Get Busy Living
The Update I Don’t Want To Give…
The History I Don’t Want To Recap…
The Future I Don’t Want To Think About…
Good morning,
I’m writing you today with an indifferent heart. So many things have happened and are about to happen. While there is no “long story short” in my situation, I will do my best to wrap it up, but still want my newer followers to understand. Please note, a lot of this makes me very uncomfortable to talk about. My Snapchat followers have known most of this for a while, but I couldn’t bring my fingers to type it on my computer.
History: I was diagnosed with Triple Positive Breast Cancer on August 4, 2023. At the time, I thought it was the worst day of my life, but that has since been disproven. August 21, 2023 I started chemotherapy after several procedures I don’t even remember having the weeks prior. Heart echo, port placement, EBUS, mammograms and more biopsies, PET scan, and another or two I might be forgetting. Everything from the month of August is a blur. I felt every emotion from fear, sadness, pity, hope, humor, anger, humility, anger, and some more anger.
I slowly started accepting that this was just cancer. No big deal. Then the chemo attacked my tumor(s) and me. I now thought this was the worst time of my life. Once again, soon to be disproven.
During the 18 weeks of chemo, I had the biggest outpouring of love, support, and encouragement. You: my family, my friends, and my supporters are what got me through those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days! If I name names, I will most certainly forget someone, and that woud never be my intention, but you ALL know who you are. Whether you sent me monetary gifts, gifts from Amazon, entered my name into drawings (and won!), sent cards- especially those who sent every single week, like clockwork, those who sent cards on my bad chemo weeks (when I received all four drugs as opposed to two), and the prayers. So, so many prayers. Which I am most thankful for, because I refused to pray for myself. I thought of my cancer diagnosis as a punishment from God, so why would he answer any request from me? But with the help of others, he listened.
After wrapping up my 18 weeks (6 rounds) I got to ring the bell at the Cancer Center! I was so hesitant about ringing it. I went back and forth in my head for many reasons (some you’re about to learn). My biggest fan, Steph, convinced me to ring it. While it may not have been the end of my journey, it was a victory. I saw it as a small stepping stone, she assured me it was a huge milestone. I was glad I rang the bell after I did it… for a while. I no longer feel that way. Don’t worry, I’m getting to that…
After chemo, came surgery. The purpose of the chemo was to shrink the tumor(s) so my surgeon’s job would essentially be much easier. My surgeon would not touch me until one month after my last treatment. Dr. Vaughan at SSM in St. Charles, MO is a Midwest-renowned surgeon. The best of the best. Her bedside manner was less than appealing to me, but her work spoke volumes and that’s all I really needed. She was very blunt and matter of fact with me. Honestly, she scared me. She used words my oncologist, Dr. Shakir (aka Dr. Yum Yum) never used with me. But for several years while working in Safety/Risk I taught and firmly believed the motto: Don’t Harm Me, Heal Me, Be Nice to Me… in that order.
Now if you know anything about the HBDI model, I am the reddest of red. The biggest emotions of emotions. So it is very hard for me to accept straight-forward, not quite so compassionate care. But I wanted this surgery to go well and make me better. So I continued with Dr. Vaughan.
To follow this surgery is the option of reconstruction by a plastic surgeon. I went back and forth for months on whether I would get new, now referred to as reconstructed, breasts. I will call out names for this one, because two very special people convinced me for reasons I never considered, reconstruction was the best option.
First: my sister-in-law, Jenna. Jenna is my brother’s wife. I have no sisters, so she is the closest I am going to get to that unbreakable, honest, tell you what you need to hear versus what you want to hear bond. She reminded me I struggle with mental illness, specifically depression. Would I be ok looking at myself for the rest of my life with no breasts? I struggle with self-image, especially my fluctuating weight, would the thought of not having breasts mess with my mind? Would I look in the mirror and feel good about myself? My answer was probably not.
Second, my sister-in-law, Jolleen. Jolleen is Jake’s younger sister. She reminded me that not only am I going through all of this, but so is Jake. Jake has silently watched in terror and taken on all the duties. He watched me lay on the bathroom floor, hopeless and weak; he watched me have panic attacks and cry myself to sleep; he held my hand every time I had to get an IV (side note: of ALL people to get cancer, it would be me- the person who faints at the sight of blood or thought of needles). If anything, get the boobs for Jake. She asked if Jake deserved the boobs. My answer was absolutely.
