On Character

Now that I've sufficiently survived surgery physically, the psychological stuff is creeping in.

Creeping is apropos.

People keep telling me I'm so brave or so strong to go through it all and then to be up and at 'em so soon after. But I just happened to survive. There was nothing brave about it. I went through with something scary that could likely save my life. If I hadn't, I would have considered myself cowardly, but it doesn't follow that, therefore, it was an act of courage, but, rather, something in the middle. It's just the reasonable thing to do. I just showed up, went to sleep on the table, and woke up and kept breathing. It's just dumb luck that I'm recovering so quickly. Continuing to exist isn't so much an accomplishment as it is a thing that we do until we don't.

I'm full of weird little phobias that I hadn't really noticed before. I don't like thinking about how my body works. I'm fine with other people's surgeries and gory pictures and videos, but I don't like to acknowledge that my body is full of veins and arteries and muscle tissue. It gives me the willies! And now it feels like there's a metal grate strapped to my chest, but it's just my ribcage!! It's cold and hard. I haven't really touched it yet. It's pretty gross. I was never very busty, but it makes a difference losing globs of fat off your frame all in one go.

I'm hyperaware of every corner in my home now: doors half open, tops of chairs sticking out from the table, the flailing elbows and knees of my gangly adolescent. I'm a total klutz at the best of times, regularly hitting the trim of doorways with half my body as I try to make it through that three-foot-wide opening, but if anything happens now, it's gonna hurt like a son-of-a-bitch! Just thinking about it gives my chest a freaky, cold, tingly feeling! Every angular shape has taken on an ominous tone.

Why did I buy killer chairs??

Why do I even live here??

And I'm nervous about that movie trope when a character makes a decision to further their life, and then they die anyway of something different because no matter what we can't change our fate. Even thought I don't rationally believe in fate at all, not even a little bit, it still kinda feels like the risk of getting hit by a mac truck are higher for me now. Actually I'll probably get brain cancer from sitting in front of Netflix and Facebook and Blogger for two-weeks straight. I've seen all of the movies, and I'm only halfway through my couch time.

I went for a haircut yesterday for the first time in years, just to get my hair washed after a week of not being allowed to shower, and I can't figure out how to do it in the sink without leaning on the counter, which just isn't going to happen for a while (yikes - chest tingles!). I just needed someone with one of those tilty chairs. They should have them at the back of every CCAC so you can get cleaned up after getting your dressing changed. Anyway, sixty bucks later and my hair's sticky with product and all poofy. Is that the style now??  I immediately put it in a pony tail. But I dragged my daughter along in case I passed out walking two blocks. She asked, "What good am I going to do?" but she came anyway.

So, for this I'm not really courageous or strong. I am sometimes both of those, but this isn't a thing to be remembered for. Except I think I'm more thoughtful than I would have thought previously. I was concerned about my kids missing school to sit with me, and the nurses being uncomfortable while they have to bend over me to work, and it kills me that I missed commencement at school this year. But that's pretty standard mom stuff.

Character should be lauded when people stand up against the masses. It's a sign of character to keep doing the right thing when people call you names for it - like Aaron Swartz (watched this great doc yesterday). I'm only just this year not a total freak for actually believing climate change is something to worry about. All eye-rolls and side-eyed grins and open palm to forehead gestures I've tolerated and yet soldiered on, that takes strength and courage up the wazoo. Because it's so easy to be like everyone else, to be a mass consumer and sit on the prosperous team that looks shiny and gets places quickly. And I don't think I actively helped further the momentum of the movement despite attending marches and joining groups and forwarding info and talking about it until people can't stand me; I just worked hard to avoid adding to the problem and to try to help by spreading the word in any way I can through reasonable but gentle persuasion in an attempt to avoid a backlash. It's an accomplishment in that it takes effort just to be heard at all, not that it saved the world.

The many of us who try to spread the bad news know we won't be praised for our courage or strength. But we do it anyway. That's what character's all about.

Preventing Ovarian Cancer Program Logistics

I went down the road to genetic testing all because of a link I noticed on facebook in early May 2015 - just before my 50th birthday, from the POCP. It said that anyone could get free genetic testing to test for cancer if they have a close relative who had ovarian cancer. So I signed up. It sounds a little sketchy to do genetic testing online, but it was through the Familial Breast and Ovarian Cancer Clinic at the Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto, and I thought, what the heck. I did it pretty flippantly.

The process took 18 months from start to finish. After completing numerous lengthy forms, it took four months just for them to determine that I was eligible largely because it was difficult to find my mother's medical records because she died in 1996. The span from one step to the next was often so long that I completely forgot about clicking that link months before.

Then they sent me a ton of psychosocial questionnaires and called me at work a few times to ask me a multitude of questions about how I'm coping with thinking about having the testing done, and whether or not I might actually want the information if I do get tested. I got a little impatient with all that. Once the test results came, in February, and I sufficiently convinced them that I actually wanted the results, then it got more interesting. I was able to transfer my files closer to home, and then I got to meet a host of really kind and competent medical professionals for numerous appointments.

But, after finding out that you've got the genes that put you in a high risk category for cancer, you want it all to go by in a matter of days. It felt like it took forever to actually get appointments with all the necessary doctors. Once there, then it felt pretty quick to get it on with it.

This is what it all looked like:

I got my last drainage tube out today and had a good look at it. It was HUGE.  I'm really glad I didn't ask to see it when I got the first one out. I pictured a tiny tube in my body about an eighth of an inch in diameter and about an inch long. Nope. It was a good half an inch wide and flat, with holes in it, like a drip irrigation hose for watering plants - except it sucked instead of spraying. And it was many inches long. I'm still getting over it!  But I'm glad that bit's over now.

Now I just have to see if the bits that they took out are cancer free at my appointments later this month, and it should all be over!

ETA: Narrator: But it wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

Sorry, but You've Been Duped into Denial

Alternatively titled, Don't be a Koch Sucker!

In the U.S., about 70% believe climate change is real, 35% believe it's caused by humans, and 16% are worried about it. The 30-minute film, "The Doubt Machine: Inside the Koch Brothers' War on Climate Science" explains how you've been tricked into false belief. It features Michael Mann, who was also in recent films makes by Josh Fox and Leo DiCaprio. What makes him so important? He published the "hockey stick graph" in 1999, which shows how industrialization connects directly to the increase in global temperature, and he was summarily attacked for it.

Later used in Gore's Inconvenient Truth. 

