Goodbye, Left Breast

Last weekend was not pleasant. I spent two hours on the phone with HP customer support because of a bad AC adapter for my laptop. If you are a Facebook friend of mine, you've already heard me complain about that as well as the next wonderful surprise. I woke up Sunday morning to water standing in the master bath, not a lot, but even a little is worrisome if it's just in the middle of the floor and you have no idea where it came from. The day before, one of our neighbors knocked on our door and said she had water standing in her yard, and she thought it was coming from our house. Kyle took a look around and couldn't find a source. We called the landlady, who said she'd come by on Monday. Well, when I saw the water in the bathroom, I realized that something was really wrong, so I took a look in the garage, and sure enough, water was seeping up through the foundation out there too. I woke Kyle, and he was able to locate the main and turn it off. So, no water all day Sunday, nor Monday. We did find out yesterday that the problem was a leak in the pipe from the hot water heater to the master bath; the pipe, of course, is in the slab in the master BR closet. So we had to spend a good bit of time last night emptying the closet completely.

We had scheduled some time for a sitting with Ann Beck, a local photographer, on Sunday afternoon. I wanted to get some pictures made of Kyle, me, and the dog while I still look healthy. So we called my friend and colleague, Eric, and his wife, Stacey, to see whether we could shower at their house. They said that was fine, but of course Eric had to tease us about how stinky we were when we walked in his house, lol. So we showered and went to meet Ann; I hope some of the photos turn out well. I think they will. That was the only good part about this weekend :).

Yesterday and today at work, I spent most of my time trying to wrap everything up: time sheet, monthly report, sick leave pool application, auto-responder on email, new greeting on voice mail, etc. I taught a class this afternoon as well for one of my favorite interdisciplinary studies professors. I got done there and ran a few errands, and then Kyle and I went out for a casual but tasty dinner at Hoffbrau: lovely salad, steak, and scalloped potatoes.

Things aren't as I would like for them to be at the house. Kyle made a valiant effort to clean today, but the contents of the master closet are still strewn everywhere; the plumber fixed the leak, but he will have to come back tomorrow to fill the huge HUGE hole with concrete. Oh well, so much for having a clean, serene home to return to. I will sleep in the guest room when we get back until Kyle can get everything back in place in the master BR. I'm trying to remember that this really doesn't matter that much in the grand scheme of things.

I've been crying a bit off and on today; I'm sure I will get very emotional tomorrow. I find it truly hard to believe that I have to voluntarily walk into a hospital tomorrow to have a part of my body cut off. A part of my body that appears to be perfectly healthy, no less. I mean, if it looked sick, that would be another thing. I wonder whether I will be able to do it without crying and begging them not to do this thing to me? I know it has to be done. Well, the logical, intellectual part of me knows this has to be done. But the part of me that really, really likes my body just the way it is does not agree in the least. I suppose that the latter part will just have to be reconciled to this reality sooner or later. For those of you who might be thinking, "Oh, it's just a breast; it's not that big of a deal," well, I understand that thinking because that's what I thought when my mom went through this. I have no idea whether she had as much sadness about losing her breast as I have had, because I was stupid and didn't think to ask her how she felt about it. But now I can tell you that this is very, very, very difficult. Perhaps it's not so hard for some women, but this is the hardest thing I've had to wrap my head around outside of my mother's illness and death and my sister's death.

So I need to get to bed. Sorry to end this evening on a sad note. I hope to be able to write soon, but I've told Kyle to try to post a bit here and there until I can get back to this blog. Kyle says to warn you that his posts will not be like mine; they will be pretty brief, like "AOK" [publish]. Heh. Thanks again to all of you for your love and support. See you on the other side :).

A postscript:

I went to bed and read what I wrote here a little while ago. I had thought that I might keep one thing private about what I did today, but when I thought about it more, I realized that there's no reason to. I decided last week that I wanted some more intimate portraits done of myself, something to document the way my body looks now. So I had asked Ann Beck for a recommendation, and she put me in touch with Jennifer Weintraub of Sugar Photography in Dallas. I spent some time with Jen and a stylist she works with, Julie, this afternoon, and the two of them could not have been nicer had they been my own sisters. So I want to publicly thank Ann, Jen, and Julie for making me feel so special and helping me out on very short notice. Something about having documented the way I look now is extremely comforting to me, helping me to feel better about what's happening to me than almost anything else. So thanks, ladies, you are angels :).