The Egomania of Blogging

http://youtu.be/Jp9N2Vipm6w click here to see eiger and bucky camping on video.

It’s all about me! In Grade 13 (hard to recall there was one, eh?) I looked up “egotist" and “egoist” in the dictionary and learned they are the same thing except the former one talks about it. Blogging really is the egotist’s wet dream. I found my niche!

As I write this, Bobo (Bobbi) is lying at my feet, where she returns, after I squeeze her from behind and kiss the back of her neck. She jabs her tongue in my lips and then returns to the foot of the bed where she is happiest. She is so funny. It’s like she humours me and then goes back to her personal space. 

Tulip, the one-year-old girl’s girl, a four-pound, long haired chihuahua, smiles in her doggie-bed, bat-ears back, listening to the birdsong outside, atop a pillow at my left elbow, snoozing. It is girls-only in here for the moment and we love it. 

Dexter, the furry bedcuddler, let me cuddle him last night; a heavenly, warm-puppy armful of crazy black curls. Love is in the air. He and the ‘boys’ (Buchans... pronounced Buckans... or Bucky, as we call him...and Eiger) are in the back garden with rawhides on the deck. Dexter’s mommy and daddy are at a Lamaze class. Life is blooming in the springtime.

Tulip’s mommy, Allison, is off to Lake Opeongo to canoe-camp for a week and I am nostalgic about the silence, the visual breadth, the time-space continuum disappearing in a sweet dripping-from-the-paddles sound, into the depths below, with the cut of the paddle’s blade. 

The thrill in the dogs’ faces in the prow of the boat, as they sniff the wild air; absolution for civilization’s sins all round us, worries left behind under the canoe’s bottom, as the boat glides through the water. 

My best memories are of Tim and Doug and me in Lady Evelyn Lake in Temagami, swimming with the young fledgling loons in flight school, picnic fires on eskers in the setting sun. 

As the canoe drifts and the destination is marked by natural landmarks: bays, outcroppings, marshes, cliffs, natural beaches, and wildlife sightings better than Vegas shows, the mind turns to lyrics and melodies that capture the beauty that is the human experience on this gorgeous planet in this, the best of natural scenery on earth.

Out of nowhere, a sight like Babylon appears: a sleek helicopter descends and two otherworldly people descend, inflate a raft, strip naked, laugh, swim, disappear round a peninsula, returning in a couple of hours with a giant fish they cook on a woodfire. 

In the darkness, after our own supper, we build up the fire, lean back and Doug and Tim listen while I belt out Irish ballads. A conversational male voice startles us in the pause between songs: “Do you know any Simon and Garfunkle?” 


Our burst of laughter signals our amazement at the natural acoustics of the bay; that the gorgeous, presumably celebrity-rich, couple of Olympians has heard every single sentence we, a half mile across the water from them, have uttered, including my bawdy praise for the glory and beauty of their nude figures.

An estimated 1.3 million women are diagnosed with breast cancer worldwide each year and nearly 500,000 die of the disease. According to the Canadian Cancer Society, breast cancer is the most prevalent form of the disease among women in this country, with the exception of non-melanoma skin cancer. 


An estimated 23,400 Canadian women will get a breast cancer diagnosis this year and another 5,100 women will die from the disease.Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/health/Drug+slashes+cases+breast+cancer+high+risk+groups+trial/4894949/story.html#ixzz1QJ5s1RdW In sum, all the women in developing countries die straight away, no surgery, chemo, hormone therapy, radiation therapy, immune therapy. 


All the women in our jewel of a country get a whack, of some degree, depending on early detection, of scientific and medical assistance; the bulwark against the darkness.

The egomania of my blog, for example; the millions of dollars made by publishers of breast cancer books; the co-branding of the Pink Ribbon campaign; in short, the Marie Antoinette-ness of my bourgeois situation, is not lost on me, as I am showered with gifts and loving concern.

A friend tried to give me a New-Age Oprahstyle book on the stress and the psychology of illness, and I basically, rudely, batted it back. How self-involved can I let myself get? 

I have received more good fortune on this earth than a Saudi Arabian prince. My clients’, my former students’, my friends’ and family’s and my dogfriends’ hearts are bigger, funnier, more wry, more loving, more generous, more fun, more soothing and kind, than those around a prince or princess. My eyes have absorbed more natural beauty, my ears more great music, than a songwriter’s or a painter’s. I am ready to let go, and I am ready to tell fear to go suck itself.