It was a matter of shooting the messenger. There were death threats made to him and his family, and money was offered to his colleagues to discredit him. He was eventually cleared of all wrong-doings. The smear campaign was funded by Charles and David Koch.

The Koch Brothers own a $100 billion oil, chemicals, and minerals empire. They control 1-2 million acres of the Tar Sands in our fair nation. And you thought this was just an American problem! Their number one goal is to stop any climate action. They do this by controlling Congress and the Senate by paying off politicians directly. The 52% of Senators and 39% of member of Congress that are in their pocket have pledged to stop any policy that will impede their business ventures. Because the US is so influential, this is the single biggest obstacle to climate change action.

The film doesn't say this, but if it weren't for the "intent to destroy" line in the definition, what the Koch brothers are doing is genocidal in nature: deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of a group in whole or in part. Okay, it's not a deliberate intent to destroy life; it's just an unfortunate side effect of their business model that will take down 100s of millions of lives. That's all.

Climate change is all real. The worst predictions keep coming true, and it's going to get so much worse really soon. We stand to pass 2° threshold by 2050. How much money does it take for politicians to allow policies to continue that will destroy the world for your children? About a million dollars on average.

The API - American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the oil industry, uses the same methods as the tobacco industry to provoke doubt. Remember this?



Charles and David's dad, Fred Koch, was a chemical engineer from Texas who couldn't get an in to promote his tactics in the U.S., so went abroad and set up refineries for Stalin and Hitler. Really. He trained his sons in neo-liberal, small government philosophies. In the 1990s, the Koch family needed clout in Washington to stop regulations that would impact their profits, so they got involved in bribing lobbying politicians for their support. Now their reach is unprecedented in its complexity. Any politician that runs counter to their policies is hung to dry, like republican Bob Inglis.

They have the cash to bombard the public with whatever message they need them to hear. And they have rounded up scientist-types who are making a fortune denying climate change. One of the most famous is Willie Soon, an aerospace engineer who carefully allows people to believe he's a climate scientist, even though the difference is huge. There were some climate scientists who were skeptical, but not now. There is too much evidence matching GHGs to climate change that it's clearly not just a matter of solar variability.  No scientist educated in climate studies is currently denying that this is a human effect that requires human action to slow it down.

In other news, no pain pills today! I'm that much closer to being able to have a beer! And I need it after all this. I mean climate change, of course. Recovery from surgery is relatively easy all things considered. Recovery from climate change will be a bugger! We need the Koch Brothers unceremoniously lopped off from any connection with politics, so we can finally start to heal.

Before the Flood

First of all, I love that this Leo DiCaprio film, directed by Fisher Stevens, was free to watch everywhere on the National Geographic Channel for a while. But if you missed it, here's the gist of it below.

Without ads, it's 90 minutes, jampacked with information. The pacing is good, and that's key. I can't help comparing it to Josh Fox's film, because there are marked similarities - both feature one man, a passionate novice in the field, talking a little too much about himself as he flies around the world narrating his learning experience through listening to a variety of experts - many of the same experts even - as he aims to get some kind of a hopeful conclusion. But Leo's film works so much better. It helps that he has funds and connections - where Fox had footage from drones, DiCaprio had footage from space - and that he's a much better orator and has an incredible cinematography crew (and it doesn't hurt that Trent Reznor did the music), but what Stevens and DiCaprio got from the interviews and what they did with the material, the basic trajectory of the film, is what nails it as the superior vehicle to inspire positive change. In 2000, DiCaprio interviewed President Clinton on Earth Day, and they talked about the need for citizens to use better lightbulbs. He recognizes we're getting nowhere with that kind of rhetoric, and he does a good job at getting at the big picture quickly.

DiCaprio frames the film with a discussion of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych: The Garden of Earthly Delights, which is timely as Bosch died 500 years ago this year and you can take a really interesting, brief online tour of the work. The painting hung over DiCaprio's crib as a child. My parents were wary about giving me a book of his work when I was about ten. It's pretty disturbing for a little one, depicting our deal with God, our fall from grace, and the hell that awaits us for all our sins.

He also starts and ends the film at the United Nations as he took on the role of the UN Messenger of Peace with a focus on climate change back in 2014 when Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon remarked, "If this boat is sinking, then we will all have to sink together." And then he gets moving. Here's a very brief summary of pertinent remarks made with each place or person interviewed:

ALBERTA, CANADA
Michael Brune of the Sierra Club explained how the economy is based on fossil fuels: oil for transportation and coal and gas for electricity. We're going to more extreme sources now with mountaintop removal, fracking, offshore drilling, and the tar sands - the most devastating way to produce fossil fuels that poisons miles of rives and land and requires the clear-cutting of the boreal forests. On a copter flying over the sands, DiCaprio said "It looks like Mordor," which is exactly what Maude Barlow said about it. He started shooting The Revenant in Alberta, but they had to move to Argentina because there wasn't enough snow in the winter in Canada.


BAFFIN ISLAND, CANADA
Dr. Enric Sala of the National Geographic and Jake Awa, their arctic guide, looked at the sea ice and watched the narwhals passing by. The arctic is the air conditioner for the northern hemisphere, and by 2040, we'll be able to sail over the North Pole, unencumbered by icebergs and all that snow.

GREENLAND
Professor Jason E. Box, a climatologist, thinks our projections are conservative and Greenland will be gone in a few decades if we stay on our current path. He showed DiCaprio how a climate station works and that it just looks like broken down pool equipment.

FLORIDA
Mayor Philip Levine suggested we bring all the unconverted to Miami so they can see first hand the "sunny day flooding" they get randomly. It's taken $400 million of taxpayer money for a pump project to keep the city out of water, and that will just buy them 40 years of time before they'll have to leave. Yet officials in Florida are banned from discussing climate change thanks to the work of Rick Scott and Marco Rubio.

WALL STREET
Michael Mann, an American climatologist, says we have as strong a scientific agreement on climate change as we do on gravity. There's opposition because of politics, lobbying, and industry creating a massive disinformation campaign. Scientists are vilified and attacked by congressmen. Mann has received death threats, an FBI investigation, and threats to his family. The lobbyists don't have to win a legitimate debate; they just have to divide the public enough for them to stay their course.

Front groups funded by the Koch brothers ensure all legislation supports fossil fuel interests. They're doing everything they can to protect that wealth. They own the house of representatives, with James Inhofe, the snowball dude and the largest recipient of Koch funding in the Senate, receiving $1,837,427. These people are engaged in an effort to lead us astray in the name of short term fossil fuel profits. These companies have invested all their money in one basket, and they're not going to let anything happen to it. And they control the government through cash flow. Check out this 30 minute documentary if you want more info on the Koch Brothers' War on Climate Science.

