creaking plots of many of these old shows, but one sequence invariably cut straight through the carapace of teenage cool and had whole classes of 14-year-old girls writhing with hysterical delight.

I give you 'Make 'Em Laugh', from 'Singing in the Rain.' Go on, watch it. Be a devil!

Make 'Em Laugh!

I suspect that the inherent philosophy of this song- that everyone will love you as long as you make them giggle helplessly- has underpinned far too much of my interaction with the rest of the human race. Never mind that Donald O'Connor had to be hospitalised after filming the song. It's only pain, right?

And so it was that I turned up to Admissions last Monday for my prophylactic surgery wearing bunny ears.

************************

The world is divided into two types of people: those who thought this was hilarious, and those who immediately looked away and tightened their lips into a semi-audible 'tsk tsk'. I found it an incredibly useful way to shortcut the business at hand. The tsk tskers wanted to get straight down to the business of getting me sectioned (and you can interpret that any way you want), and the others were happy to notice that I'm a human being, not a diagnosis, before they got right down to treating me.

So I smiled, regardless of the cool reception, and filled out forms; or I returned the smiles and talked about the Jolly Old Jolie Gene as I filled out forms. Laughter does sort people out awfully quickly.

What did you notice first?
The ears or the commode chair?

Here is my tip of the day for people going to hospital: be memorable, but for the right reasons. From the time I walked into that building, the majority of the staff who came into my vicinity had smiles on their faces. My bunny ears declared my intent not to be a fucking miserable sod, and hardworking underpaid people tend to like that.

It's a choice, right? Pretty much every attitude we adopt is a choice. If I'm the one on the receiving end of the shit sandwich, I reckon it's empowering to choose to make 'em laugh.

********************

Of course, making 'em laugh also served to divert attention from my very real and intensely personal feelings about losing my remaining breast. I'd got totally tired of being asked if I was alright by well-meaning people, and it was easier to project the humour as a smoke screen than to be either angry (which would hurt them for no good reason) or honest (which would leave them as confused as I was, and no doubt convinced they'd said the wrong thing). Was I alright? How the fuck would I know? Define alright. What was there to feel about this surgery, other than complete bewilderment?

I knew only one thing. I wanted to live, rather more than I wanted to maintain one real breast (or indeed two); that's the only part that's ever been clear. In the days leading up to last Monday, whenever I touched my doomed nipple it felt numb- as though all feeling had already resigned itself to landing the hospital incinerator. Whatever grieving has to happen about that sexual loss will hit me when it hits me, but it hasn't happened yet.

What I do regret- and knew I would- what I do feel angry and sad and not alright about is the way I look now. There's simply no pretending that I look like anything but a huge pink pear. With my narrow shoulders, small back and generous Polynesian hips, I was balanced visually only by my excess of breast. I've gone from hourglass to bean bag, and I hate it.

Turn the mirrors to the wall? It's only temporary, right? Yes, sure, Dr Yes will fix it. First World problem, vanity, beauty-is-not-skin-deep, wee-waa wee-waa blah blah blah, STFU. For now, it's my reality, and I'll be damned if I'll do anything but face it and feel what has to be felt. Alone. But don't ask me to define it.

The ovaries, on the other hand, I regret not one whit; I was done with breeding long ago, and all I think of when I think of them at all is how fucking lethal they can be in someone like me.

Or, indeed, in someone like my mother. QED. Sayonara, and slam the door on your way out.

*********************

This hospital visit proved to be my turn to upset the surgical apple cart, in the most minor of ways. First on the afternoon list, I slid straight into theatre without my backside touching the waiting room chair and proceeded to screw up everyone's schedule. My ovaries, clearly picking up on the rabbit-hole theme, wanted to play hide and seek. It took some hours longer than planned for Dr Goodguy and friends to blow up my abdomen with gas (truly, they do!) and go hunting around the back of my uterus via three tiny incisions in my belly. We're late, we're late, for a very important date.

