Certain people are prone to emotional highs and lows.  As for me, I would define myself as someone who has experienced a ton of life’s complicated highs and lows.  As a direct result, my life has felt like a psychologically thrilling roller coaster ride.  I’m tired.

Now don’t feel bad for me just yet.  Earlier on in my life, most of the catapults between extremes were simply the consequences of the choices I made.  Perhaps I was pre-wired to seek danger.  I had an odd childhood and now looking back I do see the warning signs that I’m vigilantly checking for in my own daughters.  As a young child, teen and young adult I picked some bad partners, hung out with too many dysfunctional adults and was deeply needy for attention.  That right there is a trifecta of trouble.

But now, I’m much different.  My whole ecosystem of people is very supportive and healthy.  I wake up at 5 am.  I do yoga.  I pack my own breakfast and lunch. I don’t (really) eat red meat.  I’m sober.  I make smoothies.  I try to be a stellar co-parent.  I use ‘I’ statements with my partner. Yet daily I still feel like I’m screaming at the universe, 

“CAN YOU LEAVE ME ALONE NOW?!”

It simply laughs at me.  The answer is no.  No it won’t.

I went back to work after 8 weeks on disability.  I had just felt physically well enough to sleep in a bed at night instead of a recliner.  So that meant everything had to go back to normal I guess.  The second week on the job, I woke up to a horrifying image in the bathroom mirror before my shower.  

My right boob was deflated.

Before I get into this story, I need to provide you all with a quick lesson around mastectomies with reconstruction:

You basically have two options in the reconstruction world.  The first is reconstruction with your own fat (or other body parts like muscle)  which I don’t qualify for.  The second option is to get breast implants.  Since I lost so much skin from my mastectomy, I need my skin to be stretched to house the permanent implant at a later date.  To do this, I have to have a temporary implant called an expander.  Expanders are essentially empty implants that you fill slowly with saline water.  So the process is you go from having boobs, getting cancer, getting them taken off and then slowly filling them back up again.  Every week you go to your doctor, and get more and more fluid put into your expanders.  There’s something cool about it because you feel like you’re being put back together at every visit.  However the fills are painful.  You are stretching an area that has just been traumatized.  It’s tight, heavy and sort of takes your breath away.   Once you reach your desired size and timeframe, you have a second surgery where the permanent implant is put in.  I’ll be doing that in May, or that is what I ‘planned to do.’

So let’s get back to me waking up with a deflated expander.  I’ve had a lot of physical and emotional changes over the last few weeks but this one felt darker for some reason.  I felt my heart rate quicken, my insides turn cold, a heaviness pool into my stomach and back up to my head, and another dark wave of cancer thoughts.  Would I have to go right back on disability again?  Did I need an emergency surgery?  Everyone keeps telling me how well I’m handling everything but in that moment, I’m reminded that I’m simply OK because most of this nightmare has gone to plan.  I’m not strong, everyone.  I’ve just made a traumatic to-do list, checked things off and got to feel like I was gradually moving forward.

Fifteen minutes later I’m responding to a message that basically says, 

“Send pics.”

I’m saddened that at 40 years old this is my first, real sext and it’s coming from the nurse at the plastic surgeon’s office.  My doctor is in surgery for the day so they are using pictures to triage.  However life goes on and now I’m 20 minutes behind in my morning schedule.  I shower while shaking, I drive to work, I make some jokes, do my job and come home.  I’m told that it’s no real rush and while it’s rare that expanders leak, when they do it’s not dangerous because it’s just saline water.  I’m scheduled for a doctor’s appointment in a few days, so I’ll have to keep it together until then.  A close friend tells me I’m totally fine and that I should stop looking at it.  I take her advice and go to the bathroom, pick up my shirt and assess the damage about every hour.   I’ve now also picked up the habit of squeezing my boob to evaluate its size and shape.   It’s a new, fun obsession of mine.  I’m not well.

The day of the doctor’s appointment comes, however I get a call that my appointment is canceled because of the snowstorm outside.  I’m now fully insane, because in some sick turn of events, now my OTHER boob is deflated.  My partner was away on business, so my mother came over to watch the kids and basically talk me down from the psychosis that everyone is fully aware of except me.  I end up in a fight with my partner because I’ve become an increasingly intense, angry person to be around.  I do feel enraged but really I’m more scared.  Did you know that anger is a secondary emotion?

I plead with the plastic surgeon’s office and they let me come in even though there’s a storm.  I shake as I drive to the hospital in my Suburu, going about 18 miles per hour.  I keep about 20 cars distance so I don’t spin out and hit anyone.   I become extremely aware that driving in the snow can expose me to other dangers.  It just feels like most of my life is dangerous now. 

I arrive at the doctor’s office and there’s only one person there. She seems to be in some kind of altercation with the nurses. She’s visibility angry and then starts screaming:

“YOU ALL DID ME DIRTY!”

She walks out, slams the door and the entire office staff seems mortified.  I’m now struck with the fear that someone may have done ME dirty.  Finally the doctor walks into my exam room and nonchalantly informs me that my expanders haven’t ruptured. I’m just no longer swollen and that in itself changes the shape of everything.  “This is you- fully healed,” she explains flatly.  She also tells me it’s basically impossible for two expanders to rupture without a traumatic episode.  

My drive home from the hospital felt like a victory.  The snow had stopped, the roads had been cleared significantly since my drive in, and I felt relieved that I didn’t need any emergency intervention.  My initial, comforting plan of having only one more surgery in May would commence.  My body dysmorphia and obsession eased too.  It helped knowing that the image before me didn’t represent a leaking, foreign object.  Rather it was my body healing and adjusting favorably to a highly invasive procedure.

What does all of this mean, anyway?  I cannot survive any of this if it all means nothing. First and foremost, life will most likely present us with a series of weird events that we have no control over.  Many of them will be the ones we weren’t even worried about or planning for.  Also the whole idea of one’s mental health is interesting.  I don’t think of it as a noun anymore, but a pretty aggressive verb.  It’s such a precarious thing, and as life gets more and more complicated, my only hope is that I default towards practices that divert me away from crashing into massive un-wellness.  

Also, being a woman is impossible sometimes.  On the cancer front, do you know that 1 in 7/8 of us will get breast cancer?  So many of us have kids/jobs/spouses and most of us will have to pretend everything is somewhat OK for all of them if that happens.  Also, it doesn’t have to be cancer.  It can be any of the trillion traumas that are available to us in our modern world.  Women, we are far too important.  That is equal parts affirming, terrifying, motivating and overwhelming.  I guarantee you that if you received some deeply disturbing news today, I could still find you soon after heating up chicken nuggets, tucking your kids into bed and straightening up the kitchen.  

Also, I do have body dysmorphia.  I probably had it before, and I know I definitely have it now.  It’s super terrifying for your outside shell to change so drastically and quickly. There’s so much more to pick and prod. There’s so much to fixate on. There’s so much that I don’t have control over. I try to remind myself that I am so much more than a body, but it’s hard. These are the more hidden, ongoing parts of the struggle that plague me since this experience started.

Is this OK?  Will I be OK?  I’m not sure.  However, I do think the highs and lows will come, even with my best intentions to level out.