Enough Awareness, We Need A Cure

Today is Metastatic Breast Cancer Awareness Day.

Why should you care? Why do I care so much?

40,000 women and men die of breast cancer yearly, and those numbers are probably low. My own mother's death certificate doesn't list her cause of death as metastatic breast cancer. But that's what killed her. 

It's the ONLY kind of breast cancer that kills. If a woman or man dies of breast cancer, it's because it was stage 4, metastatic. Their family might not say that. Their death certificate might not say that.  But that is what killed them.  

You do not need breasts to get stage 4, metastatic breast cancer. You could have had your breast tissue removed and still get metastatic breast cancer.

20-30% of women with early stage breast cancer - and that is women like me - will develop stage 4. They could have done EVERYTHING right  - surgery, chemo, radiation, Tamoxifen - but 5, 10, 15 years later the cancer will show up in their lungs, bones, liver, or brain. There is no way to prevent this that we know of. We try with surgery, chemo, radiation, and drugs like Tamoxifen but that doesn't always work. Early detection doesn't save lives. 

6-10% of women are diagnosed with Stage 4 initially. This means that they never had an early stage breast cancer diagnosis.

If you have Stage 4, metastatic cancer, you are in treatment for the rest of your life. You will NEVER be cured. You will never be DONE. You might do really really well, get a nice break. You might find one treatment that worked great doesn't work anymore.  There's no way to tell. You might live for the average of 33 months, or you might live for decades. It's a crappy crapshoot.

Everyone knows about breast cancer. It's no longer something we whisper about. We no longer need people to be aware of breast cancer. We need people to know the reality. It's not always a happy pink story and a "survivor".

Why do I care? I care because I am the daughter of a woman who died of stage 4, metastatic breast cancer, because I had stage one breast cancer, because my sisters are dying and we are telling them to have hope and courage and faith - and that is MEANINGLESS unless we are going to find a CURE.

So, this is depressing and heavy but, like, what can YOU do? I'm glad you asked.

Educate yourself. The more you know, the more you understand.  Read what other breast cancer activists have written. Follow some kick ass Stage 4 women on Facebook. Listen to not only the experts on this disease but also the voices of the people living with it. Their voices matter.  

Educate others. A friend of mine sat down and had a chat with his school aged son about why pink for awareness is useless and how to better support women and men who have been diagnosed. Another friend speaks up when she sees pink ribbons waving. You don't have to have had breast cancer or Stage 4 to say something.  Advocating for Stage 4, metastatic awareness is something anyone can do. Share your knowledge.

Donate. An average of 2% of breast cancer money goes to research for a cure. Less than 1% in some very big organizations. There's effective treatments for early stage breast cancer, and that's great.  Women like me are living longer. But we still have this huge number of women and men who are being diagnosed with stage 4 initially or after years of being "cancer free". So donate to Stage 4 research.  I'm a big fan of METAvivor

I hope this post gave you some new information on Stage 4, metastatic breast cancer. I hope you if you come across something breast cancer related and it makes you go "hmm" and you want to bounce it off someone, you reach out to me. I hope awareness spreads so fast that I never need to do another one of these posts. I hope we find a cure. 

Here's some links for further reading.

13 Things Everyone Should Know About Metastatic Breast Cancer


Ten Things Wrong With the Pink Ribbon


Pink Marketing for Breast Cancer; Where's the Payoff?

The Closer I Am To Fine

This post is brought to you by my favorite band, the Indigo Girls, the "shall remain nameless anti breast cancer" drug, and my wonderful, supportive friends and family.  If you aren't as in love with the song as I am, you might want to read the lyrics to make sense of my writing: Lyrics to "Closer to Fine"

I've been an Indigo Girls fan since my senior year in high school, roughly around 1991, when I spent many hours listening to music in cars with boys. Although I find it deeply ironic that straight, white men introduced me to Amy and Emily, so it was.  Their music changed my life.

In particular, one song always spoke to me the loudest.  I was one of those kids that make better adults. I was serious when others were jokey; I was heartbreakingly real instead of cool. I only knew how to be myself, and it wasn't always easy to be that self.  I never mastered that "couldn't care less" attitude that let others breeze through middle school corridors. Or high school hallways. Or college dorms.  