All things considered, the team did well; I'm lucky they didn't testily abandon the laparoscope and slash a bigger hole to make it easier. Face it, Dr Goodguy's just not like that. All the staff commented on his amazing neatness as they surveyed my tidy white rectangles of Fixamol (the only tape I've proved not to be allergic to), and I had just cause to thank him for his patience yet again. I ended up with the promised three small nicks, which will make Dr Yes' job that much easier.

That done, Dr G set upon my chest with the intent to make the scar on the right resemble the one on the left as closely as possible. Looking pretty good so far to my untutored eye.

But honestly, do you see what I mean about the pear? Once you take the breasts away, your body unexpectedly goes in under your arms and then out again at the bottom of your ribs. And out, in my case significantly, to your hips.

There's a pun in there somewhere about pairs and pears, but right now it doesn't feel funny.

**********************

I woke up without remembering a single thing after the anaesthetist told me he'd 'just give me something to relax me'. Whatever he gave me obviously sent me straight to coma, do not pass go, because I didn't get to see Dr Goodguy at all before he started sectioning the bunny. And perhaps because of the extra-long time on the operating table, I don't remember much about the waking up either, other than that it was unusually uncomfortable- a need to cough, which hurt like hell, and a certain discombobulation of the mind. My mouth felt like the whole of the Simpson Desert had been deposited in there, complete with camels and minus the waterholes.

I guess five hours' paralysis with tubes shoved down your throat will do that to you.

Back in the high dependency ward, I was treated like royalty. The male nurse waxed lyrical about the talents of Dr Goodguy; he cut my throat a few years ago and I lived to tell the tale, he joked, showing me an almost invisible thyroid scar. I drank gallons of water, desperately trying to remove the sandy expanses from my throat. The proffered sandwich was too hard to swallow, though my stomach loudly protested the need. A full bladder pressed alarmingly and immediately on the recently-reamed areas; I noticed with some satisfaction that I was able to use my yoga training to get myself onto a bedpan unassisted, though once there I needed to use my muscles in an unaccustomed way to help release the pressure.

A helpful nurse passed me my phone. A selfie was enough to reassure my friends that I was all done and fine.

Go me. I can do this.

Of course I can.

********************

Doing the hospital's instant coffee for the next few days, however, was another matter. I'd been spoiled in the high dependency ward, the staff quietly conniving to bring the bunny percolated coffee from the nurses' station, and once back with the throng I was forced to post a less reassuring picture on my Facebook.

Make 'em laugh.

************************

Happily, though, and in stark contrast to the Base Hospital which I could see across the valley through my window, the food was edible and relatively nourishing. Seriously, how hard can it be? The vegies were still slightly firm and noticeably the right colour; the meat was still moist.  Nothing appeared to have come out of a packet except some of the regrettable gravies and sauces (first ingredient salt, second ingredient sugar if my slowly recovering taste buds were telling me the truth).

Nevertheless, after three nights I was stir crazy and ready to come home. The third day had been spent feeling pretty miserable, probably a kick in the teeth from the anaesthesia as well as a little exhaustion with looking in the unforgiving bathroom mirrors every time I had to relieve my extremely impatient bladder before it exploded through my stomach wounds (well, that's how it felt). The bunny ears went back on. The call for horse and carriage was made. I waited impatiently for the Bear's time to coincide with reality- always an imperfect art.

Lemme outta here!

And so here I sit at home, mostly just lying in bed reading or playing around on Facebook, a drain still sticking out of my side to remind me not to get too ambitious too soon. I admit to feeling a little vivisected when I look at it, though of course the results of the experiment are long in. People with BRCA mutations live longer if they have these surgeries. A LOT longer.

Physically, I guess I'm doing really well. I've only had one pain tablet since yesterday morning, and that was mostly to help me sleep in a bed also occupied by a man who's all elbows and a dog who's missed me too much. I've taken two walks with the dogs today without doubling up or falling down.

But emotionally? How do I feel?

