Happy Surger-versary to me....

Today is the first anniversary of my bi-lateral mastectomy surgery.

I hope that doesn't sound depressing, because I am feeling no sorrow over it. I admit freely that I still have this weird concoction of feelings when I ponder the reality of my body as it is now compared to what it was then. I think I may have that for the rest of my life!

Still - it is not something to moan and weep and lament.

I am on the right side of the grass -- the side looking down! I have only two more Herceptin infusions (YAY!!!) and then I proceed fully into post-treatment treatment.

What else are you gonna call it? It is treatment, it is post active treatment!

I am happy to be alive. I am happy to feel good! I am delighted to have a whole new perspective on feeling good. I won't have to go through what I have been through in order to so entirely value that feeling so-so, feeling mediocre at best, feeling bad even, is absolutely GREAT!!

I can taste food again (oh that is fabulous, really it is!), I can drive around when I want to or need to, I can do most anything I want.

I have realized the amazing and precious gift of having a spirit of joy. I am blessed with friends and family who love me, who pray for me, who worry about me, who make me laugh. Okay - granted that last one is not that hard to do. My sister tells me I am an easy audience. She just entirely cracks me up!

I am going to be a grandma! My younger son married his sweet Elisa and now I have a daughter AND they are expecting the arrival of my precious first grand at the end of September.

Now he is trying to insist that I will be called nonna, which is Italian for grandmother. So wrong. That is not what is going to be my grandmother moniker. The little one will have a nonna and a nonno in the sweet Elisa's parents. I, therefore, am choosing to be called me-me, or if you prefer Mimi.

Oh, it is somewhat naughty of me to insist on it. You see, I have a sister-in-law who doesn't like me. Go figure! Everybody likes me, I like everybody, you see. She doesn't know me at all, and yet insisted at a family dust-up that I was "totally selfish. All you care about is me me me." I must contend - and it is pretty much universally agreed upon that this is a case of projection on her part. It is why - in part - I called this blog "and now it IS all about me.." and it is, again in part, why I WILL be called Mimi.

It is both a laughing off of her accusation, her erroneous and mean-spirited accusation, and a reminder to me that people will have their little issues. Well, in the Southern sense of the term "bless her heart."

Those among us who understand Southern know EXACTLY what that means. And if you don't speak Southern, just laugh - because it is funny.

So the other evening after I had told Linda that I would be called Mimi, she giggled at that and said she would be called "Aunt La-la" - which made both of us laugh.

Signing off from our phone conversation she later said "good night Mimi" in a deep and affected southern accent. I laughed at both the comment and the accent, as did she. Then she prompted me "say 'goodnight Lala'", which - naturally, I did and we both laughed.

Life is good. Life is humorous. Hang in there through the hard times, the sad times, the lonely times; better days are ahead.

If you are blessed, not lucky - blessed, you will find that God does have a sense of humor and gave you one too. Find it!! Put on rose colored glasses. Yes, there is darkness and evil in the world. But you must not stare at them, they will sweep you under the floorboards themselves into despair.

Look for the light that is there. Joy will come in the morning, just last through the night.

Weep when you must (put a time limit on it!) and laugh as soon as you can. I will dance through this world and I will laugh.