Survivor Files: Still Living the Miracle

Today in the midst of everything else that I am doing, I paused and called the surgeons office.  I have another surgery to schedule.  It is supposed to be the last one in the long drawn out process of reconstructing my body after a mastectomy was needed to remove the cancer from my body.  I am thankful and grateful to all who have supported me through the last year and a half!  I look in the mirror and am still not thrilled about what I see, but I know that life isn't all about what we look like or what we think we should look like.  God knows what He is doing and I will continue on the journey.

We decided to wait with the last surgery, not because I want to, but because we ran out of flex spending money for the year.  With all the medical bills, and the limits the new healthcare bill puts on how much (or more accurately how LITTLE ) we can put aside for that fund, we are out of money.  Just in time for a broken arm for Zach and some tests on Stacey's knee (more about that in a future post when I know what we are dealing with).

Needless to say, I called the sweet nurse who I love at Dr. Andrew's office and asked if it is too soon to schedule my last surgery sometime in January.  No!  She was so happy to have that much time to work with.  She is hammering out the details this afternoon as I type and will let me know when arrangements are finalized.  At least this has given the tissue plenty of time to heal and the last few things are supposedly only going to take about 2 1/2 hours.  Scheduling this far ahead hopefully means I will get first dibs on time.  Looks like surgery will be January 9th, hopefully bright and early in the morning.

I pulled out all of the cards and notes of encouragement that I had stashed in my bedside table from a year ago over the weekend.  I really have some great people in my life.  I love you all!  I walked into the pediatricians office the other day with Dawn and looked around and saw all of the breast cancer awareness month decor and thought "man, I wish that everyone who had a life threatening experience in their lives could have a month dedicated to their disease or ailment".  How about "sufferers of scary life-threatening ailments awareness month"?

There are a lot of things I am still hammering out.  I talked briefly to a fellow breast cancer survivor on Friday night and was trying to explain how weird if felt that after treatment and starting to feel stronger and closer to normal how I don't even remember what I used to do before.  Who did I do things with?  How did I organize my time.  The urge to just continue spending the day on the couch is still quite overwhelming for me. She just nodded with that look like she knew exactly what I meant.  That felt good, to know someone who understands the struggle it is to clean and cook and wash and even socialize again.

With that, the dirty master bathroom is calling.  I got a couple new things in the cleaning isle at the grocery store last night.  I am looking forward to seeing if they make the job easier.  One foot in front of the other and I am one step closer to finding the normal of my life.