Yesterday I went through all five stages of grief when the surgeon, who was draining another litre from my cipherbreast, told me my pathology was completed. 

Hormone-positive breast cancers comprise 80 percent of breast cancers. This is the group of cancers with the good news because you can block the hormones with drugs. I have the other kind. Mine are hormone negative. Estrogen, progesterone and heredity had nothing to do with my getting cancer. They don’t know what caused it. The prognosis for my kind is not good.

All my life I knew at a deep level I would not make it into old age. I knew it at an irrational level, a haptic knowledge, a listening to something either deep inside or way above us. I did not have children for this reason.

My eight tumours tested positive for the kind of cancer that, rather than being hormonally responsive, is immune responsive: the minority-case HER2. You can battle hormones, but you can’t really battle your immune system. 

This means that I have a very aggressive cancer. This kind of cancer means the cells multiply a million times faster than the hormone-responsive ones. 

One source said it is so aggressive the tumors generally develop their own blood supply. As I wrote Christine yesterday, it is kind of funny when you think of HER2 cancer cells as "freeloading" bums, who don't just burglarize the house that is your body, like the hormone-responsive majority of cancers, but actually call up the local Enbridge and Hydro offices and order in a supply of hot water,
cable t.v, gas, electricity and regular pizza delivery.

When the doctor told me yesterday, at first I was all happy as a book I'd read painted this rosy pic in which it revealed a thirty percent reduction in recurrence rates was possible by taking the antidote to being HER2 positive, the drug, herceptin.

What that first book left out was the fact that if you needed that drug in the first place it was cos you were fucked.

Thirty percent reduction in recurrence is a figure presented in absence of the other statistic i need to know. By what percentage am I fucked in the first place? Thirty percent reduction in a five hundred percent increase in recurrence isn’t much. I have looked all over the net and cannot find that statistic.

This morning Christine booked a cottage for us third week in July. I am over the moon to be next to a Canadian Shield lake, to be once again gliding in a canoe, swimming, reading, laughing, sleeping, building fires, singing, watching dvd’s, and laughing with two of my best friends on this good earth.

Yesterday morning at 8:00, Kate’s mom died of cancer. Her final hours were filled with mute, violent, terrified seizures in an emergency ward of the Toronto Western Hospital. Valerie Duer Eccles: Rest in Peace.

Octomom

Two weeks post mastectomy/lymphectomy.
Friday the surgeon phones. He tells me that he took ALL my lymph nodes.
There were twenty.
Whaaa? Get this: FIVE of them had cancer. 
"My sister said three."
"No. I removed all twenty lymph nodes and five were cancer tumors."
Weird that the surgeon tells me this two weeks after my surgery. My sister had told me that the surgeon told her I had three removed and they were cancerous.


So. Including the three tumors in the breast,  I had eight cancer tumors when I found 'the' lump.

Eight.


I had a dream last night. I was buying a coat (some women buy shoes, go figure, I buy coats.) The clerk says "so do you have children?" I say "no but I have given birth to eight fine cancer tumors."


I would like to be able to say that the surgeon called right before Jordan had to witness what he saw. That would not be true, however. The surgeon called just before I left to walk psycho Shamus, the killer dog that is so vicious he cannot be put with the rest of the pack, and indeed never has been. I walked Shamus and returned and Dave was by then home from the pack walk.


Poor Jordan. He is the son I never had. I think of him like that. If I had ever had a son, I would be so lucky if he had half of his character. The greatest guy ever. Period. Anyway, for almost a year and a half, Monday through Friday, he has dropped off his HALF pitbull Jaida in the wee hours of the morning when we are still asleep, and picked her up again in mid afternoon when I look forward to seeing him and finding out how his day went. (I only know he has dropped her off when she has slipped herself between my arms in bed and is busily cleaning my face while I awaken.)


Friday, the poor guy is standing there just after I have told the 'news' to Dave that two weeks ago I had twenty lymph nodes removed and five were cancerous.  Anyway, I am in floods of tears when I tell this to Dave because eight feels way past "early detection" and on into "oh poor thing she just caught it all too late." Dave and I are holding one another, standing there weeping. Both of us sobbing. Jordan is standing at the door and he doesn't know where to look.