So I fell in love with these two girls and their music, self styled outsiders who sang honestly and authentically about not being cool, or funny, or anything but serious and real and scared sometimes.  I was a perfectionist, never up to my own standards.  I was a seeker, always trying to learn and search and explore and improve. I was pretty sure I was alone in feeling that way. But their music made me feel like maybe I wasn't the only one.

A few months ago, I went to a wedding.  It was beautiful and full of love and exactly the kind of wedding you want to attend. It made me feel good just to be there.  I was seated next to an attractive, dynamic woman a few years younger than me who disclosed over dinner that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago.  Later, she mentioned that she was a social worker.  I about fell over. I'd like to tell you that I was sad to hear of another woman diagnosed so young, but that wasn't my first reaction.  My first reaction was disbelief and then I was ecstatic. I was so happy to have someone to talk to about it.

I've mentioned before about cancer being isolating, about how I almost hate writing about myself in this way, about how I don't want to whine. All of those things are true.  I think I have a good life.  A great life.  I know how bad breast cancer can be, and is, for so many.  But it still sucks for me. I wish there was a more eloquent way to express that sentiment.  Cancer.  Sucks.

I hate how cancer has changed my body - my body that I was, for the majority of my life, in love with. I liked how I looked.  I wasn't perfect but I was me. But this body is one I'm still not used to. I barely even know it. I haven't fallen in love with it yet. 

I hate how cancer has changed my actions.  Before cancer, I was strong in my legs.  I could complete a half marathon.  I could take a long yoga class. I could walk for hours. Now, it's different. Fatigue and pain followed both surgeries; the anti-cancer drug I've been on since February comes with side effects that include joint pain severe enough to limit my mobility and bring me to tears of frustration.  

The first month I was on it, no side effects! I thought I dodged them - I was one of the lucky ones. Then in month two, it felt like the flu, the way your whole body aches and then settles into your joints. I figured out pretty quickly that it wasn't the flu, but drug related. So I looked for answers. (I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains) I exercise the prescribed amount to prevent the joint pain; I take the correct amount of supplements shown to combat the discomfort.  I follow the recommendations on sleep, and activity, and whatever else has been shown in real, legitimate research. I work consistently to prevent it.  But sometimes I don't prevent it. Or I can't. 

I feel embarrassed to admit this, even to my closest friends.  To say "we need to find a table; I have to sit down because I'm in pain" feels really awful. I've canceled plans with girlfriends.  This weekend I had Nick turn around and take me home to rest instead of to a family party. Last summer I walked 5-7 miles a day in London and felt terrific; this summer in Vienna I could barely do 5 miles a day, and not consistently without hurting. It annoyed my companions and it brought me to tears.

This week when a friend texted me about the Indigo Girls and their song Closer to Fine, it reminded me how much I love the song, how long it's been "my" song that I use to define myself, how I'd always loved these particular lyrics and how I'd long wanted to get them as a tattoo:

The less I seek my source for some definitive, the closer I am to fine

This is a very long of way of saying that it's been a little rough lately.  It seems my (very reasonable) expectations for myself have to change.  And I hate that.  I hate every bit of that.  I want to believe that if I just get it "right" I will feel good and not be in pain and not have to slow down or change the way I move through my world. I don't want cancer to change one more thing on the long list of things it has altered without my permission.

I want an end date to this. I want to know that if I search for and find the right answers, I can make it work.  I can be back to normal.  I want an answer, a definitive answer, a fix that says "okay, this pain will not get worse or continue, just do this and that and it will be done".  But I don't know if that's even possible. It hasn't been so far, and it's not from lack of trying on my part. I could easily be facing ten years of this side effect, plus new and different ones.

What I think I need to do is realize that this, like everything else in life, is not fully in my control. I might have this pain for the entire ten years I'm supposed to take this drug; I might suddenly stop having it.  It might be better some days and worse others and maybe nothing I do will make it go away.  Perhaps it's not a failing on my part - I might not be able to "fix" it.  

