One Year Since Diagnosis

I've always been good at remembering dates.  I don't need Facebook to remind me of my friends' birthdays.  I would never forget the anniversary of my first date with Jeff or the day he proposed.  And it's not just the good anniversaries that stick in my mind.  The day I broke my leg?  May 6th.  The day Jeff shot himself in the eye with a champagne cork and tore his retina?  March 31st.  And of course, the day I was diagnosed with breast cancer.  January 9th.  These bad anniversaries serve as a reminder that terrible things can come out of nowhere.  Only then do you realize how great your life was yesterday.  Look at this photo of me from January 7th, two days before my diagnosis.  Look how happy I am!  I don't have a care in the world.  I'm feeding cantaloupe to a horse, for God's sake.

Until the next terrible thing occurs, I'm trying to appreciate that life is pretty okay right now.  On New Year's Day, Jeff and I took the girls to Colorado for a ski trip.  I didn't ski because I'm a coward and I can't handle an injury after the year I've had, so instead I got to haul everyone else's ski equipment around.  If you've made a resolution to exercise more, I recommend getting two young children dressed for the snow and walking fifteen minutes to the ski school while carrying all of their skis and ski boots and helmets, stopping every few seconds to put someone's mitten back on.  At least I got to enjoy the majestic winter scenery. 

This week it was back to the grind.  The kids went back to school (hooray!) and I went back to Texas Oncology – a shot in the butt to commemorate my cancerversary.  I also had a pre-op with my plastic surgeon in Austin.  Everything looks good for my DIEP flap surgery.  He showed me my CT-angiogram and pointed out my awesome abdominal blood vessels.  "See this big one here?  I don't even have to cut the muscle.  I can just pull it right out!"  The only hiccup is that the plastic surgeon from Houston (who is supposed to lead my surgery) had a paperwork problem with his Seton license renewal, so I have to wait for that to be resolved before I can schedule my surgery.  No problem, I love uncertainty and problematic delays that are out of my control.  I'm not a control freak at all.  I'm totally fine with this development.  I'll just be obsessively organizing my kids' closets until I hear from you.