The sight of Dave and I openly weeping in each other's arms has more than likely done something to Jordan ... something irretractable perhaps. I feel guilt at doing it to him, but I can't stop. He is one of the family by now. But wow. Pretty heavy for him to witness.


Later


Nice to lie out and have fun at my sister in law's pool Saturday afternoon with our dogs, Dave, and my best wee girlfriend, Sasha. Sasha is the nanny in the pack. She is "one of the humans," we call her. Bill, her dad, is my guardian angel, the one who treated me to a massage and five star Hilton the weekend before my mastectomy. (Dave and I had a wonderful weekend there thanks to Bill). Sasha lies next to me now, my little angel. I must have told her I loved her five hundred times, cuddling her today. She laughs this wonderful doggy laugh. She has beauty marks like a young Elizabeth Taylor, and kohl lined eyes. The great beauty of the pack. Christine says she is a really special dog. So true. Jaida is Sasha's idol. Everything fun, Sasha thinks, comes from an idea Jaida had..

You have to see her with the pack to get it. She runs off and returns Dexter, (the fuzzy young pup in the second pic above) the Young Yahoo, Rapscallion, Best BedCuddler, when he looks like he is going to run off with a different group at Bruce Pit. Before we realize he has gone, Sasha is returning him to us. She is the most astute German Shepherd mix you ever met. She seems to be mixed with a Shiba Inu with her lovely long shoulder hair and curly tail, skinny short legs. Truly the most gentle dog ever born, with the greatest sense of humour. Always laughing. She cracks me up. Have you ever met a dog that laughed? That is Sasha. When I am driving and she gets in, she will put her paw on my arm, which makes me face her. Then she laughs. This makes me laugh in return. She sees that and then she laughs. Now I am laughing at the fact she is laughing at me.

She will find the lonely person or insecure dog on Lemieux Island and sit with them, or stroll with them, or play with a nervous dog. Everyone ends up adoring her. A stranger she'd been "nannying" last summer came up and said to me "I just want you to know this is a really special dog." Nobody knows this better than Bill. Sasha was removed from her first owner by Bill, when she was an emaciated, bones sticking out, hungry mess of a five month old. Bill had never owned a dog before, but his love, commitment, patience, and kindness created a Sasha who nobody ever forgets meeting. (Sasha, ears back, with adorable, squeezable, wonderful pug Beckham in the car behind her)

She will turn around all dogs with neurotic dispositions and dogs that hate other dogs. She is the dog that changed Bobbi, aka 'Bobo-na-gogo' (about to throw the ball into the river above), Joanna and Ellen's black lab mix, who is my third dog, by virtue of the fact she lives with us (one year to date and perhaps several more) while her moms live in South Africa. Bobbi (see her and Sasha following Jaida, half-Pitbull, Top-Female Ballfetcher, Land Category, Human Assistant, above too) never liked other dogs before Sasha. Sash just made Bobbi her project, and played low dog to Bobbi's Bitch Queen long enough that Sasha just wore her down. Bobbi loves to play practical jokes on Sasha all the time now. And the two girls just love one another. Last night both girls slept next to me and it made me very satisfied to see how relaxed Bobbi is with Sasha.


Where was I?  Sorry.  I got distracted. Thinking about my pack gives me such a serious case of Da Happies...as Bobbi calls it. Oh yes. Back to the much, much more worthwhile topic to blather on about...much more worthy than dogs...Cancer, death, suffering, disfigurement. Oh yes, let's go back there, shall we?


So Saturday Eliza got this great idea that we should say hello to Dad for Father's Day. We drove out to the grave and now I am looking at the family plot in a new way, right? I mean I am sure it never occurred to her, but, like, just hours ago, Dave and I are rocked by the fact I had eight cancerous tumours removed, rather than the three plus ??? whatever was told by the surgeon at the time of mastectomy. This number eight feels closer to ten or something, I just know that I am rocked by the surgeon's info. Maybe it was the number twenty, that was the number of nodes removed altogether. But death is just whispering in my ear for the past day and now I am standing in the family plot where my brother, mom, and dad lie together, and inside I'm like "Move over, Ma! Steve! Dad! Shove over I'm comin in soon!" Whatever it was it was a blackness that just will not quit.


