Tomorrow is surgery

Well it's felt like an eternity , but now it's finally the eve of my surgery. I am feeling anxious  of course , probably more about all the freaking sticks I'll have to have tomorrow than about the cancer itself. There is a surreal quality to the whole thing.

I mean if someone hadn't said HEY there's this thing in your body that will try and kill you"  you'd never know because you don't FEEL different.

People keep saying to me "Oh you look great though"..um yeah that's because nothing has changed since the last time you saw except I now KNOW that something is wrong. You don't start to look shitty till you are getting treatment.

Another weird thing is the fact you seem to spend a great deal of time making other people feel better about your disease. Its amazing the amount of reassuring I've been doing to everyone else...well not everyone there are those in my inner circle who know what is what and I never feel I have to "cheer them up about it"

I even had one person who refused to accept the term "Cancer"... lol... no really . I was making a joke like "You cant be mad at me! I have CANCER" and they started to lose it. "No you don't!"  Um yes... yes I do.
Let me put it to you THIS way. I have "A CANCER" in my breast. It's there it's not like they aren't sure about it, it is what it is , and now we treat it.

I just want to say if you know someone who is going through treatment, don't do that. Don't deny them they ability to joke about it. Honestly when I do it I hear the voice of Jack Sparrow only instead of "Pirate." I hear "Cancer." We need, ALL OF US, to laugh about things... especially things that scare the ever living fuck out of us. Because ( and I know one should never start a sentence with because) sometimes if you cant laugh you are going to cry, and we all do enough of that.

I'm not going to die (well not yet anyway, and not of this). They are talking cure. I am listening to my Dr.'s  I am doing all the things I need to do to be healthy.

 SO what have they done so far?
1. mammogram
wait
2. another mammogram & Ultrasound
wait
3. Ultrasound & biopsy
4. results scheduled surgery:
wait
5. MRI of both breast to check nothing has been missed
6. Pre-Operative check up including blood work & chest X-ray
wait
7. Another ultra sound to make sure the thing they saw on the left breast ( the right is where the tumor is) was not something to be worried about. (#7 is about as close as I get to praying..mostly consisted of the mantra of "Please let everything fine" repeated in my head ad nauseum. Everything is fine btw)
wait...

Next up surgery! What are they going to do?
Well I have to show up at 8:00 am to start the day ( I can still have coffee just no milk..yay!), my surgery is scheduled for 12:45... so lots of sitting & waiting.
They have to shoot me full of blue dye, which apparently will make me look quite grey/blue in tone.I have had to warn people so that they wont be worried about my colour... especially as I am pigmentally challenged anyway... HEY I WILL BE A BLUE BLOOD! take that social ladder!
The blue dye is used to tint the lymph nodes so they can grab one or two to biopsy and see if any spread of cancer cells has happened.
I also get the added component of having a guide wire inserted so that the surgeon is sure exactly where the tiny tumor is . As scary as that sounds it's actually a good thing because that's how small it is  :D They are taking an egg shaped area  so that healthy tissue surrounds the tiny tumor, a lumpectomy, or as the medically call it a "partial mastectomy"  which sounds WAY scarier but means exactly the same thing.

I should be coming back home around 4:30 pm. I then have 2 weeks of convalescence, hopefully I'll be up and around in a couple of days. I am suppose to get the results of the lymph node biopsy in about 1- 1 1/2 weeks and then we will discuss any further treatment I will need. Basically if it's Radiation or Chemo, that all depends on the lymph nodes.

OK so now you are all up to date!