CHINA
Ma Jun, at the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, explained that China has surpassed the US as number one polluter because the pollution of the world's industry is all dumped there since we've outsourced all our factory work. They want to hold power plants accountable, and have made a cool national pollution map database that makes all emissions public, transparent, and updated hourly. They won't let companies operate in the dark. But this was only possible because China's media talked about it constantly. It motivated China's policy of green growth.

NEW DELHI, INDIA
Sunita Narain, at the Centre for Science and Environment, explained that the biggest problem in India is poverty, so energy access is as big an issue as GHGs. There are 300 million people without any form of power generation; they burn cow dung to cook on. Finance Secretary Ashok Lavasa, said that they need electricity to be affordable and coal is cheap. But if they all start using it, then the entire world will be fried. One US citizen uses as much energy as 34 Indian citizens, and lifestyle consumption has to be at the centre of the discussion. Sunita explained that if the US will shift to solar and wind, if they lead the way in turning their back on the fossil fuel industry, then everyone will follow. But DiCaprio lamented that it's just not going to happen. It's a fossil addicted country. So then India won't do it either. Here's the thing: if a wealthy country can't find a way to stop using harmful energy sources, then the poor countries look at that and don't see why they should bother. The sacrifice is so much greater for the poorer countries, but the rich countries aren't going to bend on this. So we're screwed. The rich can withstand the first hits of climate change, but the poor are already impacted today. Only the poor really see that it's real and it's urgent.

PACIFIC ISLANDS
Anote Tong, President of Kiribati, regularly deals with severe flooding into fresh water ponds so there's no drinking water on the island. Soon they'll be underwater. They're trying a policy of migration with dignity: they bought land and are offering to relocate people away from the coast by choice. But the reality is that they won't be able to accommodate all their people. Tommy Remengesau, President of Palau, showed an area that was a community just a decade ago, but is completely gone. Small island nations contribute the least to climate change and feel the worst impacts.

ECOSYSTEMS
Jeremy Jackson, PhD, an American marine ecologist, says that what we've done to the rest of the world is criminal. We're reversed half a billion years of evolution by destroying ocean areas that once were dominated by abundance. They went underwater to look at areas with dead coral reef. In the last 30 years, 50% of all coral has been lost. Oceans are a stabilizing force, but they can't take in CO₂ as quickly as we're producing it. Lindsey Allen of the Rainforest Action Network says we're taking away ecosystems that normally help us stabilize climate by clearcutting and slash and burning rainforests. Farwiza Farhan, HAkA Chairperson, flew over the fires in Sumatra, Indonesia. They were intentionally set in order to make way for rows and rows of palm oil tress. It's the last place in the world with elephants, tigers, rhinos, and orangutans living together, but palm oil has taken over 90% of the forest land. Ian Singleton, PhD, runs a sanctuary to try to save them. The animals he doesn't save, die.  (Leo and Fisher almost died filming the fires.)

So, we can't seem to stop people from buying these products, and we can't seem to get the government to stop the companies from destroying the land. What else can we do?

How stupid are we that we can't see the connection between our constant consumption of these products and the destruction of the environment, or, at the very least, the destruction of animal habitat directly leading to significant extinctions?? Buy what you need, not everything you want, and stay low on the production chain.


HOW TO TURN IT AROUND??

Professor Gidon Eshel, PhD in environmental physics at Bard College, says the easiest and most important thing we can do is to change our diet. Tonight. The foremost reason for deforestation is beef, which is an inefficient form of food. 70% of agricultural land in the US is for cattle feed. And cows produce methane, CH₄, which is 20 times worse as a GHG than CO₂. It's great if you can go vegan, but it helps even to change from beef to chicken. And that's something we can all do immediately.

Elon Musk, CEO of Spacex, a Tesla Gigafactory, has made battery storage a priority. He built a Giga factory that can create power with just solar and wind. We just need 100 gigafactories to power the entire world. It's very manageable. We just need a few industrial companies to do the same thing and we'll get there very quickly.

Gregory Mankiw, Professor of Economics at Harvard, says we need a hefty carbon tax on any activity that puts carbon in the atmosphere to nudge people in the direction of doing the right thing.

BUT, my concern with this argument is that when cigarettes are taxed, people don't stop buying them. They need to get cancer to stop smoking, not a price hike. They need to see the direct consequences of their behaviour before they'll change. A gradual rise in price doesn't affect us enough. Maybe if it's a huge increase very quickly we'll actually change. We need a carbon tax that will affect industry enough to change their practices, not citizens.

Then he went on to explain the flow of power. When Obama first started he wouldn't support gay marriage because it polled terribly. But once the people got on board, he supported it. Politicians aren't elected leaders; they're elected followers. They'll say whatever the public will support. So we just need to get the public to really understand how this all works!

John Kerry, Secretary of State, says the Paris negotiations are different because Obama was able to announce his intentions to reduce with Beijing. The two largest emitters made a public declaration to reduce, which is a huge statement. The concern in the interim is that people are being displaced and there will be wars over water, and any extremist philosophy will appeal to a desperate people.

Johan Rockstrom, Stockholm Resilience Centre, says we're moving quickly towards 4° warming in this century, and we haven't been at those temperatures in 4 million years. We're moving faster than predicted and seeing impacts already. At 3° warming, regions will become unlivable and agriculture will collapse. We're hitting feedback loops where the melted ice leaves behind dark earth that absorbs more of the sun's rays. We have a really small window for world leaders to fix it. It can be done, though. Germany is at 30% renewable power, and Denmark is using 100% wind. Once we invest in it, then we have free energy forever.

BUT, I think this is the whole stopper for investors. It doesn't make financial sense to invest in something people will just need to buy once. If we can't get out of our current growth economic mindset, then we'll never survive.

Barack Obama says the Paris summit is a massive step forward, but there's no enforcement and we just have to take it on faith that each country will hit its own targets. It's historic because each country is locked into targets, so the architecture is in place. But we have to have increasingly ambitious targets for the next twenty years.

BUT - the next twenty years?!? That's way too gradual a change! We really don't have twenty years to get to the targets that we should be imposing today. Will Hilary have big enough balls to do what's necessary? Could anyone stand up the the money infiltrating congress through corporations? Which leaders will actually, for real, fight climate change when it means cutting their own funds?