My best friend, Kate, in Toronto, is cleaning up after her mom and cooking and handfeeding her, and over there all the time at her mom's place. Her mom seems, most unfortunately, to be in the losing stages of her battle with cancer. Yes, the doctor says the cancer is advanced breast cancer and the brain tumor is no doubt a separate cancer, but....let's not mince words. It is cancer.


Tonight it is a relief to pick up the phone when she calls and to hear her sob, and really let it go. We did this the day I got my diagnosis, long distance from Zurich when she was there studying. We recalled that tonight on the phone with a laugh. It felt so oddly good to recollect that roaring and sobbing we did with each other long distance. You just can't always have words and self containment for this surreal experience. My pain now is for Kate not me. I just cannot imagine what it feels like to have this disease making her mom's life the most undignified, humiliated experience, voiceless, helpless, yet fully with all mental capacities to feel the indignities. Kate is over there ten or more hours at a time and then she is home at her loft, on the phone with her best friend....who has the same thing that is killing her mom. It is like the worst pair of bookends you could buy.

(Me, hugging my whiney 4 yr old baby, Eiger, left, aka 'Baby Hughie,' Christine's Poirot, the Bernese Mountain dog, right, aka "Fatty" as Simba, his sis refers to him, and wonderful ole Dozer, Cortney and Ryan's Anatolian Shepherd in the Halloween mask on the right).




I might not have given birth to human babies, but as I look at my title for this blog, it occurs to me that I have at least eight furry babies, you know. I look at all the dogs in my pack as my babies. The greatest happiness is looking after them overnight once in awhile, when you really get a chance to know them and love them. Here are some pictures. These are some of my babies:Top-Female-Ballfetcher, Water-Category, Simba, golden-doodle, with Cathy Pomeroy's Duke, golden retriever, top all-round fetcher, land and sea, middle, aka 'The Seal', and bottom, strolling the beach, four-pound Tulip, aka Tutu, long-haired chihuahua and voted "Pack Boss" on long hikes.

Anthropology, Respect, and I'm One Week Past Mastectomy

Bucky is staring deeply into my eyes. He sits beside my bed and Bobbi lies at my feet as i type on the laptop. 

Bucky, a seven-year-old golden retriever, a master-manipulator, wears his "I'm just a widdle boy" expression. If you know Golden Retrievers, you know that they can change their facial expressions for whatever purpose they have at the time. 99 percent of the time they choose a facial expression that will get them food. (Yesterday he wore an evil, vicious face to his younger brother, when he snarled and fake-snapped at Eiger, whom he thought had gotten into an unopened kibble bag on the floor). 

He is saying "I smell that awful' nice-smellin' Tim Hortons eggamuffin dere, lil lady, an' I was wonderin' if you were through with the wax paper wrappin' on it." I tell him that eating paper is bad for him. He replies "dat don't mean nuthin' lil lady, bulieve me, we eat poop half the time you're not lookin', in the park."

Bobbi raises her head on backup. She is confident that any snacks that get doled out to Jaida, Bucky, and Eiger, also get hand delivered to her.

I will be walking Shamus, a dog who lives three houses up the street, at one o'clock. For the past year, his parents have needed him walked daily, every other week. This works great for me these days. I get an hour of exercise so my leg muscles and core muscles don't atrophy while I convalesce.

While I walk Shay I get that same rush everyday, rain or shine, an excitement that all around me is greenery and blue water. 

The Parkway is the most amazing jewel in Ottawa's landscape. All the land beside the Ottawa River has been reserved for bike trails and walking trails. The cars have an unimpeded-by-civilization view of the river on one side, and the green trails on the other. I walk Shamus a half hour out on the green side and a half hour again by the river on the way back. 

There is no beating this city if you love nature. I have swum in the Ottawa River with the dogs three summers in a row and never gotten sick.

As a teen, I swam in the Ottawa River, in the seventies, further west, out in the countryside, as a YMCA Camp counseller (I won Best Counsellor Award there two summers in a row...BRAG, brag), where the ecoli from the Quebec cows swam across and into my intestines. I recall two-week fevers as a teen, which I now know in retrospect was Ecoli Poisoning. 

Nowadays, there is an organization called the River Keepers and lotsa good clean-up of the water system manifests itself in sewer reconstruction all over the city under the roads. The city has spent billions in cleaning up the water system here. The Water Purification building sits on an island in the Ottawa River behind which is a two acre dog park, called "Lemieux Island Off-leash Dog Park". Dave and I call it "the office."

