how to help

The past few weeks have been quite a ride.

I mean, I’ve always been a little (🙄) emotional, but sheesh.

CBD drops were helping, until I was told I needed to stop taking them until after the surgery.

One of my dogs ending up with, well, let’s just call it “some gastrointestinal distress” 😬 hasn’t helped.

My lumpectomy is tomorrow.

*Please know that the above cartoon in no way reflects my feelings about my husband. First of all, we don’t even own a La-Z-Boy.

And I am so grateful for all of the messages of love and support I’ve gotten from so many people. The best of which acknowledge the difficulty of the time I’m going through, and/or include specific offers of assistance.

The thing is, while well-intentioned, and appreciated as such, things like “Cancer picked the wrong woman to mess with!” or “You’ve got this! I know (!!!) you’ll be fine!” don’t really speak the truth; a truth we all know. Because cancer is a test you can’t study for, and there are lots of strong women who have lost their noble battles against it.

You want to feel like

but it actually feels more like

I do accept and treasure it all as encouragement. And it might seem odd, but it’s actually more helpful to acknowledge the randomness and lack of control over all of this. As M said to me last night in a text: Cancer isn’t pink, it sucks.

Looking forward to looking back at all this.

screenwriting 101

Someone should write a movie scene, where a woman walks into a large room, wearing an extremely awkwardly-proportioned hospital gown (whose neck is 23” in circumference, anyway? And why are all hospital gowns designed for this person?), climbs up on a table, drapes her breasts through two openings in a plastic frame that looks a bit like a lobster trap, sticks her arm out for an IV, and then gets sent back into a large metal barrel upon which 20 dwarves bang with sledge hammers for 40 minutes.

I think this would be a very powerful scene.

They should then follow up with the same woman going to get her genetics testing lab work done and encountering a young woman in her 20s with a fantasmagoric scar on one side of her head and no hair, holding a sign declaring that this is her last radiation treatment, and beaming with joy thereto. 

Perspective anyone?

Another reminder of how grateful I should be. 

[sigh]

My eyes!

No, please, just, no.

Also, why?

 

everybody has their role

It’s interesting to me how we adopt certain roles with certain people. 

For example, if a woman in her early 50s of a certain age is wearing a bathing suit skirt at the beach, and kind of smacks her thighs, muttering something like “ugh, I hate my old lady legs,” what she wants to hear back is directly connected to to whom she is speaking.

From her best friend: “I know, right? It’s all down hill from here. Pass me another wine cooler.”

From her personal trainer: “Well let’s see what we can do about that.”

From her husband: “Your legs are beautiful. They have carried you through graduate schools and pregnancy and all over the world. You should wear every freckle and dimple and bit of wrinkled skin with pride and joy.”

And the most interesting thing is, THESE ARE MOSTLY NOT INTERCHANGEABLE. 

Just sayin’.

oops

I guess it is marked down $55,010.

rofl

You won’t see it coming.

I think that word doesn’t mean what you think it means