It could be time to get that tattoo - or at least tape those words to my mirror - to remind me not to seek the definitive. To remind me that my searching isn't useless but that all the answers are not found in the ways and times we expect them. 

Surgery, Take Two

Tomorrow morning I am having a second surgery.  My first surgery, in December, was a bilateral mastectomy.  They took my breast tissue, the skin surrounding my breasts, and my nipples.  My plastic surgeon used donor tissue to create a pocket to hold an implant in my chest cavity, and inserted the implant, called an expander, into my chest cavity.  He pulled the skin from below and above where my breasts had been, and sewed a neat line across the two lumps where my breasts used to be.

Then he used a stud finder to locate a piece of metal in the expander that was placed in my chest cavity and under my skin, inserted a needle through my skin into the metal disc under my skin, and filled the expander with saline.  This is called a "fill".

In the weeks after my mastectomy, I would go to my plastic surgeon's office, where he would use the same type of stud finder, locate the metal disc in the implant under my skin, and mark it with an X.  Then he would swab it down, and insert a needle and pump saline into the expander.

The act of this never hurt, only pinched or felt kind of uncomfortable.  But I got used to it.  It became commonplace.  Sometimes my chest would hurt the next day, very painful in the beginning, and less so as time went on.  The muscle anchoring the top part of my expander would be pulled and stretched from the saline injection; as the expander, well, expanded, the skin and muscle would stretch out.

The end result of this a size and shape that approximates the breasts I once had, or failing that, the size and shape of breasts that might exist on some woman somewhere.  These lumps look nothing like my breasts.  They look like oval shaped lumps.  They feel like hard rocks encased in plastic.  You can feel the metal disc easily, if you just lightly touched my chest.  I could flex my pectoral muscles and move my expanders - it was sort of my party trick for the first half of 2015.

What happens tomorrow is called exchange surgery.  It sounds so simple, doesn't it?  Pop one out and put another in!  Well, it's a bit more complicated.  The surgeon will open up the same incisions he used for my first surgery. He will repair the pocket on my left side, and possibly my right, too.  He will remove the expanders and place permanent silicone gel implants in my chest cavity. These are nicknamed by the press "gummy bear implants", if you want to google them.  Then he will sew those incisions back up again, another neat red line across the two lumps on my chest.  It should take about two hours, and I will be under general anesthesia.

Today I was thinking about this surgery, and how much we as a society downplay breast reconstruction.  This surgery is not the end of my reconstruction, it's merely another step in the process.  It will take weeks of healing before the implants "settle" and I could face further surgeries or procedures to get my body to have something that vaguely resembles the breasts I lost.

In short, it's not a "boob job".  I am not getting new boobies, and they will not be better than yours when we are 80.  I can only surmise that our language around reconstructing a body part generally seen only in women is another mark of sexism, misogyny, or the patriarchy.  I cannot imagine gleefully commenting on the rebuilding of a leg or arm, for instance, the same way my long and sometimes difficult breast reconstruction is remarked on.  I cannot imagine saying "Well, you are lucky!  Free bionic arm, dude! Better than my arm!"

Yet it's okay to say that about women's breasts.

Let me be clear.  I am not speaking for anyone else but me.  I am not the representative of all women, or all women with breast cancer, or all women with stage one breast cancer who opted for a double mastectomy and implant based reconstruction.  If you personally want to call your breasts "the girls" or "boobies" or "tatas" or any other slang term, you have that right.  I do not want those body parts that I had amputated called those things.  They were breasts, so that's what I call them.  I'm not calling my big toe a "piggy", either.  See the blog title - Not a Cutesy Slogan.

When I started this blog, I asked a lovely writer if I could use that name, and she told me she didn't own it - of course, go ahead and use it.  She's a kickass sister in arms, and I urge you to read her and her blogroll on this same topic of the language we use. There are links at the end of this post. There are many of us women who have lived through or died because of breast cancer who reject these terms.

