I’m having surgery this coming Tuesday. This previous week I had a procedure to place a SAVI in one of my breast tumors. It’s a small metal reflective seed that helps guide the surgeon under radiography to the tumors that need to be removed.

So I went in for what felt like my 2,563rd appointment this year. As I sat on what I’ve always morbidly thought of as “butcher paper” on the procedure chair I had my 2,563rd breast exam. Why even bother with the hospital gown at this point? I said as much to the mammogram tech and she said that some patients are like me, but others never get used to it. Admittedly, even I who work within the medical field and have been on the other end of treating a patient’s body am a little tired of the poking and prodding. The doctor came in, explained the procedure and then numbed the area of my breast by injecting lidocaine through a needle. “You didn’t even flinch,” the mammogram tech remarked. Then she tried to distract me from the other needle that the radiologist inserted deeper into my breast to place the SAVI by talking about my plans after the procedure.

When I worked in urological oncology I would administer the bladder cancer treatment to patients. This involves inserting a catheter into the patient’s urethra and into the bladder and then attaching a syringe full of Bacillus Calmette-Guerin or BCG to the other end of the catheter and instilling the mixture into the bladder. Most patients receive six weekly treatments. Some patients cried out. Some swore. Some flinched. Others acted as if it were just another day at the urology clinic, nonchalant and chatting away to me. I’ve been told by some of my doctors and nurses that I am tough. In the medical field we say “the procedure was well tolerated”. I don’t know that I am tough, but more that I am somewhat numb to the discomfort and indignity of all that I have been through and all that I have yet to go through. I find a way to disconnect from what is happening to my body. I’m not entirely sure that is emotionally healthy, but it’s how I cope with this stuff. I often feel that my body is not my own anymore. Doctors and nurses are my world, both professionally and as a patient. I know they are here to help me, even if I wish I could keep my breasts to myself at times.

I met with my surgical oncologist and then with a plastic surgeon who both agreed a lumpectomy seemed to make the most sense. Prior to chemotherapy the surgeon had wanted to do a double mastectomy. She explained that this was because on the scans there was too large of an area to do a lumpectomy. My tumors have shrunk and now they can do a lumpectomy. The chance that the cancer will recur within my breast is relatively small. The chance that the cancer will pop up somewhere else, like a bone or an organ is greater because I already have a bone metastasis and we know there is likely micro metastasis that is not yet viewable on scans. The point of the chemo, the surgery, the radiation and the hormone therapy is to kill what is there. I feel good about this plan. It is an outpatient surgery and recovery is two weeks.

Meanwhile, life goes on. It’s a surreal thing to be diagnosed with an incurable stage cancer and still wake up feeling totally alive. I’m part of an oligometastatic breast cancer group on Facebook. It gives me a lot of hope because there are women in the group who have been living with metastatic breast cancer for 10, 15, 20 years. The drugs just keep getting better so people can live longer. I’ve spent a lot of these last few months worrying about my future, or lack of one. This past week the thought popped into my head just live your life each day and stop worrying about what might or might not happen. I know that’s easier said than done, but I can’t live the rest of my life (however long that is) in fear and anxiety.

My Benny boy.

Baldor rides again! The first thing I do after work is take my wig off in the car. Who needs hair anyways?