I have no idea.

************************

Love, loss and learning

The world is divided into two types of people: those who think everything that happens has some sort of moral lesson to it, and those who believe that shit happens. Randomly. Deal with it.

Of course, that's bollocks; the truth lies somewhere between, and a third group of us have worked that out. Reading that first paragraph back, I fear I've been influenced by my midnight reading as I lay awake last night trying not to think about having my other breast lopped off next Monday. 'Chicken Soup for the Soul' might better have been named 'Krispy Kremes for the Simplistic'. I found it deeply disappointing. It's a book I've been meaning to read for years, ever since some well-meaning teacher got up at assembly and read us tender females an extract that resonated with my embryonic understanding of the world.

An understanding which was also terminally infected with bollocks, I might say. Happy ending or tragedy, I've discovered to my cost, are not the only choices in life, though my youthful literary choices would have me believe so. A lot of life is tedious or plain exhausting. We all end up dying in the end, even if the roller coaster ride was fun up till then. Worse, the ones we love die, and instead of having a weep and closing the book with a sort of morbid enjoyment, we're sentenced to keep on living that same story- to find a way to manage without them.

But of course, as a career educator I'm the first type of person. I'm more inclined than the next person to look for the lesson in everything that happens to me. And so I'm sitting here with my trepidation and my sadness, trying to see if I can learn anything useful from the loss of my beloved Blinky.

******************

It was the dog barking over and over that drew my attention to him the first time. Looking out through the forest near our house, I couldn't see a single thing to be alarmed about. Then a bouquet of gum leaves dropped almost on my head, and I looked up and started yelling for the Bear.

"Come and look! There's a koala in our yard!"

Now, perhaps you might think that this is a fairly normal happening for people who live in the Australian forest. Not so. The koala population in our area has been decimated by logging, disease and various forms of human stupidity, and is in severe danger of extinction. Nobody we know can remember seeing a koala anywhere remotely near our place before- not even the local bushmen who used to live here in humpies rather than houses, cutting ti tree by hand or dropping trees for a tiny sawmill that was swallowed by the forest long ago.

It was a magic moment.

Over the next two months we watched Blinky with increasing reverence and awe, as he selected a new tree each night in a game of hide-and-seek that he was always going to win. Finding a solitary koala in the two acres of forest nearest the house was a more diverting game than Candy Crush, and I found myself spending more and more time outside, walking through the trees with my neck aching from craning upwards. He was rarely low enough for us to photograph, given that the trees around us make Cleopatra's Needle look bent and stunted.

Are you hearing me.

TALL.

It made me educate myself in a way I'd never bother to do before, despite my love of nature. I found myself consulting Google again- thankfully not about breast cancer and BRCA2 and salpingo-oopherectomy and DIEP reconstruction, but about eucalypts and feed trees and scratch marks and droppings. I needed some 'cheats' to play the highly distracting find Blinky game more effectively.

I was no match for him, of course. He gave plenty of clues- fresh droppings, distinctive hand marks on the smooth-barked gums- but it was as though he'd turn up in plain sight and then magically vanish. Once he went AWOL for ten days and we thought he'd moved on, only to open our eyes one morning and be confronted by a furry ball tucked high in the flooded gum outside our bedroom window, in clear view.

Here I am. Gotcha.

**************

And then one evening, as I walked out in the late twilight to catch a last glimpse of him, I found him sitting on the ground at the base of a grey gum. Hastily tying the dogs up, I raced back with a flashlight. Something was definitely wrong. He shouldn't be on the ground at this time of the evening.

And he most definitely shouldn't let me get close enough to brush the flies off the back of his neck. He sat awkwardly, his bright eyes regarding me with a resigned stare.

I called the koala rescue service.

***************

24 hours later my little friend was dead, released from the misery of the final stages of the koala's form of AIDS, KoRV (koala rotavirus). He'd probably fallen from the tree out of sheer weakness, fracturing his forearm in the process.

