Weller Bookstore at Trolley Square.

I went and saw my oncologist this past week. I love her. They’re checking my estrogen to see if I’m still in menopause as a result of the chemotherapy. In the meantime she’s putting me on Letrozole. It helps to stop the production of estrogen in the body. Later I will add Lupron, an injection that turns off my ovaries. Eventually I’ll have my ovaries out for good so I don’t have to get a monthly injection.

While I was up at the Huntsman, the plastic surgery nurses examined me and declared it was time to start filling my inflatables with saline. I watched as they used a magnet to find the area in the tissue expander that is safe to stick a needle in without popping the plastic tissue expander. Jeff commented that it was like a stud finder. They laughed at this. Then the nurses stuck needles into both of my not breasts and the nurses connected tubing and then a large syringe full of saline and started pushing saline in slowly. It felt weird, but not painful. They put in 300 mL of saline. It barely made a difference in my profile. I have 350 mL that still need to be instilled and that will happen over a few weeks. The funniest thing is I noticed that if I jump or shimmy my chest it makes a distinct sloshing noise. It reminds me of a water bed. It’s my new party trick.

“Did you ever think 20 years ago that you’d have a daughter that. would love Twilight like you did back then?” – Ava Katie Smith

Megaplex decided to do an all day movie marathon of all FIVE movies of the Twilight Saga on Bella Swan’s birthday. Back in the day, when the Twilight books came out, I was ALL about them. I liked the movies less. But my sweet baby girl did grow up to eventually read the same books that I did and she fell in love with the movies as well. So Ava got tickets to the movie marathon for Christmas and over the weekend I found myself in a packed theater with women ages 8 – 65 in t-shirts declaring Team Edward, or Team Jacob and my personal favorite Team Charlie. There were multiple theaters up and down the state and multiple screens within the theaters and all of them were sold out. It’s wild that these movies still evoke such a response in people. I still find the movies cringey and cheesy but that’s ok, Ava and I had fun together.

In other news, I definitely feel like a boy with my flat chest and short hair. I know that it shouldn’t matter because the cancer has been eradicated from my breast and lymph nodes, leaving one known spot in my bone, but it does matter. I’ve started to get lash extensions in the hopes that I feel some sort of femininity. It’s a small thing and helps a little. My double mastectomy has made me think about what it means to be a woman. Even when I was bald and still had my breasts I felt “ok” about myself. I try to be positive but it gets difficult sometimes, especially at night. My feet tingle and burn from the lasting effects of Taxol. I can’t snuggle my husband as we usually do because the drain is in the way and my incisions are still tender. I’m sleeping on my back still and hate it. Menopause has its own set of crappy symptoms that seem to be worse at night, like hot flashes.

I get up in the early morning hours and stare out the window at the empty street outside and wish I could be living a different life, in a different body. I know my life is not entirely bad, and I have so many things to be grateful for, but I do feel sorry for myself sometimes.

Things will get better. I know that. In learning from other oligometastatic breast cancer patients they mention the first couple of years are the hardest. After that they sometimes forget they have cancer and life is lived pretty normally, except for the oral meds and the doctor appointments.

Just like when I’ve done hard things in my past and wished for a different set of circumstances, I can envision what I want my life to look like and work toward it. I’ll get through this and be better for it. As I’ve gotten older I’ve come to firmly believe that the meaning of life is love and empathy and the kindness you leave behind.

Jeff and I talk about a future where we are not stuck in the city. Where we can sit on our porch in the evenings and not hear traffic. In that spirit we took a drive up to Cache Valley and drove through the different towns and daydreamed about moving.

Taken on a road in Franklin County, just over the border in Idaho.

“The chances of seeing a tweaker pushing a cart down this road are zero,” Jeff commented and so I took a picture to document it.