Dr. Piers Sellers, an astronaut and director at the Earth Sciences Division, NASA, with stage 4 pancreatic cancer, says the science community hasn't done the best job of communicating the threat to the public. It's like an ant trying to understand an elephant by crawling around it. From space we can see everything and how it all works together. There are satellites looking at every aspect of earth every day. Their climate simulation tool shows the biggest impact will be the slowing of the gulf stream which will stop the transportation of heat to Europe, so it will get much colder there, and the moving of the precipitation belt, so there will be more drought in hot areas. This is going to fuel conflict in Darfur and Syria. It will make the US dustbowl much drier in the next decades.

The facts are crystal clear, but there are ways out of it. We have to stop burning fossil fuels right now. We need the people to come out of the fog of confusion with the issues, realistically appreciate the threat, and get on with it. 

Pope Francis says this is our home; it is going to ruin. Our common home has fallen into serious disrepair. Hope would have us recognize that there is always a way out, that we can always redirect our steps, that we can always do something to solve our problems. Still we can see signs that things are now reaching a breaking point. He made a call for action to stop global warming and poverty, to accept the modern science of climate change. We must speak out as loudly as we can and immediately take action. 

Leo DiCaprio's address to the United Nations: We have the means to stop the devastation, but lack the will. We must go beyond the promises of the agreement with no more excuses and studies and manipulation by fossil fuel companies. The world is watching. We'll either be laudified or vilified. It's up to all of us.

Now I'm Trendy, Dammit

The NY Times published a piece last night:"'Going flat' after breast cancer," about the nascent movement towards openly having a boobless chest - which is very different than a flat chest. (Brace yourself for the comments there - Frankenstein references, etc.) And here I thought I was doing something courageously original!  Turns out I'm just an early adopter, not an innovator.

When I first found out I needed a double mastectomy, I searched online for stories from women who had and who hadn't gotten reconstruction. Overwhelmingly, those who hadn't seemed to have far fewer problems, both physically and psychologically, and they managed fine with external prosthetics. So for my first appointment with the surgeon, I was firmly committed to a boobless chest. And I didn't want any prosthetics. I was glad that I had a choice at all, though. Many don't due to radiation or other complications. It feels more empowering to choose it rather than to have it the default.

But the doctor got to me. He appealed to my vanity, and I faltered. The one area of my body I'm insecure about and try to hide is the little flap of belly skin that developed after my third child. Tucking it into bikini bottoms and ensuring it stays tucked means always feeling self-conscious at the beach. And I only wear really long shirts in class in case I lift my arms and suddenly expose the horrors of a skin flap to my young charges. I admit I've googled "tummy tuck" previously but was deterred by the $10,000 price tag. Now, without boobs to keep a shirt out from my body far enough to stop it from clinging to my belly bulge, I worried it might be more of an issue for me feeling repulsive.

As I sat on the examining table, topless but with jeans on, the doctor grabbed my flab with two hands, gave it a good shake like he was shaking out a towel and said, "You could get rid of all this fat! Just move it up top, and you've got a flat stomach again. It'll just add half an hour to your surgery, and it's all covered by OHIP because it's reconstruction!"

I hadn't thought of myself as fat until that minute.

My resolve wavered, and I made an appointment to see a plastic surgeon.

But my surgeon was wrong about how it works. Something that surprised me along the way - but really shouldn't have - is that everyone involved knows their own job really well, but doesn't really understand everyone else's expertise. Really, why should they? I'm not sheepish that I can't teach calculus even though I'm a high-school teacher and took it once over thirty years ago. I can send people to the right place to ask those kinds of questions; nobody expects me to answer them myself. Except... I don't ever try to answer them and give the wrong answers with confidence. That might be a bit of a problem that warrants half a star off my doctor's otherwise stellar rating.

Prettiest at St. Elsewhere

The plastics guy was fantastic for telling me all the possible problems and pitfalls. The Times article suggests that plastic surgeons "aggressively promote reconstruction," like you might picture from TV stereotypes of greedy, superficial cosmetic surgeons, but this one didn't at all. He explained that there are two different types of procedures. The one using belly fat is done with micro-surgery that requires moving blood vessels around, and it's a 12-hour procedure that can't be done at my local hospital. It's great because the fat grows and shrinks and ages with you, so it doesn't look like a different entity, but it's a separate, 12-hour procedure!!  AND, right away he told me I don't have enough fat for even one small boob. It's all skin. Somehow, that didn't make me feel any sexier.

The other procedure, that just adds half an hour to the surgery, is with an implant. We played with the saline and silicone boobs on display, but he just uses "gummy bear implants" - solid silicone that won't be damaged by being punctured and can't leak. It feels exactly like a gummy bear. BUT the surgery doesn't all end with just that additional 30 minutes in the O.R. That's just to put in a skin-stretcher: a balloon-thingy that they add to with an injection every week so the skin can slowly expand enough to fit an implant. THEN, weeks later, you have to go back under again to get the actual implant added. AND there are so many complications with scaring and rejection and dimpling around the prosthetic. As he said, it's not a breast implant, it's a prosthetic implant. I can barely tolerate plastics in my life, much less in my body. I thanked him so much for telling it like it is, tucked my flap back in my jeans, and went on my merry way.

At my next appointment, I asked my surgeon how long I should wait before getting a tattoo. I already have vines up each arm and now I can have them join in some wonderfully delicate display on my chest. The only grieving I did before losing my breasts was when I'd think about losing my butterfly tattoo. I got it decades ago when I was trying to wean my son from breastfeeding. He was already three and showed no signs of giving it up willingly, so I was working on getting him through longer and longer periods without. But the little monkey would sneak into my room at night to nurse while I slept dead to the world! I tried wearing a bodysuit to bed, but he was able to get around anything this side of a suit of armour. So I got the tattoo to mark the transformation from my breasts being purely functional to being beautiful again, and, most importantly, to make sure I'd wake up from the pain for the first few days and stop my little snuggler in the act. It worked! And then it became a memento of that precious time of my life with my little ones.

When I was waiting to go into the O.R., my kids asked if there was some way we could keep that bit of skin, and we made some pretty sick jokes involving pressing the butterfly in a book even though there are much better ways to save tattoos. But with the surgeon being pretty old-fashioned about aesthetics to begin with, I suggested they could ask him. I had too much else on my mind. And it can always be re-done among the vines.

