post-surgery

I had a lumpectomy Tuesday morning, left breast.  The surgeon just called to tell me that there is no cancer, only some more of those precancerous cells.  I'll see her again in a few weeks.

In the meantime I am in pain.  I cried for over an hour last night.  Finally the pain medicine kicked in and I slept...for 11 hours.  I guess I was tired.

It has been a whirlwind for a few weeks.  Now, I can rest?  I hope so.

It's rainy and cold and grey here in VT.

I have ice on my breast and my head feels full of cotton but this breast thing is over.  Closure.

I called my mom and emailed a few people closest to me.  I owed it to them to tell them asap,

I am exhausted.   Now I can go back to bed.  BED!  Happy Halloween too.  :)

emptiness

I had a lot of dreams last night although I cannot recall them, only glances.  I woke up looking forward to taking a shower. ( I took off my pressure bandage from the biopsies last night.)  I am still sore and it looks black and blue on the breast, but I think the worst of the pain is over.

It felt good to be clean.  I headed out for my morning coffee, checked the mail and went for a short walk in town.  I miss running but the walk was nice.

I came home by 9:30 to watch the live stream of the Dalai Lama's teaching in NYC.  I brought my laptop into the kitchen so I could listen while processing all of my dried herbs from this year's garden. The smells were fabulous: sage, thyme, sacred basil (tulsi tea), rosemary, and chamomile.

I cleaned the kitchen too.  It felt good to have energy.

I decided some big things today.  I am not going to accept the job offer from the hospital.  I have several logical reasons to accept but my intuition tells me it is not the job for me.  I type this easily but it has been a very difficult decision.  I am breaking new patterns by not grabbing at the first things offered to me.  The voice in my head says, "You have to take it.  What if another job offer doesn't come?  What will people think?  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE BY SAYING NO?"

Amazing to see all the snakes slither out of the grass as I decide not to take this job.

I am also coming to terms with the biopsy results.  I honestly thought I had cancer and didn't realize how much I had already prepared for the bad news.

I'll have to see a new doctor soon and they are recommending a surgical biopsy to make sure all of the surrounding tissue is healthy.    I have 2 surgical clips in the breast (I didn't know that a few days ago) so they will know exactly where to go.

I am not looking forward to day-surgery but I am assuming it will put an end to this diagnosis.  Strict follow every 6 months for 2 years too.

I am an odd person.  I am realizing I fear life in a way that most people fear death.  I am scared.  I am unsure of myself.  I feel sad about all the suffering in the world.

Listening to the Dalai Lama today, I heard him talk about something I have read about: emptiness.  Not like an empty box but more like, no absolute solidity that is separate from everything else.  Meaning that there is no "Patty" particle somewhere in my body.   There is no hidden table particle in a table, that makes it a table.

So I am flirting around with this idea of emptiness and finding it surprisingly calming to me.  I don't need to take myself so darn seriously.  I am part of the universe, not the center of it.  The truth is what it is.  I don't need to argue with it.  Fighting with it, to find what I WANT, is silly and it hurts.

I end up miserable like a lot of other people because life didn't work out for me.  Me?  Why should it work out for just me?

I feel a very strong connection with the world, with other people.  I feel hurt and sad when I see people who are unhappy.  I smile at people.  I send them prayers when I see them.  I attempt to be kind whenever I can.

I feel so part of all this...life, and yet I also look to run away from it, to be done, safe.  Why do I assume that death would make any of that easier?  I have no clue what happens at death.  But if there is any continuation of my soul (spirit or consciousness) I will still be wanting to stop other's suffering as well as seeking my own inner peace.

I read yesterday, world peace begins with inner peace.   I don't know how to create world peace but I can work on inner peace.  It starts with accepting the truth.  The truth of my fears, my worries, my joys and my biopsy results.    I am staying in the now.  Breathing.  I am ok.  My peace adds to the big peace.  I can do something to help and that makes me grateful to be alive.  

numb

That's how I feel this afternoon.  After getting back from 2weeks on Long Island helping out my mother, I've had a job interview, a diagnostic mammogram, and a breast biopsy.  I've only been home for 3 days.

I got the results today, it is not cancer.  They found precancerous cells.  I'll follow up with a breast specialist and they want another biopsy to make sure all is well.

Am I relieved?  No.

For two days all I have read about is the different types of diagnoses for linear clustered micro-calcifications.  Some were benign, some where cancer but I didn't read about ADH. (Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia)

It's like a non-diagnosis.

I also got the job offer and I don't want the job.  He is hiring me from my resume.  He never asked me anything about myself.  The place seems dysfunctional to the max.

My gut told me 2 minutes into the interview ("no way") but my head tells me all these facts: Money.  Get to tell people you found a job.  No more looking for work.  Save money and move out.

I feel torn up about so many things.   I am not sick after all this 'rush,rush" with the medical stuff.  I don't have an income.  I do not like living in the house with my ex-spouse.  My kids are so busy my head spins sometimes.  My kids don't like living with their father on the other side of the house but only tell me.  Winter is coming and it's a LONG season up here in VT.

This will sounds crazy but it is true, I would have rather have had cancer.  It would mean that there was an end point to all this stress.

