Cancer sucks, but I've got it!

Here's a photo of G and I at my first appointment at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where I'll be getting my treatment for stage 3 breast cancer (right boob, in case you were wondering).

Going to see what G keeps calling the "best of the breast" here. More soon!

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I am here (I am alive)!

Hello! This will be a quick one as I am very still much in post-double mastectomy + axillary lymph node dissection land. I'll start by saying that the title of this blogpost is that of a Bonny Doon song, one of the artists we saw when were upstate this past weekend for the Woodsist Fest: It was awesome, and the weather was perfect. But you guys don't care about that, nor do you care about the great Rosh Hashanah dinner we had on Sunday night!* You want to know more about how I'm feeling and all that good stuff. Well, surgery is officially over 🙏, and it went mostly as planned! I want to give a hugeeee shoutout to our friends Austin and Allix, who stayed at the surgery center all day on Tuesday. Austie kept G company while Allix, who works at Sloan in the pathology lab, stayed on top of lymph node dissection like it was precious cargo! We love them and little doodis so damn much. After waking up pretty out of it (but still cracking some good jokes about how bedpan...

Well, fuck this shit!

Hello! Lately, I haven't really felt like posting a blog, in part because I haven't really felt like having cancer. When I reached the halfway point last week, instead of feeling a sense of accomplishment, I actually felt really frustrated that I have to repeat the same amount of chemo sessions I already have under my belt.* And then I got to thinking about how I'm only halfway through the first step of my treatment. And how even when I am done with the next intensive steps– surgery, then radiation, and likely, more surgery– I will be taking medicine every day for the next 5-10 years that will basically put me into early menopause. And I will be monitored for the next several decades to make sure this piece of shit cancer doesn't recur somewhere else in my body. Greg initially described this whole cancer thing as a detour. But it actually feels like my car has been hijacked. And when the hijacker finally abandons it, it's keeping a few parts. There's just so...

Recovery sucks!

Hello friends and readers, I am officially on day 5 of recovery from my exchange surgery, and I am woefully reminded that recovery sucks! I'm in a lot of discomfort in my chest (obviously) and my thighs, where they took some fat to "graft" around my implants. It's not fun. My spirits are pretty low and that will be reflected in this post. I'm frankly annoyed that my doctors made this surgery seem like it was going to be a breeze. What I've slowly learned is that in cancerland, there are varying degrees of awful. Like with the third suite of chemo that I received- sure, it was LESS awful than the literal poison, but its still made me hazy, exhausted, and dehydrated. Sure, this surgery is LESS awful than the one where they took out all of my breast tissue and my tumor, but it's still pretty terrible to have gruesome sutures across your chest and bruising all over your legs. The fact that I've been through worse does not make this any less painful now. ...

I'm a pisces, but I had cancer!

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