Order Up!

As I prepare for surgery, I can't help but feel like I've just pulled up to the drive-thru at a fast food restaurant. Only the choices on this menu are quite different than the usual artery choking options that you find on those big illuminated boards.

"Welcome to Surgery King. May I take your order?"

Me: "I'll take the #2: Lumpectomy with a side order of a few removed lymph nodes."

"Oh, sorry ma'am, that item is no longer available."

Well, no real surprise there, a lumpectomy was taken off the menu months ago due to the grade of the tumor and stage of the cancer -- but, it was worth a try. Not to worry, there are still plenty of available options to choose from. Immediate or delayed reconstruction? Implants or your own tissue? Tummy (TRAM flap) or back (latissimus dorsi flap) tissue to rebuild? Perhaps some of the newer types of flap procedures...DIEP, GAP or TUG? Whoa, slow down...I'm still trying to figure out if I want "fries with that." Silicone or saline implants? Whopper or double whopper?...oops, I mean...single or bilateral mastectomy? The choice to the last question IS a whopper (no, a double whopper) of a decision -- not to be made lightly. The choice will ultimately decide the following: a) needless additional surgery now; b) having to go through this all again years later; or, c) none of the above.

To make the decision even harder, I'm not ordering from the high-risk menu. Meaning: there is no family history of breast cancer or existence of those notorious BRCA 1 or BRCA 2 cancer genes -- just to name some of the risk factors -- which would make the decision for the bilateral mastectomy a no-brainer. My doctor said, "How a woman makes the choice of having a single or bilateral mastectomy is a gray area." No kidding... also I don't do well with "gray" areas. I'm a numbers kind of gal. Give me the cold hard facts. Will I cut the odds of cancer returning by 10% if I have a double mastectomy? 5%? 1%? C'mon doc, I'm young, have a husband and three kids to consider -- give me a number. Hell, tell me that there's a 0.5% chance that I don't have to go down this road again and I'm sold...take the second boob.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way -- there are no guarantees when it comes to cancer. I knew, no matter how hard I pushed, my doctor wasn't going to and, for that matter, wasn't able to commit to any of the percentages that I was throwing around. There are no assurances that removing my healthy breast will avoid any further matches in the ring with the big 'C'. So, there you are left in that gray area forced to make a major decision that you hope, at the end of the day, will allow you to sleep at night.

Obviously, it would be a lot simpler if I knew what caused my cancer -- just cut out those unhealthy foods and/or life style choices and move on. But, of course, nothing is easy with cancer. Who knows what I can attribute mine to...the more than occasional glass of wine that has passed over these lips? a decline in exercise over the years? the consumption of one too much prime rib? or maybe it was a smorgasboard of them all? Or perhaps it was just a case of:

Whatever the cause(s), the long term and permanent choice to hack off a healthy breast doesn't seem like a choice that should be determined by a person who questions her short term decisions minutes after they are made -- like ordering the quarter pounder as the option least likely to have me crouched over with indigestion hours later...which, by the way, I should have went with the chicken sandwich. But, thanks to my husband, after much discussion, we were able to come to a decision that I feel is right for me.

"Would you like that order super-sized?" Hmmm, now that's an interesting question. Years ago, a friend of mine said to me, "Lisa, if you had boobs (referring to the kind that spill out of a plunging neckline) you would be dangerous!" Here I am decades later and those words are spinning around in my mind. After four and a half months of chemo, the stronger woman who has emerged may not be feeling dangerous but definitely a bit spunkier. Maybe I should go with the triple Ds:

One day at chemo, a nurse overheard me joking around with a friend about monstrosities like these that I was threatening to get. "Oh Lisa," she cried, "You would topple over!"

Ouch!

Ha, ha - yes, she's probably right. Plus, I can see the disapproving look on my plastic surgeon's face now. No, this isn't the route for me...but it's fun to think about nonetheless.


And, I'm not going for the happy meal either...