I can't wait to get back to Bruce Pit or Lemieux, our off leash dog parks. The only thing in my way is the recuperation.

What I didn't know about mastecomy and lymphectomy is that there is a gallon of water that comes from inside you and fills the space where your boob used to be, and swells your armpit with cipherlike side-boob.

I went to the nurse on sunday, as scheduled, and she oohed and aahed about how nice was the thin, neat line the surgeon made of my incision. Yay!! You may recall how I campaigned for it, right? Please if you have read this blog and you know anyone who is approaching a mastectomy, tell them to fight for a thin, nice scar.

Here is how i did it. (What I left out of previous blogs.) You may recall I phoned the surgeon and requested no junior resident be allowed to sew me up. You also recall he returned my call and refused. Ok. Well here is what I did next.

The week before surgery you are called in to the hospital where your mastectomy will take place, for a three hour or so Pre Operation Assessment. You get a scan of whatever body parts they haven't already scanned and you meet with a Family Doctor and answer his questions and a lot of questions given by nurses too. 

At the end the nurse presents you with all the paperwork in a neat pile with a cover sheet on it. She passes you it to sign. She points at the place where you are to sign.

Don't be a dummy. Don't just sign. Don't consult with her for what you are to do next. Instead, there is a blank space on the cover sheet. You fill this in, without telling her what you are doing. I wrote "Patient requests that no junior residents be allowed on the team." Alternately, you could write "Patient requests the surgeon, Dr...X, closes the wound."

My aftercare nurse told me this was genius. Her words, this past Sunday were: "I am the first one to see the mastectomy scar. I see tons of them. Yours is the neatest, thinnest, nicest one I have seen so far." 

Isn't that great? When I told her the above, she said "well the doctors who were about to operate on you would have seen what you wrote first, and thoughts of lawsuits would have discouraged them from letting a Junior Resident close your wound." 

Indeed I recall the Senior Fellow (resident) with five years experience post residency, telling me no Juniors were even on the team. I was astonished, in the Recovery room when I asked him if there were Juniors on the team, and he said "no, no Juniors were on the team and the Big Guy (Dr. Lorimer) closed you himself."

A good friend of mine had a mastectomy last year. A bilateral. She deliberately spared me the details, beforehand, thank God, about the only yucky procedure that awaited me prior to surgery. 

In her case the language used by the Male technician, just before she entered the operating room, was seriously unfortunate. (Jesus, do these people get no training in bedside manner?) Her support was back in the waiting room. She had no friend nor daughter with her during this yucky moment. I find that shameful on the part of the people who run the Queensway Carleton, and in retrospect, am glad I had mine at the General.

Hers went like this: She said goodbye to her daughter and friend and off she was wheeled to a tech room prior to surgery. The male tech said "I need to put radioactive tracers in your breast, followed by blue dye, prior to your mastectomy, in the cancerous breast. This will be used during your operation, to take photographs of the cancer as we are removing your breasts. We need to make sure we get clean margins around the cancer." What he said next caused her to have to be held down by nurses and technicians during the procedure while she kicked and screamed: "I am going to put a needle, without freezing first, in your nipple."

Now I recall from reading Suzanne Somers' book years ago, the bit about the needle in the nipple. I fortunately forgot all that prior to my mastectomy, so that was a good thing. I recall reading that, and saying to myself, as does every woman who reads that bit, "nope, never would let anybody do that." In fact if you are reading this, male or female, right now, you are saying the same thing, right?

Well, Luanne, this is what you meant, right? That hospitals can indeed train staff to make better choices in how they do things, and how they say things to us. Here is how I received a much better way of doing things.

I wrote a blog on this already but in a nutshell: the radioactive tracers have to follow the ducts in your breast towards your lymph nodes. The cancer in ductal breast cancer will head there anyway. This is why early detection is great. If, unlike me, you do your breast checks, and feel for lumps, you prevent the cancer from heading towards the lymph glands under your armpit. 

Well these radioactive tracers pretend they are cancer heading towards your lymph nodes. The clever thing the doctors do is to allow the tracers to go from one end to the other. Think of the nipple as the beginning of the journey and the lymph gland as the end. 

Once the tracers have followed that journey, they put dye in the nipple (or in my friend's case, at the same time as the tracers) and allow the dye to follow the tracers. Once you are on the operating table, photos can be taken from inside the breast, so to speak. It is wonderful magic, these photos of things the eye cannot detect.