I almost didn't continue this blog.  I almost deleted it.  I didn't want to be seen as a mouthpiece for all my fellow sisters, and I didn't want to be seen as an attention seeking navel gazer.  I just wanted to speak my truth in the hopes that my voice had a purpose larger than my little life.  I struggled with this for months - my feeling that personal blogging was pure hubris, but my conviction that those who speak their truth change the world.  I had a small army of people telling me to write, and a small army of voices inside my head telling me it was silly. I haven't really reconciled this, I have just come to the place where the words need to get out - so out they go.

Tonight I want to thank all of you who cheered me on, who prayed for me or said nice things when I wrote something or sent me a random text or held me in your thoughts.  I want to thank all the professors in my life who helped radicalize me, and the women who taught me a lot about the inequalities and inequities of cancer, cancer treatment, and what kinds of cancers get attention.  I want to thank all the teachers that taught me compassion and kindness and empathy.  I want to thank everyone who said in one way or another, "you have a voice - use it".  I plan to.

And if you have read this far, I hope you come back.  I have a really funny story about how the hospital lost me the night before my surgery, and some really interesting links to read and discuss, and some good old social justice rabble rousing.  And possibly some navel gazing, too.

Here's some links to keep you busy while I'm having surgery!

Get Up Swinging

Nancy's Point

Living Beyond Breast Cancer

Cheers!

No More

Today is the anniversary of the day my good, sweet, smart, big hearted friend left her abuser.

You know the kind of friend who holds you when you cry?  I sure hope you have that kind of friend.  She is that kind of friend.  You can call her in fear or frustration when things are scary or upsetting in your life, and she will manage to take the call in the middle of her work day and talk you off your ledge.

She is magic in the kitchen.  She creates whole meals from absolutely nothing at all.

She is wicked smart.  She finished her undergrad and graduate degrees while working full-time and raising two kids on her own.

She's someone you can laugh with. I have laughed harder with her than I knew I could.

My sweet, kind, amazingly talented friend was pregnant with her second and had a young child when she said no more. Eleven years ago today, she left the man who had fathered her children, built a life with her for years, and emotionally and physically abused her.  

She did not have resources, she did not have family support, she did not have money or a college degree.  It was years before she told anyone the truth, and even then it was years before she told more of her story.

I did not know her then, in those years.  I met her after, when she had made a life for herself and her children, when she was starting to tell her story.  

I never forget that I might not have met her. That without her decision eleven years ago, she might not be here.

So today we celebrate that anniversary.  Eleven years ago she said "no more".

If you want to celebrate with us, my friend suggests donating to her local domestic violence center.  She says "Instead of expressing sympathy or rage, please consider donating to Albion Fellows Bacon Center .  Click the "Donate Now" button.  If was all donated 1 hour of pay, we can make a huge difference!" 

I'm going to say that you can donate in your community, as well.  But just as important, I am going to ask you, today, to speak up.  

I have come to trust her and rely on my friend for many things, and one thing I never question is her sense when another woman is being abused.  She, who lived in shame for so long, is not afraid to see it. She is not afraid to name it. She is not afraid to say "this is not right".

My friend might not have been alive if she had not made that decision eleven years ago.  My heart breaks at that thought.  So, please, if you know a person who is living that nightmare, speak up.  Do you suspect that things aren't quite right?  Say something.  Do you know, without a shadow of a doubt, that what your friend deals with is emotional abuse?  Tell her.  

Silence is not helping your friend.  Silence says "this is okay".  It is not okay.

So today, I beg you to have the courage to speak up, to reach out, to risk a friendship in order to save a life.  Domestic violence lives everywhere. It's in the nice neighborhoods and it happens to people we know, people we love. 

Today, I wish you a happy and healthy Valentine's Day.  I wish you the gift of loving yourself.  I wish you a long life free from violence of any kind.  And I am thankful for the decisions, people, and interventions that brought my friend to a safe, happy life.



The National Domestic Violence Helpline

1-800-799-SAFE (7233) 

I carry it in my heart

I'm not an expert on mothers. I had a mother and I am a mother, but that doesn't make me an expert, except on my own life. 