I have outgrown the child-sized portions and toys that come along in those boxes.

*I couldn't resist including the Hello Kitty training bra as a shout out to my youngest who loves everything about this cat -- not sure if she's going to be humored by the tribute years from now. ;)

Yep, let's just say, when this is all said and done, I will be left with a set of jugs, that as my blog name suggests, are "uplifted". And, more importantly, ones that are, fingers and toes crossed...cancer-free.

After a bunch of scheduling problems, the wait is finally over. I have a date with the O.R. to put the decisions that I have made into action. At long last, the person behind the headsets is instructing me to pull up to the next window...

Order up!

  

Cancer you don't stand a chance....

Humor vs. Humorous

The other day I called to check up on a friend who was diagnosed with breast cancer a few months back and is having a pretty rough time handling the physical and mental side effects of chemotherapy. She recently downed her third round of chemical cocktails so I asked her how she was holding up. She paused before answering and then broke down into tears and blurted out, "I can't do it anymore! I try to joke about being bald or laugh about the absence of my left breast. But, the bottom line is that I don't find anything humorous about cancer. How do you do it?"

Whoa, hold the horses! Who said anything about finding cancer humorous? Let's be clear, there is nothing, I repeat, nothing humorous about cancer. Cancer sucks - plain and simple. And while there is nothing humorous about it, I certainly rely on my humor to help get me through this battle. This may sound contradictory -- but there is a huge difference between finding something humorous and drawing on one's humor to help get them through a difficult situation. Let me explain...

A few weeks ago, I was sitting by the pool when I saw that some fresh ivy vines were beginning to creep beneath the siding of the house. "Ugh," I thought to myself, "it's time to rip those vines out again." Because if left untended, those vines become destructive and will smother neighboring flowers and plants, suffocate shrubbery and trees, spread under the siding of your home and coil around your electric meters and telephone boxes. So I spent a good part of the morning yanking and shearing those out-of-control vines to prevent the other residents of the garden bed from being evicted. And that's when it hit me--cancer is just like those neglected ivy vines.

You see, cancer not only takes over the physical part of your body but it weaves its way into the mental part as well and, just like those vines coiling around the branches of your azalea bush, it can suffocate you if left untended. So I use mental garden shears, otherwise known as humor, to keep cancer's destructive vines under control.

Now before you start brushing up on your stand-up comedy routine, let's be clear -- I'm not suggesting that one of those "so a priest, a rabbi and cancer walk into a bar" jokes is going to lift you up when you've been knocked down by one of cancer's perilous blows. And the fact that I joke about the perkier set of ta-tas that I'll get when this battle is over doesn't mean that I take the mastectomy in my near future lightly. I would gladly hold onto these size 34As if it meant not having to enter the ring with the big 'C'. I have learned to laugh at the temporary miseries that cancer has thrown my way because I refuse to let it weave its noxious vines through my brain. I mean, it's not like you get any time off for serious behavior, otherwise those bald jokes would be thrown right out the window.

According to the American Cancer Society, a woman in the United States is diagnosed with breast cancer every three minutes. Every 13 minutes a woman in America dies of breast cancer. And that's just breast cancer...the numbers are astounding when you include all the other types of cancers. {Pretty funny stuff, huh? I don't know about you, but I'm not laughing} In the short amount of time since I heard those words "you have cancer," seven girlfriends of mine have been diagnosed with cancer and three have lost loved ones to this insidious disease. Yep, I think we can all agree that:
(1.)

(2.) There is absolutely nothing humorous about it.

But, I will continue to find humor in the exaggerated sighs of relief that my kids let out when I stub my toe and discover that everything is still intact (Taxol wreaks havoc on your nails...thankfully it hasn't claimed one yet) or how my "Beckham" hairdo has now become the most rubbed head in the household (oh, how soft those new hairs on my noggin are) because I refuse to allow cancer to suffocate my spirit, drown out my laughter and overtake my life with its misery.

Cancer you don't stand a chance...