My doctor didn't really answer the question about how long to wait to be inked, but advised I wait a good, long while in case I reconsider getting reconstruction. "You're still young!" was his primary argument as if giving up breasts means giving up romance or life itself. I guess it's his experience that women change their mind afterwards, and that it helps them to look like themselves again, but I'd still like my question answered! I know I'm not quite dead yet, but I think I can muster the courage to make it through my remaining years without looking traditionally female. We can totally rock a boobless chest, despite misgivings from the Trumps in the crowd! And maybe the work of art on my chest will be enough to distract from that extra bit of skin sneaking out of my bottoms at the beach. Maybe.

Just a Flesh Wound

This is a figuring kind of post wherein I try to make sense of it all. I have all sorts of thoughts about breasts now.

I had to get the dressing changed today, so I got a glimpse of myself for the first time. The nurse at the CCAC was wonderful. She taught me to "milk" my drainage tubes so they don't get clots in them. When she asked how's my milking going, I thought she was talking about lactating, and I was baffled that it was still possible. It's not. Nobody had mentioned clearing the tubes before, so good to know. She was very gentle taking off all the bandages, and the only place that hurt were my armpits, which I predicted with all my feminist hairiness and all. It felt great to have the bandages off, to be able to scratch the sticky places and get nice and clean before it was all covered up again. I didn't look too closely at where the drains went in; that might have turned my stomach. But looking down at my flat chest wasn't so bad. It's absolutely amazing how quickly we can adapt to some pretty significant changes in our lives!

I'm deliberating over posting a picture of myself, not because of any sense of decency (since I have little in that respect), or because people might say mean things about my middle age body, but because I'm a teacher. We get fired or otherwise penalized for weird things from time to time. Supporting the BDS movement can be enough to get suspended. I'd hate for someone to be traumatized and then it be decided that the community has lost all faith in my ability to school the young because I'm willing to let people know I look like a boy. So maybe another day.

Pietro Boselli in some tiny shorts.

I didn't march in the topless parade, which happened here just over a year ago, for the same reason. Teachers generally have to remain covered up. Well, actually, it's perfectly okay for male teachers to have their shirts off. So, is it the case that it's okay because there's less fat on their pecs? Because then flat-chested females should be okay, but they're not. Facebook policy makes it clear that it's female nipples, specifically, that can't be seen. Women of any cup-size can bare their breasts if they have their nipples covered, but male nipples of any size or shape aren't nearly as offensive, which spurred the whole "free the nipple" campaign. Then Rolling Stone said they'd show uncovered nipples on men and trans women only, which implies that women's nipples are still offensive, and, worse, that trans women aren't really women so it's okay to show them too. I'm not sure if I fit in with the men or women now, but if it's only women's nipples that get censored, the fact that I don't have any nipples at all should mean it's okay to be topless, right? And it's legal in Ontario anyway. But there's always that community standards thing that can costs someone their job. Even this paragraph might be enough to do me in!

When I first signed a teaching contract in the early 90s, I was unmarried and just that day found out I was pregnant. A few older teachers I barely knew came out of the woodwork to suggest I couldn't continue to be pregnant and teach - that I'd have to make a choice - because what will people think?! I'll tell ya what they'll think: I had sex outside the confines of matrimony, like most people do. I wasn't doing anything harmful or immoral or beyond the boundaries of current customs, but carrying the pregnancy to term, unmarried, made it clearly known that this is what's acceptable to us now. I kept teaching and even had two more little bastards to complete the set. I was just showing us what we all knew already but weren't quite ready to see.

Mastectomies are nothing new, but I'm wary of sharing too much because it's still something women do privately. We're not really ready to see this part of our reality yet either. Women without breasts typically use something to make it appear that they have breasts sometimes just so as not to offend. Which is a shame. I don't think it's a problem if someone feels like breasts are an important part of their identity - that option of reconstruction should definitely be available, but I do think it's unfortunate if some women only want prosthetics so they don't freak people out.

Normal is overrated.

My surgeon did a great job! I was worried that I'd have little dog ears of fat or uneven bits, but it's pretty smooth. I feel like I'm ten-years-old again! And there's just enough fat in the middle that I could fake a bit of cleavage if I were so inclined.

I have some knitted knockers that I ordered weeks ago just in case. They're cute, soft prosthetics that a small army of volunteers knits and sends to women losing a breast or two. I can add or take out stuffing to make them any size I need for the occasion. I have a couple dresses with darts in them where breasts would go, so the top would droop and flap on someone flat-chested. I'd hate to never wear them again, but now I have options. I can use my prosthetics in a bra when I'm feeling like looking tailored and womanly, but when I'm biking or building or doing anything useful, I can be completely unencumbered.

But can I really be a different shape each day? It's curious that there's a certain consistency expected in our appearance. Changing wigs or style completely throws people off - unless someone changes styles so regularly that that is their style. Actually, on second thought we're okay with someone getting a hair transplant, or a good dye job, but not a crappy toupee or have monochromatic Grecian Formula hair. Sitcoms teach us it's acceptable to laugh at people doing a bad job of trying to improve themselves. I guess it's more the case that if we fake it, we have to fake it well enough to pass.  If you're going to the trouble to make yourself look better, then you have to do it well. You can get a boob job, but get caught stuffing with kleenexes and you risk being a laughingstock, like Jenna in the first ten seconds of this trailer.




Or in the last 20 seconds of this oldie, when Rob Lowe makes fun of her Spanx.



People laugh when we try to be something we're not, but only if we're not savvy enough to carry it off. It's the Caitlyn Jenner effect that she can be lauded because she's got the money for the best surgery and outfits going, but it's that much more difficult for Cathy down the street to be accepted in old Value Village outfits and falsies. It's not cool that we do that, but there it is.

So what drives that? It's curious that I'd also roll my eyes at anyone trying but failing. I'm wondering to what extent I can change my boob size daily as the mood shifts knowing that I might raise an eyebrow at someone stuffing their bra.

Natural beauty is what it's all about, right? We used to be told to accept ourselves as we are. That's trickier to teach now. It's still a good lesson in general, to appreciate what makes you unique instead of trying to match an inaccessible ideal, but then there's a wall that some people hit there. I can embrace who I am as a very short, stalky woman. I was never bothered by taunts of "thunder thighs" because somehow I had internalized how useful it was to have strong tree trunk legs (well, stumps really). I have no idea how to teach that kind of self-acceptance, though. The quest for perfection is a problem individually because it's unattainable and socially because it has us ignoring useful differences in a move towards uniformity, which, worst of all, is really boring. But if it can get us through the day, if it can help us to reach a modicum of social acceptance that allows us to manage our lives with fewer hassles, then sometimes a shift towards the narrow range of media-driven ideals might create more personal benefits than is lost by a rejection of our own "natural" beauty.

