Well,
tomorrow our oldest child, Sean, graduates from high school. It’s an emotional
time as he’s been at the same school, Sandy Spring Friends, since he was four
years old, and now he and the friends of his whole life are going out separately
into the big world. Sean is off for the University of Toronto. I am acutely feeling the absence of my mom,
who died in January, and John’s mom, whose doctor told her not to fly out here.
They would have loved to be here. And everyone is on pins and needles wondering
if Tropical Storm Andrea is going to wash out the traditional Sandy Spring
Friends outdoor barefoot graduation ceremony and all the lawn parties
thereafter…
I had
my quarterly check-up with my oncologist on Tuesday and I have been in that
three-day period where your heart stops every time the phone rings, because it
could be them calling back with bad news. But the phone hasn’t rung.
Yesterday,
our youngest, Matt, finished fourth grade and there was a festive picnic for
that. The Lower School assembly in the morning was lovely, and I got through
the whole thing without crying once, almost made it, until they brought out one
of Matt’s teachers, Linda, who is retiring after 20 years at our school, and
she was crying. That was it for me. I may stop crying sometime next week. Happy
trails, Linda! As the great Warren Zevon has said, may you enjoy every
sandwich.
I did
some graduating yesterday, too. I had my last appointment with my plastic
surgeon. It has taken nearly two years
to go from the original mastectomy to the finished product. I will now see my
plastic surgeon, Dr. Kathy Huang, once a year for a quick check. At some point down the road, maybe ten years
from now, I will need to get that implant changed, because they don’t last
forever. In the meantime, I’ve got my little exercises to do from now on to
make sure that this boob stays nice and boobular, and doesn’t go hard as
rock. Who knew that could happen? But
for now, I’ve got my plastic-surgery diploma.
Let’s
mix some metaphors! I am going to toot my own hooter. Everyone who has seen my
new boob, which isn’t many people, I’ll admit, is absolutely delighted with how
it turned out. In fact, yesterday, the doctor took photos of me to use when she
speaks to breast cancer survivors’ groups and potential future patients. It
turns out that in my surgery, they used a new-and-improved pattern for where to
make the incisions, which results in less-obvious scars. I have to say, it
worked beautifully. If I was of a later
generation that didn’t mind plastering nude photos of itself on the Internet, I
would be doing that myself, just to show how good a job Dr. Huang did. But I am
of an older generation, so I shall restrain myself. Someday, I may go to the
hot springs and have a few beers and get naked like everyone else, just because
I can, and from the day I had my mastectomy I never really thought I
would get to this happy point. I wish I could tell other women going through
this how well it can turn out. (And I do believe I have actually caught men
looking at my chest! Ha! They may have no idea what it took to get to the point
where a guy would want to do that…Take that, stupid cancer!)
There
was a woman in the doctor’s waiting room yesterday, a bit older than me, bald,
no eyebrows, wearing the pink scarf-thing on her head. It was like looking back
through time at my two-years-ago self. You could tell how crappy she was
feeling. It was all I could do not to go up to her and give her a big hug and
tell her to hang in there. That is not something you do in a doctor’s waiting
room, where there are understood rules about respecting each other’s privacy.
But I am sending her all kinds of good energy and prayers.
