new look

Yes, you are in the right place. Sometimes change is good.

Speaking of change, I have emerged from my surgery haze and am very happy to report that all went well. I am also happy to report that my encounter with DCIS is about to become history. "You'll be able to look back on all this one of these days, Gloria" my friends and family have said at one time or another during the past six months. Now I am starting to look back on it. Believe me when I say this is a better vantage point.

I am so ready to enter the next phase of my life: post breast cancer.

This email from a breast cancer survivor, one who went through pretty much the same drill I did, is a keeper:

"Dear Gloria,

Good luck with your surgery. I know you will do well. One more step toward putting this all behind you. I know that during all those surgeries and injections that I had, I felt like everybody had access to my boobs. There was me, and there was the boob. The last surgery (the second reconstruction) was in September of last year, and now I am back at the point where I feel like my body and the boob are one organism again and I have some privacy. People are talking to me without looking at my chest. A small thing, but somehow I think about this part of the process. And it sure is cooler without that prosthesis stuck to my chest."

Well said, I say.

Of course, I have been responsible for a lot of this "access" to my breasts because I have written about them on this blog. Plus, I was not opposed to wearing clothing that didn't hide the fact that I had a mastectomy followed by reconstruction. I even insisted that close friends "touch" the hard thing that was lodged in my chest. I use the word "touch" with a heavy dose of nostalgia. I can't feel a thing. One of those little secrets you kind of have to find out about on your own. There was no discussion in the doctor's office about how I would eventually be able to bump hard into a doorway and not even realize my right breast had veered into anything!

At any rate, time to move on. Eddie and I are heading out to Portland at week's end to close on a very lovely, very tiny condo. We made this purchase during the breast cancer phase of my life. Eddie had been ready for a couple of years to buy a second home. I dragged my feet. One morning shortly after my mastectomy, I announced to him that I was on board.

Health scares tend to make me want to live life at its fullest, right now, while I can.

So... changes and new looks and new perspectives and new chapters. All good.