It was, to me, completely unbelievable. For over two months I'd told myself stories about this little chap. He felt safe here. He had everything he needed. Our trees were so attractive because they were in fertile soil, thanks to our turkeys free ranging around them. In spring he'd start to call, and attract a female. Soon we'd have a whole colony of koalas outside our window.

All bollocks. My head had been firmly wedged in the sand. Wild koalas don't appear near houses unless they're desperate. All the time, he was sick and hungry; perhaps when I didn't see him, he'd not been hiding- he'd simply been too weak to climb and had lived on the ground, scrounging a few fallen leaves where he could.

He wasn't the start of something. More likely, he was the end- a sign of the dire state of our koala population, ravaged by KoRV, chlamydia and a decimated, fragmented environment.

What was there to learn that I didn't already know? The human race is selfish, greedy, deluded. There is no hope for us. We will cut down the trees and flatten hapless wildlife with speeding cars till there's no magic left.

***************

I could, so easily, throw Blinky out with the bathwater, just like that. I could so easily discard everything good about the experience, simply because the ending was bad, sad, too hard to deal with.

I could let him confirm my worst, most depressing thoughts about humanity.

There's always a choice, my therapist used to say. And so, actively, from Blinky I learn yet again to choose differently, even though it's hard work.

I can choose to learn that life is a series of cameos, each one carrying its little basket of emotions. I can choose to hold onto the best vignettes, even when they're in the past, instead of letting them be eclipsed and made meaningless by sadness. Looking at my few photos of Blinky, remembering the joy he gave me while he was here, I can still smile as well as ache. Touching my poor doomed breast for the last time, I can still recall the fun we've had together, even as I mourn the coming loss of that particular sensation- surely? Can't I? Can I?

I can try.

I can choose to learn not to tell myself such alluring stories. I can acknowledge that when I really don't know, it's best to store up a little realism with the determination and optimism. Blinky's presence was a farewell, not a greeting. These operations may go wrong. I may get an infection, my wounds may break down, the reconstruction may fail.

Learning is always possible. Shit happens. The truth is somewhere in between.

And while I'm stuck with my story, the story where my breasts will be gone forever- and with them one dimension of my sexuality- there are other dimensions of my story coming that I can't imagine from where I am now. The more I close myself off, protect myself, allow myself to be miserable and fatalistic, the less open I am to turning new pages.

Vi's grandson- remember Vi?- Vi's grandson has helped me turn a page to get past the sadness of my Blinky story. He's turned up here on a bicycle, ridden all the way from the Central Coast, and he's started to clear our track through the forest down to the creek. Remember those huge storms while I was having chemo? The tree that nearly killed the Bear when it fell? Those storms wrought havoc down the back. We couldn't even walk down there, let alone get a vehicle in.

Losing access to most of our property has been a huge thorn in our sides. But with everything else that's been going on, dealing with the carnage down there just hasn't come to the top of the list. Now as I walk down the first part of the track again, for the first time in two years, I see that the enforced lack of human presence has been a boon for the wildlife.

And I find myself looking upwards again, craning my neck to see the distant treetops. Checking the ground. Checking the bark of the smoothest trees, looking for those tell-tale scratch marks.

It's good exercise, walking. It's something I can do almost immediately after my surgery. I was wondering how I'd cope with suddenly having to drop my exercise routine back to the bare minimum; walking down the road simply doesn't have the pull of cycling. What would happen to my motivation?

But walking down the bush track- that's different. If I stop, wait, listen, there's always magic to be found.

And listen. There are scratch marks on those trees. Fresh ones, since the last time the trees lost their bark.

They may be from a goanna, I say to myself. Google said it's hard to tell the difference sometimes.

There are droppings, too. Fresh ones.

I'm no expert, I say to myself. They may be from some other animal.

But I keep looking upwards anyway.

Flying to Antarctica

I never sleep well the night before I fly- not for some time before, if the truth be told. I have trouble giving up my illusion of control to the invisible man in the cockpit. It's hard to entrust a stranger with my life.

