I Made Them Do It

Look at my reconstructed breasts.
I don't know why I wanted my Friday bridge group to see them. I tried to get them to look last Friday, but they refused, as we were sitting at the dining table at the Hyannis Yacht Club when I offered.
They, my breasts, are amazing (as are my friends), sealed underneath that square of saran wrap, which has been covering and supporting them for a month, tomorrow.
Hopefully that saran wrap type stuff will come off Thursday. And I hope that it has done a lot to shove much of my boob into my armpit. If not, I may have to ask for a redo. God no, I would never do that again. But I will be able to have some fat lyposuctioned out of me somewhere and injected into the depressions where the drains were. And apparently Medicare will also pay for new nipples.
Becky and I talked about losing our breasts. She's four years out from her double mastectomy and chose no reconstruction. Eventually she found that she felt more comfortable wearing a slightly padded bra, just to look and feel a little less different from her old self. She's an amazing writer and did a piece about her feelings after her surgery. I remember a description of her swimming, with the different feeling of the displacement of water.
I'm not sure she does it so much now, but Becky did touch her chest a lot at the beginning. I find I am constantly doing the same.
Hers was a major loss and void. Mine, on the other hand, though sort of a loss, it's actually a major improvement. I can now actually pass the pencil test. These new breasts feel about the same size and weight as my old ones, so there is no empty space. I feel feminine and sexy.
After I pulled my shirt back down and everyone had exclaimed over my new breasts, Maureen invited me into another room to see her trompe l'oeil nipple. It really is amazing, the same color and size as her natural one. She often forgets that she has one reconstructed breast and has to think a moment about which one it is.
During bridge, Maureen got a call that  there is something happening in her natural breast that the radiologist wants to examine further. She has to return for additional mammograms.
Oh God!
The dread of what is to come can be overwhelming.
I met with all of the doctors on my team last week and got a feeling for what is to come.
On April 10, I will begin a new round of chemotherapy, AC, four doses every other week. I filled prescriptions for 3 antinausea medications. Writing this is making me quite anxious.
A month or so off and then six weeks of radiation every day.
Then a year of Herceptin infusions, every other week or so, I think. At some point I'm going to have to give myself injections, when I cannot recall.
Maureen and I will be there for each other.

Talk About Stupid Living

That's what Dad said about living at deluxe, first-class, Judson Retirement Home, whose motto is "Smart living". 

Primary example is a battle he lost: he suggested that a Porte-cochère be added to the main entrance. It is the front door to the community center and main entrance to many living units along one half mile of hallways, in 5 buildings, connected by enclosed bridges. I could check with my sisters to see how far from a car drop-off-point to the front door it is, maybe 30 or 40 feet. But it's a long hike, on a walker, uncovered, in inclement, Northern Ohio, Lake effect, weather, unheated sidewalk, up a sloping, for handicap access, walkway. 

Now that is stupid living.
He got drawings and estimates from contractors to cover it. He kept meeting resistance, so he kept streamlining the design, shortening the walkway, reducing the costs, all with no success.
A couple of successful improvements he got implemented, include: blinds that could be lowered against the setting, blazing sun in the dining room, translucent so you can eat dinner without dying of sunstroke and could still see the wonderful view across the pond (he had numerous water lilies planted in that pond, at his own expense); covering an outdoor dining area and adding similar blinds to that sitting area, allowing diners to enjoy that same Northern Ohio weather and nearly doubling the capacity of the restaurant for half the year; convincing the management to leave open the doors at the entrances and exits to those enclosed bridges, because once you pushed the automatic-opening button you had to leap back three or four steps so you didn't get bonked by the opening door.

He was working on an individual apartment-unit humidifying system, which Judson did not include when building this huge complex. On a personal level, he had the legs to his loveseats lengthened so that he and his friends could get in and out of them still. 

You get the gist.
Today at Mass General, I had a couple drains removed, half actually, one from each side and was commissioned a compression bra. It was quite a complicated process as the doctor rejected the original one the nurse had left for me. It was an 3X, which, thank God, he thought was going to be way too big for me. So she brought back an XL, which he thought would be the correct size. Well that didn't go around my rib cage so she tried the 2X next, which also didn't reach around my rib cage. So she had to finally get the 3X, which does fit the rib cage, but does nothing to compress the reconstructed breasts. 