Dr. Vaughan works closely with a plastic surgeon’s office also in St. Charles. She gave me a few options and I did my research on each surgeon. I chose the surgeon who had a wife and three daughters. Dr. Paul Mills. His bedside manner definitely fulfilled my emotional needs. While he did have a fun chuckle and told me I had the saggiest boobs for a 35 year old he’d ever seen, I laughed with him and said I wish you could’ve known my Grandma Meinhart. He promised he’d fix them- the jury is still out as I am still bandaged up and currently have 2 of 3 drains still left in. Hopefully next week I will have the remaining drains removed and the big reveal!
Things are sounding pretty good, right?
Well not entirely. I personally don’t want to talk about my surgery and all the things. I’m just not ready to say/type the words yet. But this is what you can know… I restart chemotherapy on Monday. 14 rounds this time. 14 fucking more rounds of chemotherapy. What a blow to my heart, head, and healing.
I meet with Dr. Yum Yum before starting this new cycle, so I don’t have all the exact details, goals, plan, etc. Those will come Monday.
So what thoughts immediately went through my mind?
- Fuck.
- Will I still get to take my girls to Disney in May?
- While I don’t owe anyone an explanation, I feel it’s necessary to share because of so many generous folks donating money to us. My parents bought/booked this trip three weeks prior to me being diagnosed in August. My parents chose to take the grandkids to experience Disney as their Christmas gift. My kids (and TJ’s kids) do not even know about this trip yet. And my #1 fear, is I am not going to get to go along and see the absolute pure joy on my girls’ faces.
- My job. Holy shit what I am going to do about my job? It is no secret I work for our family’s insurance and retirement. I have already used 12 weeks of FMLA for chemotherapy. I have taken an unpaid LOA for my surgery, and let’s be honest, what employer in their right mind is going to say, oh yeah, we’ll give you 42 more weeks of employment, benefits, and insurance while you can’t do a damn thing for us.
- Apply for disability? But does that only cover me? What happens with my girls? Let’s be honest, Jake goes to the doctor once a year because I make him and that’s it, so not too entirely worried about him in this sense. State aid could be an option, but unlikely because of Jake’s income.
- Divorce Jake, legally. The girls and I would likely qualify for help, and we could cross our fingers nothing happens to Jake. It should be said, neither of us are fans of this option, and would take a lot, and I mean A LOT, to happen.
- How much more of this can I take? Really… how long before the drugs stop working, or don’t work at all, and my body shut downs, gives up, throws in the towel?
- Get out of your head. Get out of your head. Get out of your fucking head. You’re going to do this chemo, you’re going to keep working, you’re going to do just fine on this chemo and not have to take off work, and you’re going to roundhouse kick cancer in the gonads for the last time. That’s it. Story over.
- You’re old news. No one cares anymore that you have cancer. Does that mean the prayers stop, because if so, I am going to have to start praying for myself? They are over hearing about you… we get it, you have cancer. So do thousands of other people in the world, what makes you special?
- I AM SPECIAL. I am special because I have two daughters who have so much damn potential it nearly kills me. My oldest daughter is going to make something big of herself. She is the eccentric girl who will most likely go awkwardly through her adolescence, only to throw up a huge middle finger to everyone and say, “Look at me now!” My youngest daughter is already doing that, so I have zero worries about her.
- This isn’t real. This is a made-up nightmare and you’ll wake up and laugh. Well, unfortunately I know that isn’t true, so I just have to laugh regardless. Humor has always been my go-to coping mechanism. We can laugh or we can cry, but neither is going to change the outcome. So we will laugh. We make cancer jokes, often in the presence of strangers and notice the side-eye from bystanders who don’t know us, our personalities, or the way we cope.
In conclusion, (ha, I seriously made myself laugh because that was always my ending paragraph in school) life sucks for me at the moment. But life is also beautiful. My daughters are beautiful. The snow if beautiful. The process is beautiful. That’s not to say there won’t be heartbreak, but in the end, it will be beautiful.
Ironic that I just turned the television to The Shawshank Redemption, specifically when Andy Dufresne says, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really, get busy living… or get busy dying.”
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**Kidding! Remember I use humor to cope. But for real, if you would like to support my blog, please do so by paying this new, lowest of all time price: Prayer.**
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