Bread

Apples

Laundry soap

Milk…. What?!   Out of MILK??   How are you OUT OF MILK?!!

 

It was the day… Biopsy day.  Up early… pump, pump, pump.  Liquid gold, bagged and in the freezer.  All set.

Baby in the bucket again.  Husband behind the wheel.  It’s not yet light out, but I barely notice as the night kept me awake anyway.  We’re parked and on the sidewalk.  Time to walk in… but this sidewalk, in particular, is made of quicksand.  Pep talk, to myself… “You are a badass.  You will not be taken down.  You got this.”   Quicksand dissipates, and the sidewalk leads me in although I am already familiar with the path.

Baby in the bucket and my husband wait in the hallway.  Last snuggles and hugs, and I’m whisked away.  Pink robe, again.   $#%t!  Screw you, pink robe.

Biopsy #1:

It’s almost like a sonogram, on your boob.  The dim light in the room takes me back to my baby sonograms, and again I’m moved to “bada$$ mode.”  The lidocaine numbs the “area” in which appeared suspect when the boob films from my mammo hit the lightbox.  I’m watching the screen, then avert my eyes… there is no baby there so why should I watch.

It sounds like I’m getting my ears pierced.  But, last I checked, my earlobes weren’t in my chest.  If the sound were piercings, then I’d have more holes than room on my lobes.

“How much longer?”  I’m starting to panic.  Again, I talk to myself… “you got this!”  “Just breathe.”  “Baby in the bucket.”  “Almost over.”

Bright lights click on, directly overhead.  I am squinting and realize the tears as they fall sideways down my cheeks and into my ears.  Again, with the ears.  WTF?

“Ok, we’re just gonna have you sit here until the room is ready for the next one.”

I begin to think, “what?  You have ‘em lined up out the door for a biopsy??”

Anyway, along I went in the #@%n pink gown… right down the hallway, passing my husband and baby in the bucket.  Like a shot of adrenaline, I find myself fierce again in seeing them and I enter the room.

This room is bright, yet sterile.  A table with a hole is awaiting my right breast.  Face down, in all my glory, with my boob in a hole in a table.  Nice.

I have to say, the women who conducted these biopsies may as well have had wings and a halo.  There was an aura of “we already know and this is just a formality” in all of us.  United in the unknown, yet seemingly known, by us all.

I like to call the Biopsy #2 the “oil change.”  It is loud.  My boob is in a hole.  There is a tube pulling my breast tissue (again, lidocaine is my friend) through it and into the great unknown.  I can see it flow through the clear tube.  Red, pale yellow, and squishy.  Sounds amazing, doesn’t it?  Make it stop, please God make it stop.

Then it hits me:  Hole.  In.  Boob.  WTF?  This should be interesting.  I guess this is why God gave us two breasts.  There’s a backup for me and my son.  Hi, left boob.  Let’s get really acquainted.  We have a baby to feed.

Home… hallelujah.  Baby of the year award goes to …. Mine, in the bucket.

I’m bandaged and holy.  Cool, I’m holy.

I’m sore, but I’m a bada$$ so I’m fine.  Total bada$$, except when my hormones get the best of me…  Or, when my heart breaks at the possibility of not being able to nurse anymore…  Or, I just get downright scared.  Cue, the tears.  Lots and lots of tears.

The next day, I wake up to a spongebob square boob.  Yep, no need to read that again, just go with the visual.  Remember those old western cartoons?  I had been shot like a wooden barrel full of water and milk was flyin’ out the bullet holes.  I’d cry if I didn’t laugh.  So, I laugh.  You can, too, because it’s funny.  Ya haveta take these moments when they come.

I’m waiting…  for the phone to ring.  It doesn’t.  For the entire day, it does not.

I carry the portable  phone in one hand, and the baby (out of the bucket) in the other.  No chance that I’m parting with him.  We nap together, I feed him from the coveted left breast, and we’re inseparable the entire day.  It’s dark now, and I’m free.  No news is good news, right?

Feeling like the warrior I was, I settled into the couch.  My five-month-old was snoozing right there in the crease between the cushions.  American Idol captured my exhausted gaze at the television.  Then…

It happened.  The phone rang.  Thanks to caller ID, I knew it was “Northside Hospital.”  And, I knew it wasn’t good.  It’s nine a #*&%!+@’clock!

Shaky, yet steadfast voice, “Hello?”…

“May I speak to Mrs. Rossi, please?”…

“This is she.”…

It was nine o’clock at night, I was thirty-two years old, and I had cancer.

#$*!

 

“Be strong and courageous.  Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the Lord your God goes with you; He will never leave or forsake you.”

Deuteronomy 31:6

 

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