I'm nesting like a mofo to prepare for my return to work, but there ain't no baby to push into the arms of a stranger for eight-hours a day. Very strange feeling. Cancer's all grown up and leaving the house soon to be replaced by...?
Last week I had my leftie pumped up one final time to compensate for some inevitable radiation-induced skin shrinkage (there's a sentence I never thought I'd type). So I'm done with my plastic doc for another six months or so, when I'll go back to the hospital for a day-time implant implantation extravaganza. These rocks are mine all summer, which means Hawaii will require some bathing suit action soon. Sweaty, poorly-lit changeroom shenanigans ensue.
I'm still not used to my bod in clothes (you know, cuz I'm a nudist at heart). Everything I put on looks so demure! And after 20-odd years of looking like a ho-bag in everything tight, I'm having to learn about what simply looks flattering rather than minimizing. My wardrobe is pathetic, but amazingly, I'm able to repurpose some of the shirts I used to bust out of and they look normal now. Fo shizzle.
The tamoxifen seems to be having no side effects on much of anything, so although my skin is still horrific from the Herceptin (and will be until I kick the H-bomb in September) and my range of motion on the left side is still pretty pathetic, I'm feeling fairly fantastic lately (impending cold aside). But I tell you - this Easter business can try a girl's sugar/crack addiction. When you purge the high-fructose corn syrup from your life, it's startling how you can hear the angels sing, but one chocolate egg can put you back on the street corner begging for just one more hit of HFCS to get you through the next hour. So I toss that bidness in the garbage. It's the only way to get over it.
All of this going back to work stuff is again forcing me to reflect on what exactly I've gotten out of this cancer shit. It's unbelievably easy to slip back into old habits, old thought patterns, old ways of dealing with everything. Not doing all that stuff is the effort. So I'm still trying to reinvent everything - I really am - without tiring my neck out from all the navel-gazing.
If you think it is easy, at your age, to slip back into old habits and ways of dealing with things, try doing it when you are almost ##! When that extra little easter sweet gets popped into my mouth I find myself saying "Oh well, I've lasted this long ... so what's one more gonna do!" It may be true to some extent but I can rationalize an extra "this" and an extra "that" way too often ...
ReplyDeleteyou are hilarious.......and man, can you write! (by the way, are you doing anything along those lines?? you know, to further yourself?) your words are clever as all-get-out...you definitely have a talent. i'm so plain-jane boring.....what i think is what i say. "see Spot jump. see Spot run." okay, so we all have different talents.
ReplyDeleteanyway, to get back to you--good luck with the bathing suit shopping (not one of my favorite tasks...big boobs aren't all they're cracked up to be!) and with going back to work. good for you for dumping the E chocolate.
and to finish your first paragraph........"....nothing but good health."
xo