Once aboard, bag carefully stowed in the overhead locker and seatbelt firmly tightened, I accept that the choice has been made. I'm headed up to the endless acres of rolling white, as much a toy of the gods as Scott of the Antarctic. Perhaps today they'll do what they've threatened for the last 18 months, and kill me for their sport. That would be the ultimate irony.

But the wisdom of Pooh comes back to me. Perhaps they won't. Either way, there's nothing I can do but surrender to the experience. I give in, just as I do before each surgery. I imagine I'm sledding hundreds of miles in a frozen, ethereally beautiful landscape, the numbing snow spreading in infinite dappled contours to every horizon.

It was some small measure of comfort
to travel with Keith Urban on my lap.

And on this occasion, I wonder more pragmatically if I've brought enough warm clothes, because coming from the subtropical Bungy to the chill depths of Victoria might just be a little bit of a climate shock. But it had been notably cheaper to fly with only the Bear's carry-on sail bag; I'd been damned if I was going to succumb to the Jetstar website's siren song and add checked baggage. How much could I possibly need for five days in Melbourne?

*********************

A little back-story. I'd realised some time ago that I just couldn't sit comfortably with the idea of a double latissimus dorsi reconstruction. (No pun intended.) Since I saw Dr Mattel, I'd started to hear louder and louder internal voices screaming that I was tempting fate. God knows I've had enough nerve pain from the surgeries I've already been forced to endure on my upper body; why on earth would I screw around more than absolutely necessary with the sensation and function I had left up there?

No, I wasn't happy with Dr Mattel's advice. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the gradual dawning of awareness that his expressionless face, so impossible for me to connect with, had probably been Botoxed to within an inch of its life. What did it matter if my plastic surgeon was trying to cheat time, as long as he was a great technician? What did it matter if he was as empathetic as an Easter Island statue, as long as I ended up with a great rack?

Who am I kidding? I didn't trust him. You don't tell a patient who's had a life-threatening disease that you wish she was bordering on obese, instead of working to be more healthy, just because that would make your job easier. You don't tell a patient that the timing of her operation will have to work around your skiing holiday, for fuck's sake. I'm a slow burner, but in the weeks since my appointment with Dr Mattel, burn I most certainly did.

Cancel my follow-up appointment I also most certainly did. The fact that no human was available to take my call during normal business hours seemed to confirm my decision. I've had second thoughts, I said to the answering machine; no point being rude. I'm sure he's exactly the right surgeon for some females.

Like, say, Barbie.

But I am not a plaything. The time had come to seek a second opinion.

***********************

Jools had been telling me for some time that she knew some excellent practitioners south of the border, in that great state which the Bear has always called 'Mexico' (to the complete confusion of our less lateral-thinking friends). 'She's gone to Mexico for a few days,' he'd say down the phone when I went visiting, without a single syllable of clarification; the last time I dropped in on my best friend, certain people expected me to return with sombreros and chilli sauce.

But this time I was going in search of something far more elusive than fancy hats and cooking ingredients. I wanted to come back with hope, because I'd decided sadly that if the lat dorsi was the only option, I'd settle for being flat-chested for the rest of my life. It wasn't an idea that appealed very much to a girl who spent her late adolescence balancing her conversational shortcomings with increasing lengths of exposed cleavage.

Nevertheless, it did sound more like fun than having my back muscles excised, exported to Twin Peaks and told to learn to be Laura Palmer's deceased and numb perky bits, instead of holding me upright. Apparently they're liable to spasm now and then without warning while they're being schooled. Tourette's tits don't really strike me as desirable to anyone, except perhaps the sideshow manager at the circus.

Dr Goodguy was completely amenable to the concept of a second opinion. "It's important that you're sure," he'd said when I suggested by late-night email that I might like to front up to the exchange desk at Boobman Carvery. Not for a moment did he ask me to justify the request- confirming yet again that the sun shines out of his nether regions 24 hours a day. Referral arranged, I headed down to Jools' sculptor-of-choice in Mexico City.

