Pathetic Falsie

pa·thet·ic fal·la·cy

Noun: The attribution of human feelings and responses to climate, esp. in art and literature.

It has been raining for three weeks. Very bad for people in the dog walking industry. (Also bad for owners of white dogs. If you want a dog, do not buy a white one. For some perverse reason white dogs love diving into mud puddles. The dirtier they get the happier they are.)

Rain is bad for us. All my medical appointments over the last three weeks have been scheduled for the morning, prime time for our business. Poor Dave has had to do virtually all the work, and has been very unhappy about this. I have been horribly guilty about it too. Picturing him miserable in the rain with the dogs every morning.

One day recently, I had no appointments scheduled and I did the dogs. I screwed up. One client had sent me an email asking me to keep the dog at the house till seven p.m. and they would pick it up. Normally we pick this dog up and return it to its crate daily. Upon retrieving the dog I saw they had reminded us by leaving a note on the crate. Idiot that I am, I pocketed the note, rather than leaving it there. Yup. I returned the dog to its crate. 

Fortunately it was within the four hour period Cesar Millan says is the maximum time to crate a dog, and indeed it was tired going in. Still. I was in tears of mortification for this error. The client had given me a lovely cancer gift when she and her husband arrived at seven p.m. I was so mortified I could not even come out of the sunroom to speak to them. They phoned and suggested from now on they deal with Dave not me.

Hard to give up my business to my husband. I live for those dogs and need them so much. Hoping this stupid cancer will allow me some mornings to join them in the park. That is the true joy of my life, throwing balls for them, interacting with the pack.

Hard to believe I haven't posted a blog in a week. Today, May 20th is my birthday. 

Tuesday, May 10th, I meet with the surgeon, Dr. Lorimer. I hate him. All the books and info I skimmed since my diagnosis talk about the various surgical options available. I am unsuccessful in attempting any discussion on these.

Don't forget I grew up, since the age of ten, with a mother who deeply resented her lack of surgical options. She detested the ugly sewing job on the site of her mastectomy. She was bitter that other women had been offered options while she hadn't, despite the fact her tumour was tiny, and she could have had a lumpectomy. 

All the recent lit, including the lit I read when I raised $2500.00 for breast cancer and walked the 60km Walk For The Cure a few years ago, stress that the recovery of a breast cancer patient is related to her sense of general control, and taking that control away from her by allowing a junior resident to botch her sewing job, for instance, is not helpful, and indeed disempowering.

To my surprise, when I open my mouth and express the desire for a double mastectomy, instead of a single, my sister tells me I am not listening to the doctor and I need to button my lip. Later, having heard it from her, my brother admonishes me: My sister told him about my "speaking up". It's a sign of non-co-operation or a bad attitude or not listening or something. Ohhhkaaaaaayyy. But what happened to options and empowerment? And not ending up bitter like my mother?

I ask if I can have a double mastectomy, (a) because I have a twenty percent chance of a new breast cancer occurring in my left breast, if I have had one in my right one, and (b) because the surgeon himself said reconstructed single breasts never match the existing real one. 

Why would I choose to recover from two separate mastectomies? Down the road I am going to want two new breasts and that involves two operations itself. Speaking out is mandatory, not "rude" or "failing to listen" in my books. Who wants to end up bitter and resentful for the next decades like my ma?

That afternoon I realize I have forgotten to ask the surgeon an important question. In my past, three separate junior residents have made sewing errors on my body. The common thing in an operating room is that the newbie "closes" the wound. This is the person with the least experience in matching the weave and the warp of human skin together in a thin, neat line. The more experience the surgeon has, the sooner they wish to exit the operating theatre I assume.

I phone the surgeon's office and leave a request with his secretary to have him phone me. First, i want more info about why I cannot have a double mastectomy. (He'd told me I was free later, after my single mastectomy, chemo, and radio were finished, in a year, to pursue some surgeon for another mastectomy on my non-cancerous breast, and even recommended it.) I needed more info. Secondly, I'd forgotten to ask him to refrain from allowing a Junior Resident to close my wound.

Thursday I call Antonella, my help nurse at the Breast Program, for help. He hasn't called me back. She emails him and receives an email from the surgeon himself saying he would phone me. 

He waits until Friday evening at five p.m. to return my call. In it he says the following: (1) That is the way he does things. Single breast removal. He doesn't want me to take too long to heal from surgery prior to getting me into chemo. Take it or leave it. Time is of the essence. (2) The General Hospital is a teaching hospital. Juniors will close wounds. Take it or leave it. He says the Queensway Carleton is not a teaching hospital. I can unbook with him and try there. I ask how I can do that. I want that. "You would unbook from me and search for a surgeon who works out of the Queensway Carleton."

Well, thinking that he might be telling the truth about time being of the essence, in getting me quickly to chemo, of course I am not going to unbook for my June 7th surgery date. A bird in the hand and all... What if the Queensway Carleton surgeon is booked till August or something? 

You have to question a man who says time is of the essence (a fear-generating remark) yet who takes four business days to return a phonecall on these topics. After all, he had time to answer Antonella's email Thursday at noon. 

A friend of mine wonders if he isn't just lazy. Who would choose to stand over a patient for the five hours a double takes when he can stand over me for a mere two hour period for a single mastectomy? This man did not exactly demonstrate any especial concern for my welfare, when he took four days to return a call, and didn't even offer to close my wound himself? 

A big reason i want the double mastectomy is that I just do not want to wear a prosthesis, a falsie. I cannot afford one. They are ridiculously expensive. I cannot afford one. You wear one till the year and a half later when they let you get  two operations to install fake boobs. 

I hate bras period. They pull, and are uncomfy. I can't exactly run to the corner store with a giant, flattish uniboob and a man's profile on the other side. Everyone will look. And I just don't want that. So I will be forced into that stupid falsie bra my mom hated. Dammit. Damn the surgeon. 

So, deeply resentfully, I am about to go through the first of four separate operations on my boobs. Ridiculous, stupid waste of my time. Oh, but I forgot. It's the surgeon's time that matters here.