Schedule of events

8.17: Pre-op visit
8.20: Nuclear shots for sentinel lymph node detection
8.21: Sentinel lymph node surgery
8.24: Pathology report due re: is there cancer in the lymph nodes?
8.27: Mastectomy or mastectomy + reconstruction, 3-5 day hospital stay

The lymph node dissection a simple outpatient procedure, but it is the beginning of a rapid progression to the Big Surgery and as such I get butterflies thinking about it. There's just so little time between finding out exactly what the Big Surgery will be and going ahead with it, which is probably a good thing, but it has my mind all in a tizzy right now. We should have the pathology results from the node dissection on Friday the 24th. Monday morning bright and early, I go under for either a mastectomy and axillary lymph removal (this means they will take out more lymph nodes if it turns out that the sentinel node contained cancer cells; the number of nodes they take depends on the number and size of the cancer cells present in the sentinel node), or for a mastectomy and reconstruction. Two days. Two days to let that settle in. That isn't enough.
My family keeps calling and keeps asking me to visit or if they can visit. I could spend an entire day returning their phone calls - and I should - but I can't seem to work up the will to sit on the phone for that long, saying the same things over and over, putting on my game face, telling them I feel great about the surgery.
I don't.
I'm terrified. I've never had real surgery. The closest I get is having had a tonsillectomy when I was 8, which was also the only time I ever stayed the night in a hospital. Just thinking about all of it makes my wrists weak (it's a little hard to type right now - no joke). I feel like in the last few posts, this blog has taken a serious nose-dive in terms of my attitude. Sorry y'all. It's just that the closer we get to this big deal surgery, the more I am having to reconcile the fact that it has to happen because the thing growing inside of me is deadly, and as strange as it may seem, I have done very little reckoning up to this point with my own mortality. The idea that I was a candidate for a lumpectomy was comforting, even if I wasn't sure I trusted it. Lumpectomy (to me) meant less dangerous, less life-threatening, closer to that root canal ideal. Mastectomy, grade 2, minimum stage 2 disease, well, it's scarier.
I know I'm not dying right now. I know I can have this surgery, hormone suppressant therapy, chemo, etc. and be ok for a good long while. I have known that from the first day; it is important, reassuring information that allows me to think of the future, to plan for pregnancy, to keep applying for jobs, to pretend that next summer we will have enough money to take the vacations we meant to take this year. What I can't seem to get over is this recurring internal monologue, "CANCER, huh? This will not, but has the capacity to, kill me. There is death in me. Fuck." Or maybe I'm just doing this again but it still feels new because the prognosis is scarier than it was a couple weeks ago and because no one could ever get used to being able to touch the mass through your skin that would kill you were it not for a series of fortuitous accidents.
Jason and I were talking the other day -perhaps morbidly, perhaps gratefully- reviewing our good luck in having insurance and finding the lump in the first place. He asked how long I would have lived if we hadn't had this good fortune. How long would I live if I hadn't found it or hadn't gone to have it looked at? The answer: 3-5 years.