Watch out for some nightmarish results.

But sometimes we don't look anything like we think of ourselves as looking. Somehow I just adapt to however I look and move on even when others might be horrified, but others can't move on so easily. When my son was seven, he got some skin tags removed from his face. I left them there until he was old enough to make his own decision about them. If he ended up punk, I wanted him to have options of more things to pierce! But he wasn't headed in that direction, so off them came. It was a really minor event, and at no point did I think it necessary to try to convince him to embrace his natural self. He's still himself, just without the extra bits that didn't quite fit with his personal perception.

Sometimes the natural self isn't quite what works for us. So maybe it's not such a big deal to stuff and squeeze, to paint, powder, and pad as it suits us each day. Hmm...

Oh, what the hell:

72 hours after surgery.

How to Let Go of the World

I was really looking forward to seeing the latest Josh Fox film on fracking. I loved Gasland (for which Mark Ruffalo was just added to the US Terror Advisory List for promoting), and then Chris Hedges gave this film a nod, which means a lot to me. And then one reviewer wrote that the film will "restore your faith that we, as a people, have the power to save ourselves." Exactly what I need. So I bought it on iTunes and settled in for some enlightenment.

Maybe my expectations were a smidge too high.

It fell into the same problems that made Rob Stewart's films less than stellar. In Sharkwater, Stewart had long dramatic interludes focusing on himself and the problems he experienced being unwittingly thrust into activism. And then in Revolution, he spoke at length about beginning to learn about the environment. At least Stewart, near the end, seemed to recognize the part he himself was playing in exacerbating climate change with all the air travel the film required. Did it really require it, is the question. Stewart starts asking himself some really hard questions, which I respect. Fox doesn't go there.

Like Stewart, Fox is just learning - or, at least, he presents the appearance of just learning about climate change. He's been in this a while, so I can't imagine he doesn't get the big picture yet, and I'm really not a fan of the technique of feigning ignorance to get people on board. It feels like he hadn't done any research before the shoot so we could watch him discover what it is to "eat from the tree of knowledge, and now there's no going back." I want a documentary to tell me something I don't know, and tell me with confidence. I want a climate change doc, especially, to tell the world everything they need to know to get with the program. There were too many shots of Fox walking through forests in awe of nature - look at that spider! and that tree! and that bird! Even worse, most of those shots weren't of the forest, but of Fox looking at the forest. We were to be enthralled by his wonder at nature, not by nature itself. If he were my son, this would be my favourite movie ever. But he's not.

That gets to the bigger problem here: that this film is way too focused on Fox to be compelling to anyone who isn't related to him or doesn't have a crush on him. It starts with a painfully awkward dance to show how happy he is that a river nearby won't be polluted with oil. It was a hard-won victory, and I get the celebratory tone, but there are other ways to show joyfulness without forcing us to watch a guy dance in his living room for the entire opening credits. He finds it helpful to cope with tragedy by playing the banjo. That's really nice for him, but it's doesn't necessarily translate to helping us cope by listening to him play.

Like Stewart, Fox does it all, and sometimes it's better to spread the jobs around a more talented pool. His narration is stilted, with long dramatic pauses mid-sentence throughout. There aren't rises and lulls in the intensity of his tone; it's all drama all the way through: "Just a few months later.  New York City.  Was about to get.  A wake-up call."  Couple that with a really quiet voice juxtaposed with sudden bursts of loud extended musical interludes meant my finger hovered on the volume the whole time. He had some great footage from a camera strapped to a drone, and he had the cash to film in twelve different countries, but he didn't spring for a steadicam, so much of the tromping through the forest had a Blair Witch effect.

He collected the usual litany of talking heads: Bill McKibben, Michael Mann, Elizabeth Kolbert...  but only for a few minutes each. If I had the chance to chat with Elizabeth Kolbert, I'd have so many more questions to ask. She's got a wealth of knowledge that was largely ignored. And the McKibben interview was in a food court, and they decided to include their argument with mall security about filming in the mall. I struggle to see the purpose of that clip - why they'd choose a food court to film in, and why they'd choose to highlight the conflict. Is it to mirror the pipeline protests? A corporation vs citizen struggle? He was just a security guard doing his job. Weird.

He threw in some stats about increasing weather events, rising sea levels, endangered animals, factory farms, ocean acidity, threatened protesters, that the window to slow the expected 2° rise by 2036 closes within a year from now (NASA thinks we may have already hit 2°), and that all our 40-year-old pipelines are going to break. He referred to the Amazon rainforest as the lungs of the world even though the oceans create significantly more oxygen. Standard stuff. But a few of his poignant pieces of information were learned by most of us in grade three: "People. And animals. Exhale carbon dioxide. Trees. Take in. Carbon dioxide."

What I learned? To make a good documentary, you really have to get over yourself and your personal learning experience and make the subject matter the star of the show. Read some Monbiot before you start shooting so you don't sound like you've never heard of any of this before, and so you can temper your amazement at what's being shared. A lot of it is old news to anyone remotely familiar with the issues, like that Republicans don't think climate change is caused by human activity. Even better, read the IPCC reports that came out in 2014.

As far as learning basic information about climate change, there are better films to watch to understand all the meetings leading up to Paris. Like this one at only 4 minutes:



And then Grist also explained what happened in Paris, but in much more positive terms than Fox:



So his big question, the big draw to the film, is the focus on what won't be destroyed by climate change. His thesis is that we'll still have courage and creativity and resilience and all sorts of other wonderful human attributes that should be celebrated. But, I think we won't have any of those if we don't have any humans left. This is where some knowledge of Naomi Klein's and Gordon Laxer's plans for change would have helped add some substance to his song and dance. He's struggling with how to cope with all the knowledge, but he hasn't gotten far enough in depth in his own journey to have us walk with him. He seems to want to escape rather than actually cope with the reality of it all - to actually feel that reality.

By comparison, a much better film on the complexity of coping with the environmental destruction in our own backyard is Fractured Land with Caleb Behn. Both Behn and Stewart were willing to question their own motives and involvement in a way that Fox skirts around, refusing to acknowledge, which leaves his film feeling superficial at best. And of the three filmmakers, Behn's film offers the most complex understanding of the situation and leaves you with the most hopeful spirit. We can't have real hope if we distract ourselves with music in the face of significant loss. We have to have a clear path to walk to help make it okay.