The lucky patient, me, for example, got the smart, humane method of doing all this. The unlucky patient, my dear friend, who will go nameless to protect her identity!, did not. The humane method I got consisted of the following:

a) a female technician who allowed

b) my support (Eliza) to be present, and

c) never said "needle in your nipple" but instead said "beside the areola"

d) who explained that the contents of the needle would be aimed under the nipple, and

e) waited till I asked, to explain that despite no surface anaesthesia being possible, there would indeed be

f) anaesthesia inside the needle, along with the tracers.

Lastly, the coloured dye would be given to me at the onset of my operation under General anaesthesia.

All the above seem miniscule to you reading this,  perhaps, these differences in how we were treated. Believe you me, when primal brain-responses are invoked (someone threatens your nipple, for instance) requiring knee-jerk primal defence mechanisms (like my friend screaming and fighting on the table) you need to have great respect for human defence mechanisms. 

You need to respect that screaming and fighting on a table are not a sign of "typical stupidity" or whatever my friend's technician thought of her behaviour. You need to teach that technician that the human comes with 108 billion ancestors on this planet whose natural willingness to fight and scream to protect at the primal level, KEPT THE HOMO SAPIEN IN EXISTENCE FOR 200,000 YEARS. As my friend, Luanne, wrote in the comment to one of my posts above, you need to respect the human body. Period. You need to respect. us. As Luanne said, "respect the body as it houses the spirit."

(Personally, I extend this respect to cats and dogs in medical situations, too. My kitty, Kitty, the grey burmese, was as cooperative a patient at the vet's as any vet ever saw. She would let you turn her inside out and upside down if you handled her with love, instead of fear. One vet wrestled her to the ground to get a needle in her arm, and the vet ended up on her back trying to do this. The next vet simply believed me, and treated Kitty with respect, and Kitty held her own leg out, allowing the needle.)

All this, just to tell you: I occasionally have phantom right nipple pain. I was under general anesthesia when the coloured dye got inserted, but I suppose the nerves are still there, though the nipple is gone. Very interesting.

So there are two things, in total, I didn't know about post-mastectomy recovery. Firstly, the massive swelling of liquid under my 26 centimeter (one foot) long scar; and secondly, that you can have phantom nipple pain.

Today: the Mastectomy/Lymphectomy

After I wrote the last blog, last nite, Christine, my fairy godfriend, dropped by with beer and a big, big Holt Renfrew box. It was soft, ice-pink pajamas! Sooooo sweet! What an angel is Chris. We hung out and I said "more than anything else, I wish we were curled up in your media living room watching MI5!"

So off we went! We picked up the antimicrobial soap the hospital told me to pick up. Tersaseptic. I was told to have a bath the nite before the surgery, and one again, the morning of the surgery.

Having a bath in Chris and Mike's gorgeous, skylited bathroom twice was a pleasure! What a beautiful home they have designed and made. True to her words, "Nora, you should get whatever you want tonight," Mike and Chris let me choose what we watched, and I missed Mike's "oh, cancer-girl gets her way again!" comments. Instead it was all "whatever your heart desires, honey." Soooo cozy and soooo wonderful.

At 6:50 a.m. Elizabeth picked me up and off we went. Beautiful weather, but my nerves were terrible today, and I think I hurt her feelings about her driving skills! Stupid me! Nervous wreck, me!

I thought Dave would be home, and here I am, home since 3:30, no note, don't know where he is.

It turns out the surgery was scheduled for two hours and forty five mins. The anaesthesiologist gave me an epidural along the vertebrae of the Thoracic part of my spine (upper spine)...at each of t1, t2,  t3,  t4,  t5, and  t6. Highly recommended. Means, in addition to the general anaesthetic, i had these epidurals so the pain won't kick in until midnite, apparently. No mind. I have Percocet pills and Advils to stuff on from then on, every four hours. A little weed to supplement, probably? TMI?

The surgeon, Dr. Lorimer, told Eliza who was waiting in the waiting room, that I was "extremely cooperative" and he has great hopes for me, despite the fact the cancer was "very advanced" when I found it. He removed three cancerous lymph nodes and the breast with its three cancerous tumours. With aggressive chemo and radiation, he feels I have a good chance, "although one never can tell with this disease as you know," he added.

