Category: Julie’s Bits

Cancer’s Aftermath

As of February 9th, I am cancer free. A few days later I learned that the cancer had not progressed to my lymph nodes. Since I had the whole breast removed, there is no need for radiation therapy or chemotherapy. I will be on hormone therapy – a pill I take each day – for several years. And I will see my breast surgeon every 4 months for the next couple of years. This is the best case scenario for breast cancer.

But recovery & healing from the mastectomy has not been easy. In the last few weeks I’ve had another surgery to remove a hematoma in my chest, then the very next day a trip to the ER, another surgery to remove another hematoma and an overnight stay in observation. My doctors were baffled as to why I was bleeding the way I was bleeding, so now I am seeing a hematologist who has given me a tentative diagnosis of a rare genetic blood disease that I never knew I had. Nothing better than discovering my blood doesn’t clot normally when I am trying to recover from surgery.

So all that bleeding left me anemic and today I had the first of three iron infusions. The infusions involve a needle in my arm for 1-1/2 hours while iron is infused directly into my blood stream. My sister sat beside me the whole time and we had a great time talking about our childhood memories.

Recovery has been harder than the cancer treatment. I am thankful to be cancer free and I think when more time has passed and this thing is really truly in the rearview mirror, I will know in my heart that even though I lost a breast, I got out easy… that I had the best case of breast cancer .. One that was found early, that was very small, and had not spread to my lymph nodes. A lot of women don’t get out so easy.

We are all yeses

“We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least — call it a mechanospiritual sense — we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us.”


― Natalie Angier in “Women: An Intimate Geography”

The best thing for being sad

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

 

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King