On the chosen day for my first encounter with this purported Rodin of the flesh, I walked seven kilometres through suburban Melbourne to get there. Perhaps this was sheer bloodymindedness. It had flashed across my mind that I could choose to drop my exercise routine back a little, to avoid losing any more abdominal weight, but the angel on my shoulder had replied that the Freeloader's always on the lookout for a job opportunity in my body. Perhaps constant vigilance might be a reasonable position, regardless of my desire for new tits of substance.

Sounds fair. 17 kilos gone and counting. Above all- above even the reincarnation of my soon-to-be-extinct boobies- I want to live.

The first encouraging sign was that I only spent twenty minutes in the waiting room beyond the allocated start time. Hoorah! I passed the time with a Facebook friend who happens to see the same surgeon; she too assured me of his worthiness. The stars were aligning.

And then the heavens parted and let me through. I found myself in the company of Dr Yes.

Yes, it was possible to perform double DIEP flap surgery using this amount of abdominal fat. A C cup, or something approaching it, was entirely possible. And given that a patient's entire silhouette would be altered for the better by this procedure- the tummy tucked, the breasts more pert- women often found that they were in fact content with a somewhat smaller cup size than they'd anticipated.

Yes, if I found I really needed to be a D cup he could insert implants at a later date. Mind you, this would negate one of the advantages of this type of procedure- the durability of the new breasts. DIEP breasts last for ever, grow with the patient if weight is gained, shrink with the patient if weight is lost, age naturally, never need tinkering with. Implants have a shelf life (no pun intended). In ten years or so, they might well need to be replaced, and who wants to be bothered with more surgery every decade?

Yes, this procedure would ideally be performed without particular interference with the muscles. Only in the case of unforeseen complications would he attempt a TRAM flap process instead, and use the rectus abdominus.

Yes, it was poor logic to gain weight in the hope of a larger cup size. For surely the aim is to stay fit and well? And on losing the excess weight again after the surgery, the artificially inflated balloons would simply deflate once more and turn into saggy baggy elephant mammaries.

Yes, I would only need to be away from home for a few weeks; I could fly perhaps a week after leaving hospital, which would be somewhere between the fifth and seventh day post-surgery.

Yes, the price included everything from the time I decided to proceed until the moment I was finally completely happy with my new chest. Adjustments, if there should happen to be some asymmetry. Pseudo-nipples added creatively, some three months after the original surgery. Implants later on, if I wasn't happy with the size.

And all this imparted with kindness, humour, sensitivity and an attention to detail which made me realise exactly how superficial my previous experience had been.

Hoorah.

*********************

I emerged triumphant into the waiting arms of my fellow breast cancer blogger, Lisa. It's a treasure chest discovered deep in the sewers of cancer, this making of new and close bonds all over the world as you face your Freeloaders side by side. Thank christ for social media. How else would we survive the emotional battering? How would we ever let out our deepest fears? Aside from Dr Yes, this was the other shining star in the Antarctic sky; I took the chance to meet up with some of the women I've previously known only from a profile picture- women with whom I've shared everything from our cancerchondria to our partner problems to our drug-induced sexual disfunction.

These women know more about this new, cancer-compromised 'me' than almost anyone else in the world. To meet them face-to-face was liberating, heady, exhilarating. We chattered like monkeys on crack. We laughed almost to the point of incontinence, as two of the girls swapped wigs in the middle of a restaurant and caused the spunky waiter to lose his carefully cultivated nonchalance. We fell about again as the same two exhorted some random young women, standing smoking on the sidewalk, to stop before they gave themselves breast cancer. One of my bosom buddies ripped off her wig once more to make the point, sending the youngsters scattering in alarm, teetering like drunken stick insects on their stilettos as they fled.

Sure, it was essentially a business trip- but I had fun.

