And in this corner.....

Tomorrow afternoon I have a surgical procedure scheduled.  This is procedure is strictly voluntary.

My sister had talked to me about it with concern that I might be anxious and unable to sleep because of it.  Yes, admittedly, that has been my MO in the past during the "procedures period."  I'm calling it that now.  I just started doing so.

I don't feel anxious about tomorrow's main event, however.  I am rather excited.

Classify this entry under "more than you probably want to know" and sort of under "more than I want you to know"!!

When you have a mastectomy, you have a certain idea in your head of what you will look like.  I know this for a fact.  You, dear readers, will have to take my word for it.

What you end up with, is NOT what you had in your mind.  Not at all like what you had in your mind.

When I came home from the hospital last February I felt like and saw a Technicolor-3-dimensional-topographic-map-of-a-railroad-crash-nightmare-scene-from-a-horror-movie. 

Tape came off, drains were removed, staples removed, swelling reduced.  Now here I sit almost 17 months later. 

I still FEEL much as I did about the scene of the crime.  (See technicolor 3D etc.)  It really does not look the same as it did post surgery, however.  I look at myself and I will tell you, it is rather like I suspect a landscape would look like many months after a terrible train crash.  Something happened here.  Something not good.

It is the wreckage of this body.

I do my best to cover myself so that my husband doesn't see me.  It is something embarrassing; unattractive where there was once beauty. 

So tomorrow I go to my plastic surgeon and whatever happens will be an improvement.

I am not getting "the girls" put back in place.  I just want to be smoothed out.  THAT, I can live with.  I can live with it and feel so much better about my physical aspect!!

My husband told me yesterday that someone at church had told me how beautiful I looked and healthy and that he was a lucky man.  He told them, yes he was a lucky man.

Mind you, my dear sweet husband tells me I am beautiful.  He gives me the words and he walks the walk, as it were.  And he loves me, oh I know he loves me. 

And yet when he tells me I am beautiful there is this little part of me who says inside "Are you insane???  Have you gone blind??  Have you seen this body??  WHAT are you finding physically attractive???  Fibber."
I don't say that aloud, and I truly love and respect my husband.  But, oh that little voice.... 

Because I have seen the wreckage.  It is all part of this gordian knot that afflicts me and I will NOT let cancer claim a victory in my private life, thank you very much! 

Thus - the procedure I will have tomorrow; thus the excitement I am feeling about it.

And thus - My reclaiming that which is mine - MY body, MY mind, MY battered and bruised psyche.

I am woman, I AM a warrior princess cancer kicking survivor woman.  I do own beauty.  And tomorrow I start to claim it back as my own.

Round 1 went to cancer with a sucker punch.  We're up to round 15 now - and I have battled and won every round.  Tomorrow will be the knockout punch.