I'm not even the most reliable narrator of my own mother's life, because children never are. We see our mothers through our lens, not theirs. We don't see them as their friends do, or their spouses. We see them weighted with our own myopic view. We see them as part of our story, not the center of theirs. 

So I will never know the true story of my mother's life. I will only know how it affected me. 

Today would have been her 68th birthday. I remember when 2013 dawned, I was a little sad because I had to say goodbye to the last year my mom was alive. 2012 is the last year that held her in this world. 65 was the last age she turned. 

In some ways, her passing defines my life in the same way that the birth of my daughter does. Bookmarks of significance that shaped me as a woman, a human being. I find myself telling the story of her death and my starting grad school as inextricably linked. If you haven't seen me for years, you need to know this about me. These things happened. They matter. 

My mother liked to say that the last birthday she celebrated, the last one she wanted to celebrate, was her 29th. It started on a Thursday. She went out with her work girlfriends that night. On Friday she celebrated with my dad and their friends. Saturday night was for her and my dad. Sunday her mom made dinner and they had a family celebration. 

I loved this story. I loved the idea that my mom had this weekend in which she got to see all the people in her life, all those little groups that made up her world. It seemed wonderfully right to me, just the sort of way you should celebrate your birthday. I can't remember where I was in that story - I was 16 months old at the time - but for once, it didn't matter to me. I didn't take center stage in this story. This was purely about my mom. That's what I cared about. What did she wear, who was there, what did they eat? Did she have four birthday cakes? What went into this perfect celebration of life? I wanted all the details. 

For years, she wore an apron that said "29 Forever". She might have been two decades past that, but the apron lived on. I know my mother got older, but she never seemed to age. I don't mean that she aged well, because she did, despite the ravages of near-constant chemo. I mean that she never seemed old. Some people are old at 30, and some never truly seem to age. 

I asked her once how old she was in her head. At the time I was probably 37 and felt 25. She said her internal age did get older but it was never past her late 40s. She just felt young, and fun. We would both point out signs of her aging with shock. How could she ever look old? Impossible. 

She did get older, but not old enough. Not for me. I would take many more years with her. But if given my choice, one of those magic wishes that don't exist, one of those that move time or mess with order, I would travel to February 1976. To the weekend when my mom was the star of the story, alive and beautiful and young. I would just take it in, see a tiny part of the story she lived. See her last official birthday. 

I don't think it would make me miss her any less, or stop me from wishing for more birthdays with her. But it sounds like fun. Today, though I will not have that option. Instead, I will try to carry her with me. Her sense of humor, her love for our family, her ability to recognize strong smart women and make them her best friends. Those qualities and so many more. 

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in my heart) i am never without it

-ee cummings

My  mom and I not-celebrating her last birthday.  She would kill me for posting this photo. 

Kind of Like Fred Rodgers

I love my neighbors.

I think this all the time, but I rarely say it aloud.  I should say it more.  

I have really good neighbors.  Really nice, caring people who act in a friendly way. Even the ones I don't know well or see often are neighborly.  Sometimes we gather because a hawk looks hurt and we are all concerned; sometimes it's to shake our heads at the teenagers who like to use our street as a by-way to their party place by the river; sometimes it's at a social event some other neighbor has thrown.

Two of my neighbors are good friends of ours. Most of our time spent together is organic, occurring naturally as our kids play together or we just head over to one of our houses to have a glass of wine and a chat.  We rarely schedule activities, except in times of snowstorms, hurricanes, and other natural disasters, and then it's just to confirm who bought the wine and who bought the cheese. I think that says something about people - who are you picking to play cards with when the winds howl and you pray your trees don't fall on their house.  I love these people dearly and I think it a lot, but I don't say it enough. I'm lucky with them. We are lucky.

My neighborhood at large is pretty special, too. This is the kind of neighborhood that has a yearly Halloween party and parade, the sort of place where you end up talking to friends in the middle of trick or treating without worrying about where your kids went because the parent up ahead has your kids with her.  I could tell you all kinds of stories about how the people come together for good and bad events, but instead I will just say: it has a book club. This neighborhood has a book club.  I mean, if you are going to judge a place, judge it by its love of books.

