Ok, where were we?

Oh, yes…  #$*!… I had cancer.

And, away we go…

Appointment after appointment… call after call… meals after meals (it’s what we do in the South).

But, alas… it was the weaning that got me.  My (up until then)  bada** super cancer-fighting unafraid self was brought to her knees.  Truly.  Knees.

God, I know you’re there… but I cannot hear you.  Please turn up the volume.

If you’re a woman reading this, and you have ever weaned a baby, you know that it hurts to halt that milk.  Well, I had to halt that milk in one day.  ONE.  Now, you see why this portion of my journey brought me to my knees.  OUCH.

With ace bandages wrapped around my torso, cabbage leaves (yes, cabbage leaves) and milk still rolling out my biopsy holes, I was toast.   Surgery was scheduled for two weeks later and that meant I had two weeks to dry the #@*! up.

Insert milk-drying-up medication here… and, again, to my knees.  This time, it was because said medication made me faint.  A lot.  Exit medication.  Wean away, sister…

Here I was, the day of surgery, hopeful that my wells had run dry enough.  I just wanted that spot on the film box out of me.  But, hey, did I mention that surgery makes me otherworldly?  It is as if I am taken over by some crazy nut.  I cry, I shake, I buckle.  With the exception of tubes in my ears when I was a kid, this was truly the first surgery of my life.  Way to dive in with both feet, sister.  And those tubes were certainly not helping me now.

Lord, please turn up the volume.

I kissed my baby goodbye, in agony that this would be my first night away from him… ever.  I can vividly remember him in the arms of my mother in law at the door.  He will not remember this the way that I am, thank God.  A million times I said goodbye to him… and his beautiful face gave me purpose.  Poor kid had been weaned in a day, taken to the bottle and formula, and been a champ.

My purpose.

Now, get this F’in cancer out of me.

I arrived to the hospital and my entire family stayed with me in pre-op… there were flowers, I remember the flowers.  A pink bouquet so grand that it was almost as if I had just given birth to a baby girl.  Alas, it was simply the new purpose of pink in my life.

Just as I had imprinted my baby’s face into my memory earlier that morning, I can still see the image of my husband as I was wheeled away on the gurney.  His head was bowed and he was wiping away his tears.

Purpose.

On the way to surgery, we took a detour into a dark room.  I do not love dark rooms at this moment, by the way.  There it was, up on the film box again.  My boobs, and the cancer that resided within.  The nurse stepped away to get a sharpie.  I kid you not, a freakin’ sharpie.  There I was, horizontal, and left alone to stare at it.  Before I knew it, my middle finger was aimed at the x-ray and a big ‘ole F@#! you came flying out of my mouth.  There she was, the bada** warrior within.  Let’s do this.

Finally, I find the purpose in the sharpie… I had nice circles drawn on my breasts.  Don’t miss the mark, doc… no excuse, as you’re taking the whole D$%# thing.  One last glance at the breasts in person, thanking them for the feeding my baby, and bidding them farewell.

I find myself looking into surgical lights overhead, in a different room now.  I’m scared.  I have cried so much that I am actually relieved to go to sleep…

Louder, please Lord.  I cannot hear you.

I am awake.  Or, am I?  I am talking.  Or am I?  I am being driven on a gurney into my next stop.  I hear “it was still pretty vascular in there because of the milk.”  I die inside.  I’m too confused to absorb it.  I’m woozy, I’m dizzy.  So very dizzy.

I can’t talk, but I can whisper.  I hear the word “dizzy” softly exit my mouth and the rush of my husband to help.

It’s over.

I wake, and realize what has just happened.  Reluctantly, I pull on my gown and look into the opening.  There they are… two horizontal incisions where my breasts once lived.  They’re nicely done, I must admit.  The right side a little longer than the left, so they could access the nodes.

I opted out of reconstruction at the time of the mastectomy, because all I wanted was the fastest route to holding my baby again.  It would be a full six years later before I went through reconstruction.

What time is it anyway?  It is dark, yet I am being made to walk.  Walk?  Scary nurse directs me with “If you don’t take a walk, you’ll never get out of here.”

Walk, I did.  Hallways and weak knees, but I walked.

It was then that I felt them.  Tentacles.  Drains.  Bulbs.  Fluid.  Gross.

There it is, my drive-through mastectomy.  Barely gone two days.

Home.  My baby is home.  Drive faster, hubby.

Multiple times a day, my husband would gently siphon surgical fluid out of my chest, down the tube, and into the drain bulb.  A new form of intimacy, for sure.  He was always so careful not to tug too hard on the tubes, for fear of pulling them right outta my chest.

Little did we know, that those suckers were wound up into coils where my breasts once lived.  Once the drainage amount was minimal enough for removal (seemed to take a month!), we fled to the doctor’s office.  The very same office, with the baby in the bucket, that I first began this journey…As if starting a lawnmower, the nurse relieved me of my tentacles pulling them out of my body and taking my breath with them.

They took my tumor, and my breasts to the lab… and we waited.  Would I need chemo?  Was I free of this mess?  Can I exhale?

Lord, I hear you now.  Even though I couldn’t hear you before, I hear you now.  The volume is just right.  Keep talking, Lord.  I promise that I will listen.  Maybe it was the tubes that kept me from hearing you… or maybe it was the fear that I should’ve given to you.  But, I hear you now.

The phone rings… again.  Sleeping baby gets my gaze … and I answer.

And, I can hear.

“So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”

~Romans 10:17

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