********************

And so I will return to Antarctica in due course, but not before Dr Goodguy removes both my ovaries and the remaining breast. That will give Dr Yes a level playing field, and it will give me a shorter time under anaesthetic. It's a massively long operation, eight to ten hours, thanks not to its invasiveness- it never goes inside the body cavity- but to its complexity. It's fiddly. It's all about finding, preserving, extracting and then rejoining major and minor blood vessels, so the flap continues to thrive in its new location. Flap death is a very real possibility- but as Jools points out, with the amount of intense exercise I've been doing, it's likely that my abdominal blood vessels will be in superb shape and the transplanted flesh will have the very best chance of survival.

Hoorah.

********************

And this I know: when the time comes, about three months after the second mastectomy, I'll have plenty of visitors. These days I can fly to Antarctica in almost any direction, and still find enough true friends to keep me warm.

A gypsy, a ghost and the function of swear words

Every family has its personal volume of mythology- the book of stories passed from generation to generation, handed down like Chinese whispers till they become some sort of mutant truth. In the end nobody's quite sure what was part of an original tale and what was a verbal embroidery by some canny descendant, a little baroque trill designed to catch the listener's ear.

Such is the story of my mother and the gypsy. I remember her telling someone- friend or relative? I can't remember- over the top of my head that she'd visited the fortune teller's tent at some country fair when she was a young woman, and everything the gypsy had said to her on reading her palm had come true.

She was very clear on that. Everything.

I was very young, mind you; my memory may be flawed. Perhaps it wasn't a country fair. Perhaps other parts of the story have been embellished by time. But I do remember her spreading her fingers out to scrunch up the side of her hand, showing the two little lines that represent my brother and me- the two living children she was yet to bear back then.

This I also remember: after my mother died, her brother's wife- one of her closest friends- told me that all her life, my mother had been terrified of dying of cancer. Twenty seven years later, I put two and two together and wonder if that gypsy was guilty of the sin of too much information.

My friend Vi, if you recall, read my palm a few weeks before I was diagnosed and told me I was about to bear a huge burden; she saw it crossing my life line. "But the line keeps going," she assured me. "You'll get through it."

Perhaps my mother's life line stopped at that crossing of the creases. Who knows? I shan't pretend it's truth. It's extrapolation. But something had put the fear of death by cancer into her head, long before her own mother succumbed to the silent tumour in her breast.

And when I ask Vi why she doesn't read palms and tarot for a living, given that she seems to have a gift for such things, she replies "I only see the bad stuff." What, indeed, is the point of telling people about the bad, inevitable stuff ahead of time? What do you do if you see a person's death? Do you lie?

Yes, you do. Fuck you, gypsy. I don't care how right you were.

*****************

I reflect on all this now, as the shock waves from my BRCA2 result finally hit me. The faulty gene that my grandmother and my mother (and perhaps others before them) carried and passed on to me was discovered a mere five years after my mother died of ovarian cancer- that sneakiest of ticking time bombs, the one that gives only the vaguest symptoms until it's far too far advanced to be curable.

The time frame seems unbearably cruel to me as I reflect on her last few years, repeatedly visiting the doctor with terror in her eyes, repeatedly being rebuffed as a hysterical woman with psychosomatic symptoms. The research must already have been in the pipeline. Five years later, and somebody surely would have smelled a rat.

*****************

So in the end it was my mother's ghost that reduced me to tears over my diagnosis. I could never bear injustice. To think that she had that goddamned gypsy's prediction jammed in her consciousness all her life, that when the vague symptoms hit she fought so hard to be heard but nobody was listening, that she was right all the time, that there was a scientific explanation right there but nobody at the coal face knew-

-yes, that makes me cry.

******************

The tears have been slow to surface, and as ever, they don't seem to be about me. Anger and fear are a different matter. I woke up a few mornings after I wrote my last blog post thinking every cell in my body has a mistake in it.

It wasn't a particularly palatable thought, and I didn't really know what to do with it. By evening my preferred coping mechanism had chipped in, and I replaced my Facebook profile picture with a mutant cow.

