Ok this is it, the night before surgery, the last night of “normal” before everything starts to change. On the one hand, I’m as prepared and loved up as I think I possibly can be, and I know that I’m in the best of hands and that everything will go fine. I’m brave and I’m healthy and I’m going to keep it rock steady. On the other hand, I’m nervous and scared and feeling a bit overwhelmed from all the attention. I feel like there’s more rowducking I could have/should have done, but it’s too late now. I have to just let go and be here now.
It’s been an emotionally weird weekend, to be honest. I tried to keep myself busy (Dickens rehearsal all day yesterday and a show at Marin Theater Company last night, then a Rodef Board meeting most of the day today) but I also had a hard time being totally present. People are sad and concerned around me. They want to mark or at least acknowledge the upcoming transition somehow. They want to give me blessings, words of support, advice, food, and hugs. I said on Facebook yesterday that I’m having a mixed feelings about all the goodbye hugs I’ve been getting, and what I mean by that is that while I love the hugs and appreciate the tremendous amount of support I’m getting from people, it’s also weird to be thinking about the fact that my hugs are going to permanently change after tomorrow. First off I won’t even be able to hug for a while until things heal sufficiently, but even after that, hugs just won’t be the same with a) smaller and then b) artificial boobs. So just like every shower was a grieving before (because every time I would get in the shower I’d be very conscious of my soon-to-be-changed boobs and skin), every hug is a grieving too right now.
Friday was also a day of mixed feelings. In the morning I drove Isaac and 5 other kids from his class on a field trip to the Legion of Honor, and it was gorgeous weather in the city and I was feeling pretty good. But then later that afternoon I drove back in to the city to go do a pre-op mammogram at UCSF (they’d only told me I had to do this on Thursday afternoon, and it was kind of annoying having to rearrange my whole schedule to accommodate, but right now if my care team says jump I say how high). That was unexpectedly hard because while waiting around between scans for the technician to read the images and make sure they were okay, I looked over her shoulder to see the images and there in quite vivid black and white, I could see my tumor. I don’t think I’ve seen it before. It was a very obvious small white spot in a field of darkness, with the little metal clip left behind from the biopsy in a clear line right next to it. Seeing that made everything feel real and scary in a way that it hadn’t felt before that. It’s hard to explain. It’s like I suddenly had to come to terms with the fact that this whole new cancer experience was truly happening, and grieving the final loss of possibility that maybe, just maybe, this was all just a bad dream after all (since I feel normal and healthy and I never felt a lump and didn’t have any other sensation that anything was actually wrong, so I was just taking the doctors’ words for it that there was really cancer there).
Tonight hasn’t been quite as restful or peaceful as I wanted it to be. People are visiting and calling and texting and I didn’t get the puttering time I was hoping for. The kids were upset and acting out, and to be honest so was Josh. I want to let go and indulge my own fears or desires for pampering but I find myself still taking care of other people.
Ok I think I am tired and not making as much sense as I’d like to, so I’m going to stop with this and try to wind down towards bed. It’s a super early call time tomorrow (I have to be at UCSF at 7:30am, which means leaving here at 6:30). I’m going to go listen to my pre-op guided meditation thingies and relax and try to get some good sleep. I know I’ll be up early anyway just from anxiety, so might as well get an early start on the sleep.
Bye blog. Catch you on the “new normal” side.