One of the Lucky Few?

I've been reading other blogs about mastectomies, and the level of pain described makes me feel like someone's made a huge mistake, and they'll take off all the bandages to find they forgot to remove my breasts! I'm experiencing zero chest pain. I could be taking up to 12 pain pills a day, but I'm down to just four - the minimum. I've got cramps that feel no worse than mild menstrual cramps, but my belly is still puffy from the gas. I have become one with my hot water bottle. And I can comfortably raise my arms enough to put my hair in a ponytail. Of course, because I love to worry, I'm thinking it must get terribly worse. But I could be wrong.

I get my drainage tubes out once I'm "producing" less than 25cc per day, and I'm already there on one side. Many others have tubes in for weeks and then removing them is a horror show. I'm expecting both out within a week. I guess it makes sense that people who comment on forums are likely people who are having a difficult experience. It kind of feels like gloating to say how easy it's been for me.

The bandages are giving me grief though. It didn't occur to me to shave my armpits before surgery, and the bandage tape gets right up in there. I had to get my kids to perform the delicate task of trying to cut some of the hairs that are being tugged whenever I move my arms. And the tape on my back is hella-itchy. I fantasize about scrubbing myself with Goo Gone.

I'm still working at getting my body to relax. It takes a conscious effort to notice my breathing and the tension that gradually takes over from my shoulders to my toes. My body is still recovering from the shock of it all, and it's not ready to let down its guard completely despite my reassurances that it's all over.

My kids, on the other hand, were wiped by the experience. It's emotionally draining to sit at someone's side all day. And now I'm worried about how much school work they're not getting done because they're practically in a coma.

It's curious how they take the shape of their containers.

My cats have been in heaven about all the snuggly time on the couch. I seem to be the only one with any energy around here! It doesn't help to be surrounded by Hallowe'en candy. I was so good about making sure I ate really well before surgery, and then yesterday I was up to my elbows in Kit Kats and Nibs. Today I'm back into raisons and sunflower seeds and raw veggies again. I'll be better in no time!

And on Recovery in All its Glory

Mom-ishly waiting for the kids to get their shoes on!

I walked into the O.R. for a three-hour surgery just yesterday, and I feel fine. I'm taking half the pain meds that I'm allowed to take because the pain is minimal. Weirdly minimal for all that's been done to me. The worst of it is in my shoulders from gas settling there. I have an ice-pack on the top half of me and a hot-water bottle on the bottom half. It should be raining on my rib cage.

Liam thinks I'm a badass for walking there!

Pre-surgery fashion show.

When we first got to the hospital, the place was completely deserted. We were just five minutes early to register, but it took a while working through the maze of darkened hallways to find an actual staff member. It reminded me of The Kingdom, but, listening to me complain of nausea, my kids recited Wayne's World instead: "If you're going to spew, spew into this." Foreshadowing!

Once begun, the day started with a whole lot of hurry-up-and-wait. We were shuffled from room to room, closer and closer to the O.R. We were stuck in one room for an hour and regretted not bringing the crokinole board along for a few games; I was too restless for cards. I was glad my kids were allowed to hang out with me during that time to help relieve the boredom and anxiety. But when nurses tried and failed to get an IV going, jabbing each hand before giving up, my daughter got a little pale and exhaled audibly, and all the attention shifted to her: "Take off your coat; you're going to faint!" "Put your head down!" "Are you going to be okay?" I had to remind them that I was the patient lying here with two bloody hands. But she has good reason to be stressed watching it all. She inherited my mutant genes, so she'll be next. That'll be an even harder day for me, I'm guessing.

Trying to be Zen about it all.

Staff kept remarking on the fact that I was getting two procedures at once, but I'd much rather one long surgery than two shorter ones. It's the anesthesia that scares the bejeebers outta me. It's like I'm a sickly animal being put down only to be magically awakened again. I don't trust that waking up part. I told the anesthesiologist as much and he offered to do it the old fashioned way with a bullet to bite on. I was totally up for that, but, alas, he was kidding. Bugger.

I expected to be wheeled into the O.R. like it happens on TV, but I just walked on in and hopped up on the table. There were eight masked people in the room milling about talking to each other jovially with music playing. I felt like I was intruding on an oddly specific Hallowe'en party. The anesthesiologist asked me how much I drink, and when I told him a few beers most Friday nights, the nurse and I got talking about what beers we like. She prefers a dark ale. It was all very chummy. Everyone checked my wrist band and asked my name and what I was doing there. I'm not sure if that was for their sake or my own. They covered me in toasty warm blankets and got the IV going, and tried to put an oxygen mask on my face but were really good about taking it off and just holding it close when I got all claustrophobic about it. Geez, I didn't used to be so neurotic!

And then I woke up, and there was much rejoicing!  I felt totally fine and lucid, and well enough to be annoyed that they couldn't find which waiting room my kids were in and insisted they must have gone out for coffee. They wouldn't have both left, I told them. Wait a minute... they don't even drink coffee! Eventually they let me call their cell phones to get them to me.

Post-surgery: the calm before the storm.

But then I had some troubles breathing. When I'd doze off, it felt like I kept exhaling and not inhaling again for ages, then waking up in a panic: Anesthesia-induced sleep apnea. Waking to a row of nurses staring at me, and telling me I'm not imagining it, wasn't remotely reassuring. I was supposed to be out the door by 1:00, but they kept me until 6:00. I kept getting really confused and having mini nightmares - terrors, really - about things I had to do right away, but couldn't. I was glad to have taken drugs in my wayward youth so I was well-prepared to talk myself down from a bad trip. I was hoping to come out of the O.R. saying hilariously inappropriate things to people; no such luck. The oxygen mask made my face itch, and there was vaseline on my eyes (WTF?), and the inside of my mouth felt like it was coated with glue. And then came the puking. Each time the nurses told me, "Now you'll feel 100% better!" but they lied.

After a few hours of that mess, they taught my daughter how to drain my tubes and carefully measure the blood loss. That would make anyone ralph. They got me into a pressure camisole to keep the swelling down. The nurse called it a teddy, but not many Victoria's Secret products have handy drainage bag pockets like this one does! Then they got me in a cab with a jerky driver, and I barfed just once more as soon as I got home. By 8:00 at night, twelve hours after walking into the O.R., the fog miraculously lifted, and I was up and about and watching Star Wars with my kids. Piece of cake! I almost feel like I could go to work on Monday. Almost. But I did all that prep-work, so I may as well enjoy my time off.