I've already thought of ways to modify the bras:
Velcro extenders for the rib cage; inflatable packets or just extra pads for the cups; Velcro tabs to reduce the size of the individual cups.
Velcro is everywhere else. I mentioned the rib cage, but it also extends up to the bottom of the clavicle. Plus there's Velcro to adjust the length of the straps, which makes me look like a relative of the hunchback of Notre Dame.
This is MGH, a premier hospital in the world. The doctor doesn't know he's issuing me a non-compressing bra?
I'm impressed with the doctor, but the systems are pretty inadequate at MGH, at least some of them. Another instance: I was issued the "Jackie" and a lanyard.
First thing the doctor said today is don't use lanyard, it holds those bulbs far too high for you. They don't drain properly. He didn't know they were still issuing them with the Jackie's, of which he has a higher opinion. What the F? I switched to the lanyard for most of the last 10 days of recovery.
By the way, the other thing that he criticized was my placing the clutch of bulbs on my clavicle. Don't put anything on your chest. 

You're moving too fast. Move like a sloth. 

That almost is unimaginable to me. Though slothful in some ways, motion is not one of them. The worst news is that means that I can't drive yet and I can't get Dexter back tonight as planned.
Later, Demi and Rob dropped over and brought soup and chocolate. She's just gone through the same thing and has a cute short hairdo growing back in now. The worst thing she told me was her toenails just fell off. Mine are turning black and I look forward to what else they'll do. 

I decided to call the plastic surgeon to let him know the bra is not compressing anything but my ribs. His assistant Rachel told me to go buy something, dammit, available in the "as seen on TV " section at Target. It's a sports bra that comes in different sizes and will actually do the job. Bed Bath and Beyond also sells it and maybe Walmart. 

Yes, other people have had the same issue.

Probably Medicare doesn't want to pay for adjustable bras. 

So much for my revolutionary ideas.

I'm going out of my fucking mind

. It's going on 4 AM and I still haven't been able to sleep and my arms are so itchy that I want to rip my skin off.

I've taken a lot of pills starting around 8:30, my regular doses including one oxycodone , 2 antihistamines, followed later by a sleeping pill and then one more antihistamine, followed by another and my tranquilizer. I took an oatmeal bath, up to my waist, bent over forward, soaking my arms.

My sleep pattern have been stabilized for years really.  I take an SSRT, which allows me to sleep through the night. Miraculous change, made over 20 years ago. 

If I do have trouble sleeping, I make a point of not checking the time. But somehow I happened to see Andy's electric red clock numerals just a few minutes ago. Knowing the time makes it doubly difficult to fall asleep.

Reading in the middle of the night is usually quite relaxing, allowing me to doze off.

I finished The Art Forger around 11:30 tonight and I am nearly halfway through rereading it. It's about a young woman who is hired to forge a Degas, stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. 

My college major was History of Art and my thesis was about the art of forgery or something like that. I wrote it in my dorm, the Victorian house of Henry Wells, of Wells Fargo fame. Of course, all my research had to take place in the library, where I took notes on 4 x 6 index cards. I then arranged those cards in the order I wanted to discuss my examples. I commandeered the lovely sun room overlooking Lake Cayouga by setting up my Smith Corona manual typewriter on the library table. Then I inserted the main page sheet of white paper, a piece of carbon and a second white page. And typed my thesis directly from those note cards. No drafts, just my final version. 

Any typo in that situation was a real bitch. I even think we had no white out back then. 

And then, just outside the sunroom was a bench with Donna Hakki making out with her future husband, every minute of the day and the night. The thesis was pretty well received and I've always been interested in the technical side of forgery.

I'm boring myself to sleep! Eyelids are getting heavy and I'm yawning.

I guess it's a good sign that itching is now once again my main problem. Now I can hardly wait for my post-op appointment on Thursday, when some of the drains maybe pulled. And maybe my shrunk wrapped reconstructions can be let loose. 

My plan is to tatoo them, not with fake nipples, but with a mermaid's bra. I think I found the artist I want to create the drawing and execute it. He's a Taiwanese guy named Andy Shou. He travels to the United States periodically. 

Good night. 

My Little Clutch

Yesterday I saw an adorable photograph of an Irish Setter nursing maybe 10 or 12 of 16 her pups, all collared in different colors, triggering all of my mothering instincts. 

We are going to get a dog shortly. And I can hardly wait.

We had to get rid of Dexter for a little while because he sometimes likes to leap onto my chest when I'm lying down. That would be quite painful at this point. So he's off on a vacation with his sisters/cousins Addy and Molly. Word is that he caught a mouse this morning and he has become Anna's hero, followed closely by Blake who transferred the mouse to the dumpster.