He added, "tell her she has gall stones, by the way. She should get those removed." 

Guess what the senior resident told me...there were no junior residents on the team and the Surgeon (lorimer) himself sewed me up!

I was out, fully dressed, in bra, blouse and slacks, by 1:30. I fought hard to keep my pulse above 90 bpm in the recovery room, and not to fall back to sleep so I could get home as soon as possible. We did Harvey's drive thru, and I am now home in bed, ready to really sleep!!

As Andrew Faiz, Freya's hubby said, "Cancer, Shmancer."

Twas the night before KNIFETIME

and all through the house....not a creature was stirring, except dave making his supper, while three dogs lay snoring.

Tomorrow at six thirty a.m. I report for a two hour wait in advance of surgery. Am getting Dave to place our thermarests by the door. Am going to leave here about fifty minutes before six thirty in order to pick up Elizabeth where she stays with her friend. (She cannot stay here cos she is allergic to dogs and dust).

I have to tell you about how happy I have been in the past week. Well Bill, Sasha's dad, the most lovely man in the universe, a dear friend of ours, gave me a present that was out of this world. Otherworldly indeed. A week ago he asked me to reserve this past Saturday for a surprise. The surprise was revealed sloooowly during the week. Last Tuesday I learned it was to be the day and the night of Saturday. Then Wednesday he told me Dave and I were going to spend Sat nite at a hotel. Thursday I learned it was to be the five star Hilton/six diamond restaurant/casino, pools both indoor and outdoor, and the crown in the jewel? Nora was to have an hour's massage at the spa in the Hilton.

What an amazing time we had. Wow. We drank wine, and partied, swam in the pools, played in the casino, ate a five star delicious lobster and scallop meal, ate a ton at the gorgeous "lakeside" buffet restaurant, and relaxed. No dogs! Dave said I talked about the dogs all the time. Like a mom who cannot go away on hols without her kids. What a great weekend. Thank you Bill a millionfold!

When we returned, Chris and Mike, who babysat our three dogs said that Eiger wasn't too much of a whiney baby at all. He had them up at two a.m. and four a.m. to pee however. What a bugger. He is totally spoiled and quite a diva and it is all my fault. I spoil him waaaay too much. What sweethearts were Chris and Mike to take the three. We could relax the whole time knowing they were in the best of hands.

When we got back to our house Ellen and Joanna, Bobbi's moms, had sent a gift basket of chocolate and crackers with salmon pate, dips, five kinds of chocolate, crackers, sugared almonds, and a big lovely bow. What sweethearts!! I instantly put on the expensive sound system Chris and Mike bought me and continued to enjoy myself!!

Suzanne, my dear dear friend made me a batch of awesome brownies and Jordan and Dawn gave me a special herb that I am enjoying very very much right now, in fact. Courtenay's and Dawn's pretty necklace give me a smile and Alison, Tutu's mom, a lovely, lovely woman, gave me this great journal with what I consider the perfect saying on the front. It is from the British posters during the second world war: Keep Calm and Carry On! How sweet! I love the doggie picture frame as well. Dexter's mom and dad, Amanda and Ramsey gave me lovely teas, and a unique bowl made in Italy that they brought back for me.

So here I am the night before i lose my boob and my cancer. Today was a tough one for Elizabeth. It is always harder to watch something happening to someone else rather than have it yourself. I had radioactive tracers injected in my breast and no surface anesthetic. There was anesthetic inside the needle though. It just looked worse than it was tho Liz and I tried not to look. I held her hand during the initial, brief sore parts and she cried! I love that!!! Being loved is the biggest present and people try to show you the size of that feeling. It feels so good to be loved by the special people I mentioned above and anyone who is reading this loves me too and that feels really good.

I should have called this blog "The Last of the Cleavage" because I wore a black dress at our formal dinner at Le Baccarat and I said to Dave across the table, "look, this dress gives cleavage. Say bye bye to them. This dinner is it!" Twas then I saw Dave's first tears! Too funny.

Next time I talk to you I will be the Uniboober! (My mom joked in advance of her mastectomy so it is a family tradition!) The wait is two hours. The surgery will probably be at eight thirty in the a.m. while eliz and I lie in the waiting room for two hours on big pillows and thermarests. (My back is killing me.)






See you tomorrow night if i can!