It’s 10:11 pm on the night before I get my double mastectomy.  At this point, there’s practical matters on my mind.  I’m wondering if I should have a snack before midnight and how thirsty I’ll be before they actually put me under anesthesia. I’m packing a comfortable pajama set that I’ll put on after surgery as well as a special pillow I’ll leave in the car to protect myself from my seatbelt on the way home.  All these little details helped me feel sane over the last couple of days.  However, the loneliest part was finishing them and having to address all the other, darker parts hiding right behind my to-do list..

There are so many practical matters to handle when you’re a parent.  I had to console my older daughter because I won’t be able to lay with her tomorrow night at bedtime. She wants answers about how many days that will go on, and I honestly can’t answer her.  I’m reminded that I never got around to writing a will.  I’m plagued by the fact that my daughters stepdad has no real legal rights to them, and if anything should happen to me, he could be thrust out of their lives at any time.  I know all moms are so important to their kids, but for my children, the life they currently know would be completely washed away if anything happened to me.  Cancer would turn their current life into a mirage.  They are only 6 and 8 years old and I wonder if I’d feel like some hallucination to them as they got older.  I’m plagued with the pain of them losing me, even though I’m still very much here.

Being stuck in a vanity spiral is also a very practical, ongoing experience for me-especially because breasts and hair are so central to how society sees women.  I think about my worth daily and struggle with my own valuation.  Do I still mean anything?  I’m reminded of the book, “The Giving Tree,” for some reason, and I imagine myself as a little stump after a series of procedures that  are meant to save me.  If I’m honest with myself, I didn’t think this would happen because I thought I had already chopped off enough branches..  Most of us are afraid to admit that we think the universe takes score and we’ll be spared if we’ve already been cut. When I think deeply about this reasoning, my favorite aunt comes to mind and reminds me of how untrue this is.  She was directly involved in 911, her beloved husband left her and then she too got breast cancer. Maybe that’s the most important lesson that cancer teaches: Things pop up randomly and there’s no meaning or pattern unless we decide to make one.

Keeping score is also a very practical part of my process.  I think of my partner Brandon, and I think this surgery, my amplified anxiety, (potential) future health complications and masectomied body really corrupts the relationship evenness I’m hoping to maintain.  I’ve always been this way in relationships.  I’m not sure if it’s the abuse I suffered, but I’m scared to be a burden.  I’ve spent the last week and a half trying to plan things and manipulate my environment so I can be as self-sufficient as possible.   Intellectually I know I shouldn’t need to do this, but I can’t cram 4 more years of personal development into the last 6 weeks that quickly escalated from first mammogram to last and only mammogram.  

Trying to end the story with hope is also a practical tool for both a writer and a cancer patient.  People call us brave and think we have a super power.  I probably shouldn’t expose our secret, but what we have is actually not that profound.  What we do have, or rather what we DON’T  have, is a choice.  It’s simply too excruciatingly painful to walk though every minute pondering your mortality, so you look for the happy things and your brain becomes more attuned to the undeniable value of your own life.  I get glimpses of comfort from the practical things like meals and gift cards.  I build my will to live when someone writes me a thoughtful text or email to tell me directly how important I am to this world- even if I’ll be missing branches.  I fight like hell when I see my daughters clinging to ME for comfort and knowing that giving up is an act of cruelty when you’re a parent.  That somehow feels unfair, but cancer also reminds you that the whole meaning of parenting is this.  It also tells you that all that you had thought and planned was never real.  It was a projection, and now you must integrate this new bundle of pain, inconvenience, fear and meaning into the life that now just feels so much different.  

As for practicality, I must now go to bed.  Hoping for strength, wholeness and health.