Pixiebobs are marketed as a dogs in a cat suit and he is, in many ways. But he really is pretty much a cat in his terms of his personal interactions. Very unsatisfactory in fact. I want a cuddle buddy. I have to be grateful for every second that he deigns to spend within touching distance.

So back to getting the doggie. I am ready to pull the trigger.

When I woke up this morning to race to the bathroom, I gathered my clutch of drainage bulbs, reminding me of that litter of puppies. 

And of the popular high school project that involves a student taking care of the raw egg every minute of the day and night for several weeks in preparation for having a baby. It's supposed to be a deterrent to teenage pregnancies. Seems like it would have to be something more irritating than an egg to be effective.

Drainage bulbs? You ask. You probably shouldn't have. The first time I saw drainage bulbs was when my parents had their back-to-back facelifts. Dangling from their bandaged skulls like gigantic earrings, were clear bulbs at the end of clear tubes. Not too bad, you say. The effect was complemented by what was flowing out of their heads into those tubes to puddle in those bulbs. The colors! All hot, ranging from bright red through the oranges to the most interesting yellows. And the viscosity. Yuck! Then the surgeon told my mother had never seen anything like it. Pretty reassuring, huh?

Rather than earrings, I'm wearing four bulbs, which could look like a clutch of ostrich eggs when cradled. Or maybe emu eggs, a little bit smaller than ostrich eggs. The bulbs are at the end of tubes that are about 2 feet long. If not supported, they would tug at the exit wounds at the base of my reconstructed breasts. 

A lot of people have thought about that and when I left MGH I was issued a "Jackie". It is a jacket that is easy access, meaning that the arms and sides are closed using Velcro squares (unsolicited, I mentioned that circles would be a hell of a lot less painful than those corners on the squares). The jacket has buttons down the front and many pockets inside to hold the bulbs. Jackie also came with a lanyard, bright pink, with green paisley ribbon, almost Lilly Pulitzer. Jackie herself it's really hideous, though the dull blue, pilling fabric is quite soft. I, it must be obvious to you, have switched to using the lanyard. Instead of four independent creatures, I have a pod with curling tentacles centered around my belly button. 

That's a Good Question

Barbara and Ed brought us an amazing brunch today.
Ed asked me what I was afraid of, having read this blog I assume. I told him I didn't really know. But I have figured it out.
Being without my Dad.
I wanted to talk about Dad all afternoon, to have Ed read his obituary to know what an amazing person he was. I even offered to share his genes with their daughter, through one of my cousins. OMG! I am really still off my rocker. I'm gonna blame it on the drugs, though I'm pretty much weaned off of them.
For me, this was a really bad time for Dad to die.
Bambi told me last week that she never went to dad in a crisis. She couldn't think of any crisis she had gone through. Becky and I were talking about it today and we did come up with one crisis, when she fell through skylight at Beloit College and broke her back. Dad did not go to her. Instead he was calming down his hysterical female household, which was getting ready for its first wedding, of its first daughter. You remember that walk around Shaker Lake.
He did arrange for his sister to pick her up in Wisconsin and drive her, in the back of the station wagon, lying flat on her back, to Cleveland. She was the star of the wedding, lying, in her bridesmaids dress, on an ambulance stretcher, raised to its full height, at the front of the church. I guess that same ambulance drove her out to the Country Club for the reception. There is a great photo of me and my now ex-husband posing with her while she is lying down, smoking. We do know that we rolled her out onto the porch behind the fireplace where the wedding party was seated and that fortunately somebody remembered to bring her inside before for she froze to death on that cold January night.
That is the same fireplace in front of which we held Dad's service last Monday. Over 250 people came, despite everyone we knew in the world being down in Florida for the winter. It's whereAdmiral Carr presented to our beloved Jane the flag in honor of Dad's military service. How will she go on?
And it's where we held a reception after my mother's service. The highlight of that evening was fireworks, for her, in January.
In the programs, for both my mom and dad's services, was a quote about a ship sailing away. The gist is that the people on shore wave goodbye until she disappears over the edge of the earth. But someone is on the other side waiting there and saying hello.  The ship is not diminished at all just not visible to us anymore.
The photo below the quote Dad perched atop the seat, at the wheel of a little motorboat, full throttle ahead, hair blowing in the wind as he races toward ????
My heart aches without him.
I scheduled my regular Wednesday bridge for here this coming Wednesday. And I'm looking forward to it. I wish I could tell dad that.