Wednesday 7 December 2011

I beat up Eric Cartman. (from March 30th 2009)

It will never go away. It doesn't matter how long I live; If the cancer never comes back; If they gave me a pill tomorrow, that would guarantee that the cancer wouldn't come back, it will never go away. It's a part of my life and it will never be over.

I haven't written anything in a few months because I was feeling like I had nothing left to write. It took an episode of South Park (of all things) to get me back at the computer.

You think that it will start to not have such an impact... or .... I don't know, move into the background. But not a day goes by where it doesn't come into play in my life in some way. A few months ago we bought Wii Fit. The idea was to start getting in shape with Wii Fit and then start exercising for real when the weather gets good and we have a bit more of a handle on our daily routine. The Yoga portion of the Wii Fit workout is pretty tame. But at first I couldn't do some of it. The muscles and ligaments on the right side of my back and chest and my right shoulder were all weak and stiff. And when I run I have to hold my right arm up over my head to keep my breast from hurting. I bought a reallygood sports bra, but some days I still have to hold my arm over my head. I've had to be really gentle and slowly work my way up to doing simple Yoga poses.

Also, when you have a 2 year old you spend a lot of time getting kicked or punched or head-butted in the chest. Most mom's probably barely notice. I notice every time.


I also find it really interesting... I was discussing surgery with a woman I know who elected to have the full bilateral mastectomy as a preemptive strike because there is so much breast cancer in her family she is pretty much guaranteed to get it. I talked about wanting to reconsider that surgical option when Indiana is older and doesn't require quite so much physically active momming. My friend remarked about not wanting her son to consciously see her go through that pain and horror. But I think they know. Indiana certainly seems to know.

I don't know, it's weird. She has started becoming very aware of all the body stuff. One of her new favorite phrases is "a happen?" She points to my C-section scar every time she sees it and asks "a happen?" And I kindly tell her "You happened." She seems to ignore my breast cancer scar altogether. She thinks my boobs are totally funny and makes her wind-up toy-fish drink milk from them, but it's as if she doesn't even see the huge pink scar (way more noticeable than my 2-year-old c-section scar) on the top of my right breast.

I sometimes wonder if there isn't something wrong with me because I didn't a have harder time with it. Because I am not more damaged by it. But at the same time I wonder if people are tired of hearing about it. I feel like I can't leave it alone. Like it is something that I should never stop talking about. Maybe if I don't ever stop talking about my experience then I won't have to go through it again. I feel like there might be some clever literary or filmic reference I can make here but I can't think of what it is.

But anyway. South Park made me cry and I beat up Eric Cartman and if you've seen the episode than you know what I mean. I think Principal Victoria has officially replaced Butters as my favorite South Park character.

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