I pray for everyone every day but still I feel the suffering.  I see it when I go out.  So many people unhappy and miserable.  I don't know what to do to help, to make them better.

I am tired of life.  I am tired of phone calls, driving, dr appts, food shopping, emails, resumes, feeding the cats and everything else.

I wish I had invasive breast cancer so I could finally see an end point.  I wish I could give my life to someone who really wants to live.  I am so tired.

I know there are many many people with lives worse than mine and I am ashamed that I do not treasure life more.  I find life to be so much work.  I do a lot alone and perhaps that makes it harder?

It doesn't matter.   I am ashamed of the truth but I know it to be true for me.  I am very sad to find out that I am healthy today.   I look around and I am have no idea what to do next.  Where am I going?  What am I doing?  What happened to my life as wife and mother?

I am scared.  I am tired.  I am overwhelmed.  I am alone.  Oh and I have ADH.   Ugh.

hearts

When I got the call on Tuesday that my mom had a small fender bender, I was alarmed.  Two days later when she was still in the hospital due to abnormal heart enzymes, I was worried.  The following day I got the call from my nephew telling me that she needed by-pass surgery. (2 blocked arteries)

I canceled my job interview, picked up my son, drove home to pack and headed south on the 6 hour trip to Long Island.  While driving down, I found out that my mother had a heart attack and they put 2 stents in.  She was in I.C.U. when I got there but she looked good.

Three days later she was home.

It's been a whirlwind and I am beginning to assimilate what has happened.

I'll be heading home in a few days.

It has felt good to be here for my mother.  She is 76. My nephew and brother seemed to disappear once I got here.  I'm sorry they had to return to their day to day life so quickly.

I had a dream last night that my mother died and as I began to sob, I saw her eyes open.  The dream took place in my elementary school.  It doesn't take much imagination to see where that theme came from.

We never know what life will be each day do we?  Accidents, clogged arteries...bad things end up being a god's send.

I am making sure to take time each day to drive down to the bay (10 minutes away) and meditate. I still myself and listen to the water, the wind.  My thoughts tumble around like sneakers in a dryer.  I stay still and let it be.

The stress and anger on Long Island is palpable.  I don't think I could live down here.  Vermont is more my style these days.

My sons went home a few days ago and I felt such relief when they did.  Being a full time daughter and a full time mother was exhausting.

I find myself missing my cat Bella very much.  Picking her up and putting her on my left shoulder so she can look around while I walk is bliss.   She is the main source of love in my life.  My heart opens wide when we are together.  It sounds funny but it is true.

Being down here has been a break too.  Even though I am dealing with medications, medical appointments, dueling insurance companies, and phone calls from home...it is outside my norm, so it does feel like a break from reality in a way.

I will go home in 4 days to much colder weather.  I've missed autumn in VT.  I've missed peak leaf season. It is still mostly green here on the island.

I have a job interview the day after I get home.  I have medical appts AND a biopsy 2 days after I get home.   Maybe that is why I am no rush to get there?

I have mixed feelings about the biopsy.  Most likely, it will be fine but I do not know.  I hate not knowing.  I also hope it will be something.  Why?  Why would I want a serious diagnosis?  Because I am tired, so tired, of life.

I am not asking to die but perhaps it would be better for me to be ill than someone else.  If I could take someone else's place, I would.

When my sister Kathy was diagnosed with cancer in 1998, I remember telling her I wish I could take her cancer.  She was a bright light who loved life.  I meant it.  She knew it.

I am not sure what will make me more disappointed, to have this biopsy be positive or negative.
Life can be just as scary as death.

Life/death.

My mother is alive and I am very grateful.

Perhaps some day I will feel as grateful for my own.

 

In a day...

so much can unfold.   I had feelings of fear, comfort, worry, peace, and confusion.  It was Tuesday.

I wonder if we realize just how fluid out day goes?  Perhaps we take the dominate emotion or event and judge the day on that one but how much have we lost?

I realize so much of life is blurred and missed.  It is these small moments of peace or of drinking in the orange of a tree in fall, that are compromised for the 'event of the day'.

Yesterday's event was that when I got home around 8pm my son told me that my mother had a small car accident.  She was not hurt but she was in the hospital for observation.  It ends up that her heart enzymes were elevated.  She stressed her heart.

She is getting a cardiac ultrasound this morning and if things look normal, she'll be discharged.

The non-event of the day was that I drove down to the southern part of VT to meet with a friend I met 2 years ago at a women's retreat weekend.  We stay in touch through emails.  We met last October too.
When we meet we talk and talk and boom, 6 hours has passed.  Amazing.

I appreciate her very much.  She was a big help to me during August's crisis.  I find it easy to be open and honest with her.

As I drove home, I thought how lucky am I that we met?    Some relationships in life are effortless.  It is beautiful.  It also reminds me that I don't have to push and cajole anyone to like me, to fit in.

Why don't we realize that the spaces in our life need to be left open.  There is no need to force fill.

Just because there is space doesn't mean that there is anything wrong.  I have very few friends, but none of the friendships I have now, drains me or makes me feel as though I can't be myself.   They are free and easy.  No one needs the other to BE anything other than what we are.

Focusing on the small stuff gives me more peace than I thought possible.  The trees, the moon, the warm sunshine, my cat sleeping all curled up on my bed.   Beauty.