The women who live here have no real reason to know me and care about me - my kid doesn't go to school with their kids, I don't socialize in that way, and frankly, I'm not super friendly - but they do.  When my mom died, they showed up with food.  They have sent cards, gifts, and meals for me during this time.  They check in with me, ask me if I need anything, and mean it.

I ascribe my entry into this community to my aforementioned neighbor and good friend.  She is one of those people that can talk to anyone, anytime, in any place.  She's excellent at making connections between people - she literally does that "introduce people with thoughtful details" trick.  I almost feel like our nation is wasting her talents - surely she could be brokering peace somewhere.  

She walks in and talk to everyone.  I tend to smile vacantly and try not to make eye contact because I am overcome with shyness at these large gatherings with 50 people that all know and see each other regularly.  The mass amount of people is so intimidating.  There is something about walking into a place where everyone knows each other better than you do that just tweaks my insecurities.  Nick and Emily are on the same footing but he just grabs a beer and starts talking to people and she runs off and plays - and there I am, hoping someone I know walks by.

But then something amazing happens.  People walk up and talk to me. They ask how I am.  They know my story - which is frankly a bit of a relief, because it's never fun if someone finds out you had cancer recently in the middle of a social chitchat - so it saves me all this awkwardness.  They are all predisposed to liking me, even if I am standoffish and unsocial and can't remember how old their children are. 

I was puzzling over this recently until it dawned on me.  First, these are seriously nice people in this area I live in.  Two, it's my friend. She speaks well of me, and so they look at me and see something good. 

What a gift that is, to have a friend who speaks well of you. This says a lot more about my friend than it does about me.  And with the kindness my neighbors show, their interest in me, that too says much more about their character than mine. Every single time I make my way through lawns and around corners from a neighborhood gathering, I think two things:

Well, you should stop being scared of this.

and

I have the best neighbors.  

Ready for the storm

Like Sunshine and Rain

It's six weeks today since my bilateral mastectomy. On one hand, it feels like it went by so fast.  On the other, I can't believe I am still dealing with this.

Lots of good news - I had an excellent time with my friends in Florida, and felt, for the first time, normal.  I felt like a normal person all the time.  Not who I was before  - I will never be who I was before - but like me.  Good enough.  I walked - not ran - the 5k, and it was super fun.  I felt great about it.

I have been feeling good in general, so I started back to work this week.  I learned I do not know the meaning of "ease in".  Nope, it was all or nothing apparently.  In some ways, it feels like I never left.

Also in good news this week, a huge team of oncologists discussed my case and determined the risks I would incur from chemotherapy would outweigh the possible benefits.  This is a relief to me, because I don't want to suffer.  Not going to lie - I really, really did not want to go through that.  There were a few options, some being more attractive than others - cocktails of drugs, other surgeries, etc. The option they picked for me and that I agreed to try was to take an estrogen blocking drug.  They would like me to do this for years.  5 years, probably 10, maybe 15.  We will see how it goes for a month.  Let me make this clear - I am not refusing medical care or going against advice.  I'm simply following the usual protocol, which is to take it for a month and evaluate.

In bad news, I have spent the last day or so in pain from an ongoing procedure that comes with the reconstruction.  It's so uncomfortable I am actually wishing I could take narcotics.  This, from the woman who refuses Advil for headaches and used Tylenol after her double mastectomy.  

A friend recently commented on my version of manageable versus what she thought of as manageable.  It made me smile - I did think a double mastectomy and months of reconstruction was reasonable. Now I know it's huge. I would not change my decision, I am very happy with it.  But it's still huge. Even though this is early stage, "easy" cancer, it still sucks.  I wish I had a more eloquent and elegant way of phrasing that, but I don't.  Cancer sucks.  Some go through more than others, but it all sucks.  

I hope that not one other person ever feels the need to quantify or qualify their experience with this, or any other disease.  I catch myself doing that all the time.  Yet I am encouraged to do so by people who like to remind me how much worse it could be.  I know how much worse it could be.  I saw it up close.

