Symptom roulette

This week I had my final appointment with my plastic surgeon before my implant surgery. Talk about a sentence I didn’t think I would be writing a year ago. But it’s been nearly eight months since that concerning mammogram/ultrasound, and now I talk about my boobs with the same reckless abandon as I do what I had for dinner last night.

Even assuming there is no recurrence in the 3% of breast tissue I have remaining, I still have years of being followed by my breast surgeon for physical exams which will replace my annual mammograms. As well as at least five years of taking a daily hormone-modulating pill (Tamoxifen) and being followed by an oncologist. And in case this journey ever starts to feel like a distant bad dream, I will only need to look down to see my fake boobs with nipple tattoos to remind me it was all very, very, real.

For the most part, I am feeling almost back to normal physically: my energy and endurance are back to baseline. And while I am still struggling with heat sensitivity, general uncomfortability, and poor sleep, I am optimistic all of this will improve when my stiff expanders are replaced with the more permanent implants in September. In the meantime, I will be ordering mini–ice packs to bring with me on our beach vacation in a couple weeks.

Emotionally, I still feel pretty disconnected to my body. The weight gain isn’t helping. I have finally found the motivation to exercise again but any forward momentum will be halted by the next surgery. My plastic surgeon has informed me that this surgery is significantly easier to recover from than the mastectomy. But two surgeries in, I know myself well enough to prepare for a longer recovery than I would like – even if it’s exactly as long as the doctor has said it would be.

Further inflaming the disconnect is the faltering of the blind faith I once had in my body. I do trust that my body will heal from all of this, but the truth is my body will fail me many more times between now and my end. That is the nature of bodies. I just haven’t been forced to face my own mortality so explicitly before.

Is it weird to admit that I’ve never pictured myself having a long life? I mean, I hope I do – it’s just that I don’t assume that I will. I don’t assume anyone around me will either. Except for my mother, she will live to be at least 100 out of sheer willpower.

I wish I could say this brush with a life-threatening disease has instilled in me a desire to live healthier or be more active. But I’m writing this while drinking a cocktail, so I guess that lesson didn’t stick. That said, I have learned to appreciate this slower pace of life that was forced on me. Given my driven and ambitious nature, that is no small lesson.

Emotionally, the trouble admittedly goes further than my relationship to my body. For some reason my emotional energy remains compromised. Maybe I’m allowing emotions to come forward more because I have more time to feel them… or everything having to do with this cancer is affecting me more than I think… or my trouble sleeping (god-awful expanders!) is to blame… or it is a side-effect of my med changes… or it’s hard to look at any screen these days and not witness horrible pain and suffering at a scale my brain is not capable of processing… or I’m entirely too self-aware to be wired this emotionally.

G) All of the above?

My friend Chris, who unfortunately just received a cancer diagnosis of his own, told me he calls this question game, symptom roulette. As you know, I love naming things, and I love this name.

I played symptom roulette with Adelaide nearly every day of her life. It is all at once infuriating and familiar. Having a name for this infuriatingly familiar game doesn’t help me answer why I’m feeling the way I am – but it does make me smile, and that helps in its own way. Thank you, Chris.

Regardless, I’m hopeful that once this next surgery is behind me and life picks up with back-to-school, a return of extra-curricular activities, and marketing/promotion for The Luckiest (have you pre-ordered yet?!) – that my emotional energy will return as well.

More to do = less symptom roulette.

Or maybe I’m just not built for a slower life…

Or…

*blurry photo of my kids roughhousing because seeing them play together makes me happy.

Photo ID: A blurry action shot of Jackson bear-hugging Anessa from behind. They are indoors standing in an open space with marble-blue carpet. Jackson is smiling and wearing a red and white St Louis Cardinals hat, a grey shirt and athletic shorts. Anessa is looking down, her hair is in pig-tails and she is wearing a striped dress and sneakers.