breast cancer

Wanna know about cancer?  Mine, at least?  It didn't phase me.  I was diagnosed with it, and didn't really feel any sense of shock.  Thought I was in denial for a while, but I wasn't.  It was just another passage in my life, albeit a tough one.
After my double mastectomy, I looked down at where my breasts used to be, and saw the scars, and thought, okay, there are scars... just like my mother had lots of scars.  I wasn't afraid of scars.  The plastic surgeons nurse had told me not to look in the mirror for four days.  Did she think I would pass out or something?  It was no big shock.  I knew what I was facing, and I looked it straight in the eye without flinching.
The chemotherapy was a tough time.  Wanting to sleep twenty hours a day, and popping percocets the rest of the time to ward off the bodily aches and pains.  By the time you felt well, it was time for the next chemo treatment.  Losing my hair wasn't fun, but that too was an experience.  I got a new wig and felt like a new person in it, to tell you the truth.  It was fun to play around with it.  By the time I was getting sick of it, my hair had grown in an inch or so, so that's how I go around now... with a virtual buzz cut.  I'm loving it, it's very liberating.      And then there was Radiation.  A hassle because I had to be there five days a week for seven weeks.  But the treatments were easy and fast, with the most competent team of professionals, and it wasn't until my last week that I experienced the radiation burns, which really didn't hurt, and were healed quickly with Silverdine ointment.
Now it's almost time for my reconstruction surgery.  I haven't called my plastic surgeon to set anything up, because I just need some time to decompress after the last eight months of being "a cancer patient".

I am happy to say I'm a survivor.