When I got the news about not needing chemo, I was at first happy and then deeply sad. For 18 years, I have been a bearer of bad news about cancer.  My mom's initial diagnosis, her second diagnosis, her problems with reconstruction, her stage 4 diagnosis.  All the scans for the 8 years after that. We had very very few moments of good news about cancer. I made a lot of phone calls that ended with tears.  And here I had good news, and I didn't know how to tell it.  I was happy but it was a loaded happy.  It was a little joy with a whole lot of sadness.

I wish this was news my mom would have gotten.  Or my aunt.  Or anyone else with stage 4 cancer that I have known and loved.  So many women and men who do not have it easy, and so many who should never be told they do.  

Let's just take this good news, be grateful for it, and hold in our hearts all the people we have known and loved who got different news.  May they be at peace. May you be at peace in your heart. May the world one day be at peace.

Back to Life

A sign that hang on my bedroom wall

Although the double mastectomy was much much better than I expected it to be, it was still hard. Really hard. Somewhere around day 10 I hit this slump - I didn't want to see people, look at posts, or texts, or anything. I felt isolated. I felt, probably, some of the grief this surgery can bring. 

Then I got my surgical drains out and I started to feel like a person again. I went to Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations. I started to walk, slowly, in the local parks. I could wear a bra that wasn't from the hospital.  I could put shirts over my head. 

Recovery is defined as "the return to a normal or healthy condition".  

I knew I was feeling normal when I cared about the news again. When I felt righteous indignation. When I could go and sit in a movie theater and walk out of there making connections between what I saw on screen and how we treat people we perceive as different from us. 

At 3.5 weeks post surgery, I can drive again. I can open doors - not all of them - but ones that aren't too heavy. I can make simple meals and do simple household things. I can do a lot more than I can't. 

I still have to be careful not to lift heavy things, or push myself too far. I would have one great, active day and be totally exhausted from it the next. I've skipped parties and swim meets and all sorts of things just to rest. 

So it's a treat when I take my kid to swim practice and have coffee with a friend. Or run an errand that doesn't relate to the diagnosis that has taken over my life since October. Or when I do things two days in a row.  It's been great to spend so much time with my husband and my daughter, but my life is filled with lots of people, and I missed that.

The other night, my grad school friends came over, sort of a holiday celebration. I was very nervous about this going in. What would I be able to do? What if I couldn't handle it? Was even going to be able to have a non-medically centered conversation? I shouldn't have worried at all. Everyone brought food, helped set up and clean up, and acted exactly like themselves. It was like...being normal. Totally unremarkable but yet I was so grateful for it. It felt like I'd taken a week's vacation. 

That's how good friends make me feel, like I've been away relaxing. A twenty minute phone call from my neighbor can make me laugh and relax enough that it's equivalent to a massage. My friend calling from the airport before she leaves for a business trip buoys me for the day. Even sorting through the tricky stuff with a woman who is like a sister to me feels good. 

Friends are a huge part of my self-care. 

So for the next step in my healing, I am going to see a group of woman I love dearly. We have spent the last few years doing half marathons, and this year four of them are doing a particularly challenging set of races. On Thursday, they will run a 5k, on Friday a 10k, on Saturday a half marathon, and on Sunday a full marathon. I couldn't be prouder of them for this insanity. Three of us will be in the cheering section, handing out mid race snacks and holding up signs.

Before I was diagnosed, my plan was to complete the 5k and 10k with them. Once I knew the dates of my surgery, I asked both surgeons if I could still go on the trip. Even just to sit there. These women have supported me through everything for the last seven years, and I wanted to be there with them, even if I couldn't do the races. Both surgeons encouraged me to go, and my breast surgeon in particular understood the significance for me. She told me I would get on that plane, that I would survive this and be able to celebrate and heal with my friends.  She said the trip was part of my recovery plan.

So tonight I will get on a plane and fly south. I will get to hug my girlfriends and see their beautiful faces. I will get laugh with them and probably cry a little too. I will get to cheer them on and be there. Just soaking up the way that good friends make you feel. Loved. Whole. Healed.