WATERWORKS

My room is ready. (Wish it were overlooking a tranquil sea instead of in a hospital, but I'll take what I can get.) After 4 ½ hours of surgery and five hours in recovery, a room without a view sounds pretty darn good right about now. At least it's private.

A male nurse arrives to take me upstairs (what floor, I couldn’t tell you). Despite my post-surgery brain fog, I find it a little odd that he's the only one assisting in my transfer (besides my husband, that is). As I’m wheeled backwards into the elevator, I suddenly feel emotional. I close my eyes and let the tears roll silently down the sides of my cheeks.

Then BAM! The magnitude of the moment finally hits me. Just. Like. That. Up until surgery, I've been able to focus on a single thing at a time, placing one foot in front of the other. I had tunnel vision, and I liked it. But with surgery now complete, I'm left to face my new reality. And I have absolutely no idea what that looks or feels like.

We reach my room and I'm still quietly crying. Like a leaking faucet. Can't turn the waterworks off. (This time I don't even try.) The lone male nurse raises my gurney so it’s the same height as my hospital bed. Then he asks me to move myself over. Yup, you heard me right — he is not planning to slide me over using a sheet, he is asking me to move my fat fanny from the gurney onto the bed. Myself. After I just had major surgery. 

I can’t. How do I do that without using my arms or pulling on my chest? Why can’t someone else help? Where are the other nurses? Why is he asking my husband to spot him? Are they really that short-staffed?

I'm not sure how much of the above I actually verbalize (parts, but definitely not all). And there stands my fabulous husband, encouraging me to "just slide over," saying it’ll take a few seconds and then it will be done. I glare at him. Whose side is he on here? But I haven't the energy to fight. He's right. It will only take a few seconds, but why should I have to...? Before I can even finish my martyr-lovin' thought, I do a one-two-three shimmy off the gurney and onto the bed (with their help), crying the entire time. In part because I’m in pain, natch, but mostly because I’m a freakin' emotional mess. Yet this doesn't seem to faze the nurse, nor my husband. Huh?

I'm caught so off-guard by the wall of rage that is building inside me that I cannot hold it back. (Kinda like retching in the recovery room.) My feelings are overripe. Oh no. Lower your lids, this ain't gonna be pretty.

“Don’t you people understand what I’ve just been through?!” I scream the words, surprising even myself with my ferocity. (The male nurse spins the gurney out of the room so fast I think he left tread marks.) My husband looks startled. He’s never heard me lose my cool like this before. N-e-v-e-r. But the raging isn’t over. 

“I just had my breasts cut off!" I continue screaming (and don't care who hears me — so unlike me). "Don’t you get it? Do you know how hard this is?” My voice is horse. 

All the raw, suppressed emotion of the past two months shoots out of me like loose gunshot, hitting anything and everything in its angry path — in this case, my poor husband.

“You're a very strong woman,” he says calmly. “You’ve been so strong through all of this.” 

Lest he think I don't know it, I take the opportunity to tell him. "I am strong!" I yell back. Then, with more than a trace of vulnerability: "But I can't be strong anymore." I'm sitting in a heap of sheets. He leans in to give me a hug (not easy to do given the IV and the pillows and the bandages and my semi-reclined position). 

I wish I could say that releasing my emotions made everything better, but that would be a lie. The pain — physical, mental, emotional — has only just begun.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

Vegas did a number on me. (OK, it wasn't Vegas that did it — it was the possibility of needing a double mastectomy.) I am on edge, on the verge of crying, and short-fused. It's a bad mix. I need a solution. Fortunately, Dr. A. is true to his word; he calls Dr. C., the plastic surgeon, over the weekend and I am fast-tracked into an appointment  on Tuesday afternoon. My BFF accompanies me to take notes. 

I like the guy instantly. He asks me to begin with my list of questions because he says he can tell from what I ask how informed I am about breast reconstruction, and this allows him to tailor his answers specifically to me. I love the approach; it makes me feel more in control. He's also very easy on the eyes. (OK, so that's not why I chose him but it's not such a terrible side benefit, is it?) The night before my appointment, I comb through The 10 Best Questions for Surviving Breast Cancer (it’s more like 200 questions, actually) and create a long list. Dr. C. patiently listens and carefully answers every one of my questions. He spends nearly two hours with us. 

