Rest stop

This is so weird. The kids are back to school, I’m on leave from work (which has been, for the last 19 years, a 50+ hour a week, full-time marketing job), resting, trying to maintain a semblance of normalcy (ha!) while silently willing away the itch from the drains in both my sides and ignoring the vice-grip pressure around my mid-section*.

I can’t really do much, and even if I could, I am presumably going back to work at some point very soon. I am told that people can and do work through chemotherapy treatment, and that is my intention for now. So I have this strange, unplanned (that’s the understatement of the century) break from what is my normal — with no agenda, no objectives, nothing. I suppose it should be liberating. I suppose it should be another silver lining, which I assume on one of my more optimistic days, it might be. But today it just feels strange. It’s sort of as if I am in a little poser bubble, floating into a world/town/life of someone else’s.

After limping my way through a shallow bath this morning (shaved my legs too, thank you very much), I donned my best mastectomy bra (read: straight jacket), pinned my drains to my sweatpant waistband (getting hotter), and put on my husband’s oldest, softest button down. Some dry shampoo and waterproof mascara and poof! I was ready for the day! I packed a bag, a water bottle, and some thank-you notes  and am now sitting, relaxed and calm, at the local public library. There’s a big sunny room upstairs, big leather couches and very little talking. There are also hundreds of magazines. I am a self-proclaimed magazine whore so this is about as close to perfect as life is going to get. Today. You know, with breast cancer, 1 week post-op, in sweatpants.

It is here that I sit and reflect on this “break” I’ve been given forced into for reasons that I will never understand. What will I learn from it? What control can I take now to make the rest of this bus ride a little less shitty? What experiences will I remember when this is all over? What impact can I make from my weird poser bubble?

Pathology will come back from surgery this week and will determine the stage of the cancer, the course and timeline for treatment. In the meantime, I’ll figure out what the hell I should do with myself and let you know what I come up with.

What would you do if you were me?

*Quick note on the pressure I mentioned: you’d think when a body part (in this case, tissue, but a lot of it, leaving my skin behind) is removed you’d feel pain of some kind. The doctors said I wouldn’t really, but of course, what do they really know? Harvard people aren’t THAT smart. They were right, though. Instead of any kind of hurting, there’s an enormous amount of tension, pressure, and then an ironic numbness from about my armpits to the bottom of my rib cage. Zero feeling in my chest, like it has had several shots of novocaine at the dentist. If my breasts could talk, they’d be drooling and twalking wike dis while de dwugs woh off. Who knew?