As you do.

Naturally, cancerchondria arrived in the wake of this realisation, as night follows day. The sudden painful twinge in my right armpit- the good armpit- while I was doing star jumps as part of my exercise routine was enough to throw me back into shitsville. I remembered having twinges in the left breast and armpit before I was diagnosed; I passed them off as nothing, because they went away very quickly. Until next time. Now I realise my body was probably trying to alert me to the invader.

Was there an invader on the right too? Did my recent clear mammogram miss something in my armpit? Was the Freeloader laughing at me again?

Naturally, it's all bollocks. I had an ultrasound as well as a mammogram, and it was very bloody thorough. And hello, I've had enough chemo to kill a black dog. Dr Mellow went over me very thoroughly indeed at our appointment last week- it seems that a BRCA+ diagnosis comes with a thorough pelvic as well as breast palpation- and declared me to be in great shape and looking astoundingly well.

But you wonder. Just for that moment, you wonder, and it can send you nuts if you let it.

Then there's the pending surgery. My discomfort with the idea of having a lat dorsi reconstruction has ebbed and flowed. Some days, I'm confident; trust the doctors, they've done you proud so far. Other days, the voice in my head screams trust your gut- you know you regret it when you don't.

I've never been good with decisions unless I make them instantly, based on my gut feeling. Otherwise I go to and fro, balancing, balancing, balancing. Seeing both sides. Vacillation has become my personal art form. And this time it's not just a wavering that will eventually settle one way or the other- I feel totally bamboozled, because it seems like my choices are no boobs at all or massive invasive surgery on my upper body, with relocation of two major muscles.

And there's pressure to decide, which never helps. The time bombs are ticking.

Time for a second opinion, methinks. And maybe even a third. I expect Dr Goodguy is enough of a good guy to give me another referral. It's my right, I know, but it still makes me feel bad, to question his choice. I'm sure Dr Mattel is a very fine technician...

...but then, there's that gut feeling.

It makes me angry, to be in this no-win place. It makes me infinitely sad, that my Bear has to put up with my constant moodiness, that he'll have to live with the physical and emotional fallout from whatever reconstruction decision I eventually make.

********************

So what do you do with all that sadness and anger? There's only so much therapy a girl can afford, and it's not like it makes the daily ramifications go away.

Maybe you swear a lot. I know I do. So many of my friends are doing it tough right now, and we're all hurting for each other, and because we've been through the mill we've learned what not to say. Sometimes swearing is all we have left to express what we do need to say, which is pretty much reduced to how the fuck is this fair?

Sometimes the only empathy needed is a well-chosen swear word.

One friend has just discovered that her hair loss after chemo is permanent. My heart absolutely breaks for this gorgeous, smart, funny woman. But once it's confirmed, you don't say to an unwillingly bald woman who used to have stunning, flowing, long blonde locks, you're still beautiful to me. You don't say you're always beautiful inside. You don't offer up solutions like hats, wigs, hair transplants, head shaves, tattoos and acceptance as though that's some sort of answer to her loss and grief and anger. You don't tell her to be grateful she's still there for her kids.

What is there to say to her but shit, shit, SHIT.

Another friend's much-loved partner of 22 years collapsed and died a mere five days after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. You could have a few months, the specialist had told them just the day before.

I didn't tell her it was all for the best. I didn't reassure her that he was in a better place, or express relief that he didn't suffer for long, or any of that mealy-mouthed, well-intentioned bullshit. She texted me that he was suddenly and unexpectedly dead, and I texted back fuck.

Because that's what that word is for.

That, of course, is not all I said, but I'll spare you the blasphemy. We've known each other over forty years. We know that the best way to offend either of us is not with a swear word, but with a platitude.

And so, here's the thing: the doctors who ignored my mother's symptoms were a pack of arseholes. Being BRCA2+ is another serve of shit. And Facebook needs a button that says