Though I have just met him, I decide that if it comes down to needing a bilateral, this is the man to make me look whole again. My BFF feels the same way. (Yup, she agrees he is adorable and the right guy for the job. It's good to have friends with your best interests at heart!)

The Possible Plan (should I need it): Immediate bilateral reconstruction using tissue expanders with a later surgery down the road to exchange the expanders out for silicone implants. (Silcone had issues back in the 1980s, but Dr. C. assures me they are very safe now and prefers them over saline because they are the most natural looking.)

I am thrilled to have my surgical team in place. Now I can focus on figuring out what kind of surgery I need so I can get this cancer out of me. I've been very patient up until today. Now I want it gone. 

The next day is my MRI. I am claustrophobic, so I have to mentally get past this. A technician has me lie face down, with my boobs hanging through holes in the imaging table. (Do the humiliations ever end with breast cancer?) The machine makes clanking noises while I stay perfectly still. I shut my eyes and imagine I am hiking on my favorite trail in the wide-open spaces. I keep my eyes closed the entire time. Fooled even myself; I nearly fell asleep.

I arrange to pick up copies of the MRI films two days later and then take them to my surgeon Dr. A., who gives me the bad news: it's clear from the MRI that due to the size of my mass (3 centimeters), a lumpectomy will, in fact, leave me disfigured. So one week after hearing that I might need one, I bite the bullet and give the go-ahead for Dr. A. to schedule a bilateral mastectomy. 

Dr. A. and Dr. C. will work side-by-side in the operating room; Dr. A. removing breast tissue and any necessary lymph nodes, Dr. C. starting reconstruction by placing tissue expanders under my pectoral muscle to keep my skin inflated while I heal (and eventually filling the expanders with saline over a period of months, then another surgery to swap them out for permanent silicone implants). And this is all going to happen in less than two weeks. 

TELLING HUBBY

Good news travels fast. Bad news travels faster. Especially when it comes to cancer. The words tumble like rocks on a thin, plate-glass window. First it shatters your life, then its shards shatter the lives of those around you.

My breast cancer news doesn't need micromanaging, it needs entrusting — to three key players: My husband, my mother and one girlfriend. The game plan is to have my husband tell our 'couple' friends. My mom will tell our family. My friend will tell my other friends.

But I can't call my husband at work and tell him I have breast cancer. I just can't. Because his first wife also had breast cancer. They spent 10 years fighting it. She left behind a grieving family. How can I possibly break the news that I have breast cancer, too?

We sit down for dinner and I nervously wait for him to ask if Dr. S. has called — he knows today is the day I'm supposed to hear back about my biopsy, and this is my opening to start "the conversation." But my husband doesn't ask! We are still clinging mightily to the Isle of Denial. So halfway through whatever it is we're eating (probably salad but I really can't recall), the wait is too much for me to bear. I blurt it out: "I got the call." I look up from my plate and look him straight in the eye as I say, "It's Cancer." Then I start to cry, the kind of cry that comes from the bottom of your being. The kind of cry associated with death.

My husband, who has quite a honed sense of intuition for a guy, oddly doesn't bat an eye. He calmly tells me he knew the minute I told him that I had had a biopsy that it would come back cancerous. (Don't ask me how he knew, he just did.) Thankfully he did not share those feelings with me then.

The next few minutes are a blur: tears (mine) coupled with quiet absorption (him). I can't help but notice how unruffled his composure is — he seems detached. What is that about?

Oh, right. He's been down this road before.

(copyright 2011 TheBigCandMe)

And that is both the blessing and the curse. A curse for obvious reasons: What are the odds of one wonderful man having two wives who wind up with breast cancer? (I was initially more upset that he had to go through this a second time than I was about going through it myself.) And a blessing because he is not terrified of my diagnosis. He has a vast, multidimensional knowledge base of this disease from which to draw, and he has to believe things will get better — for his own emotional health, as well as mine.

So here's what he says to stop my crying: "It's different this time. You caught it early. You are not going to die from this." And I believe him. I have to. Like I said, he's very intuitive.

Telling hubby? Turned out to be pretty easy. Telling everyone else? Not so much. 

(See Isle of Denial for more.)