I thought I would feel much more fragile and broken at this point. But I really don't. I feel like I'll have to remind myself not to do too much over the next few weeks. The main surgeon recommended two to three weeks off work, and I pictured going back worried about being bumped in the halls, or unable to write on the chalk board, or too tired to make it through the whole day, but it's nothing like that. It was just two globs of fat taken off my chest and my ovaries and fallopian tubes slipped out of a hole in my belly button. I've had worse hangovers.

The doctors and nurses were all really wonderful. Not a crabby one in the bunch! But I did get my daughter to ask one to keep her voice down, and I immediately felt like such a princess for doing that. She was at the desk in the recovery room and kept talking about her weekend and life in general really loudly to the other nurses around her, while I was trying to focus on basic survival. I'm a little sensitive to chatter at the best of times. I was exactly the same during labour, demanding that my midwives whisper to each other. People are so gosh darn accommodating of my idiosyncrasies!

And my kids. Whenever the nurses would check me over, they'd get my son to leave the room - well, to stand on the other side of the curtain - because he's a boy, and one would lower her voice to ask about bleeding "down there." But he helped me give birth years ago! Nurses kept remarking about how incredible my kids are, as they'd hold my hand and stroke my head and rub my feet and get me whatever I needed. They even held my hair back when I threw up! I felt badly for how gross it all was, but they were troupers. My son's the best masseur I've ever known, and my daughter is amazing at doctoring, and remembering all the many instructions thrown at us, and telling people off as necessary. She's got my back.

Classic composition - my boy snoozing at my feet. But why won't that washcloth stay on my forehead?

A friend commented that it's just like me to keep this all a secret until the last minute. But I didn't do that for any noble reasons. I was keeping it from myself. I could pretty effectively block it out of my mind so long as I didn't talk about it. And then it was realer than real. And then it was over.

On Justified Worry

I’m going to be writing more personally for a bit. I have a lot to get off my chest.

Literally.

I’m getting a double mastectomy today and an oophorectomy for good measure (which sounds to me like something Willy Wonka might do), because I have all the fancy genes that make a human body a ticking time bomb. They're mutated genes, but I'm still waiting to discover my superpowers. My sister had cancer by 40, and my mom died of it at 69. The many specialists I’ve seen over the past six months have offered differing opinions on reconstructive surgery, but they all agree on one thing: my girly bits have got to go. Like, yesterday. The geneticist explained it to me like this: "Most women have a 1 in 10 chance of getting breast cancer. You have a 9 in 10 chance." So here I go.

I’ve been actively distancing myself from my breasts for weeks - ignoring them when I look in the mirror the way you can scan a packed room for a friend and not once meet the eyes of the enemies sitting front and center. They’re dead to me. They’ve served their purpose - to solicit for mates and feed my young - and now they’re going to kill me if I don’t get rid of them.

I have to get up in about an hour - yikes, half an hour! - to drink two cups of apple juice, then have a shower with minimal soap, and then I'm off to the hospital with my requisite surgical camisole and legal will. I imagine the trip playing out like the end of In Cold Blood, in that beautifully written scene when the two murderers walk to their execution and the one falters and collapses a bit from the terror of it all. I’m like that any time I walk onto a plane. And I’m going to feel like that walking down the long, rain-drenched street to the hospital, pre-dawn, with my children on either side of me holding me up and half dragging me there.

Oh for crying out loud. It’s just day surgery!

I’m nauseous with worry though. I’m a worrier at the best of times, so when something is actually worry-worthy, I do it justice. My shoulders and neck are painfully tight, and I’ve got a bit of a headache from the tension, but I can’t take anything for it. I’ve read the instruction booklet they gave me over and over, making sure I don’t miss any tiny detail that could cost me my life.

The thing of it is, is that I’m perfectly healthy right now, and I’m undergoing surgery to prevent getting cancer. So, if I die on the table, that would just be the worst! To die preventing myself from dying?? It’s like when a tiny woman driving a car has a minor fender bender that would have had little impact, but then the airbag deploys and breaks her neck. It’s the worst sort of irony when safety precautions end up being deadly.

So I better not die.

It’s funny how one worry will take over another one. It’s handy, really. I've been so terrified of the surgery that I've barely mentioned it to anyone. It makes me weak in the knees to say it out loud. But now that I have a bit of a cold, I’m terrified that it will be postponed, and all my exquisite and thorough lesson planning for the 33 classes I'm going to miss will be for nought. I've been hyperaware of anything remotely resembling congestion. I can't do that all again. This is the one major downfall of teaching: making explicit, in writing, every idea and explanation in your head for each class and every possible contingency plan just in case, and then worrying that something could still go wrong and you'll come back to a disaster that's your responsibility to fix. But at least thinking about nasal mucus is keeping me from thinking about the surgery! Planning a trip for Christmas is another way I’ve managed the anxiety. It helps focus my attention towards a much bigger fear of air travel, with a whole lot more to do to make it happen than just showing up for some blood work and trying to stay healthy. It just goes to show you, it's always something. There's no end to what we could be worrying about. And climate change will take us all out in the end anyway!

I try to get all Epicurean about it. It's not happening to me right this minute, and it's ridiculous to lament something that's not actually happening to us right now, amiright? It really does soothe away the mini-panic attacks that wash over me from time to time whenever the reality of it hits like a brick, when I start to vibrate with fear. Epicurus brings me back into the present. And then Epictetus guides the rest of the journey. He's my go-to guy when life sucks, except his bit on death being an end to suffering doesn't quite work here - I'm not currently suffering at all! But this surgery isn't necessarily a bad thing, he'd say. It's a great learning experience that will provide me with a fantastic story to tell later! I'm one of the rare few who gets to go through this incredible adventure. I won the golden ticket!!

And, of course, this too shall pass, amiright?!



Want to read even more about it? Check these out.

Day 2 - And on Recovery in All its Glory
Day 3 - One of the Lucky Few?
Day 4 - Just a Flesh Wound
Day 5 - Now I'm Trendy, Dammit!
Day 8 - Preventing Ovarian Cancer Program Logistics
Day 9 - On Character
Day 15 - On Missing the Girls
Day 17 - A Genius Kvetching Ring
Day 19 - Back to Work Boobless
Day 42 - And the Saga Continues
Day 60 - On Cancer Doulas

Cheers!