When I was diagnosed over 2 years ago, my first thought was, "Crap. This is going to suck." Then my second thought was, "This is going to suck worse for my family." It's one thing to fight the battle, but it's another thing to be forced to sit helplessly by and watch your loved one struggle.

I got a call from my sister yesterday--she has a coworker who is in that "helplessly watching" role as her sister goes through a mastectomy, chemo and radiation. I had flashbacks as my sister was describing her situation. I am a complete stranger and I feel helpless for this woman too--but then I realized maybe I am not so helpless to help.

I can share my perspective of what it's like from the inside. I can give some ideas to help a fighter be more comfortable or at least feel supported during the battle. So here goes--looking for what you can do from the outside? Read on:

1. Mastectomies aren't known for making a woman feel pretty, regardless of her age. And worse yet are the bland, uncomfortable 'camisols' that are worn post proceedure. You have 4 drains sticking out your sides, and no place to put them that doesn't scream "I am sick". I found instead of succumbing to that, I picked up a Lululemon workout jacket that had pockets on the inside. Since it zipped up the front and looked cute, it was more comfortable both physically and psychologically.
2. Take your loved one make up shopping BEFORE chemo starts. Help her learn how to draw on eyebrows and eyelashes before the 'sick face' is staring her back in the mirror.
3. Buy her a year long subscription to her favorite magazine or two. She's going to have a lot of down time, and it's fun to stay up with what's going on in the world and learn new things.
4. Buy her a Kindle and some books on it--they are pretty cheap and she doesn't have to go out and buy any books--she can download them directly.
5. Chemo dries the heck out of your skin on your feet. I found a product by RINSE called the Peppofoot Stick--kept my feet moisturized and the tingly felt good on sore feet. http://www.rinsesoap.com/
6. Subscription to Netflix to stream movies.
7. Do you have a Dream Dinners in your area? Or do you like to cook? Make some dinners for her and put them in her freezer so she doesn't have to worry about what to eat or feed the family.
8. Get her a cleaning lady once or twice. Dirt builds up whether you can do anything about it or not.
9. On a good day, take her out, bald head and all. Help her feel normal--treatment made me feel like I had stepped outside of the flow of the world. I am grateful for the friends and family who held my hand and helped me back in.

What else? I would love to be able to give her more ideas...

Many of the techniques to fight cancer and battle its long running after effects are the same catalysts comic books leverage to create or explain the protagonist/antagonist. Let me illustrate:

1. Radiation and a spider gave us Spiderman.

2. A horrible twist of fate gave Doc Ock super-human arms with a mind of their own.

3. Wolverine had adamantium infused with his bones to make his skeleton indistructible.

I sat through the radiation, and maybe there were no spiders in the room, but I cannot climb walls or sling webs.

I had the 'extra arms', and they did nothing that I truly wanted them to do.

However, maybe this time I am on to something with Wolverine.

As part of my follow up, I had a bone density scan to make sure that treatment and medically-induced menopause weren't robbing my body of bone-mass. Unfortunately, I didn't know that was a battle I was already losing.

Medical science to the rescue! On Friday it was back to the chemo-floor, and I was given an 'infusion' of a drug called Reclast. Reclast is a bisphosphonate that is administered in a 30 minute IV. It fuses to your bones to stop bone density loss, and when calcium and Vitamin D suppliments are taken regularly, can sometimes rebuild bone density.

Side effects can be a bit nasty, but for once I had none of the usual outlier bad luck. I felt a little creaky and stiff on the weekend, but I am back to usual speed today.

Sometimes I wonder if Science Fiction is inspired by life, or if life is inspired by Science Fiction. Either way, Wolverine and I have something in common.

No more cancer, no more reconstructions. Cancer comes into your life like a tornado, ripping apart everything you thought was safe. It sucks you in and challenges everything you thought you knew.

And through the storm you get tested. After all the maelstrom, I know I love my husband deeply. My child gave me an incredible reason to fight. My mother, sister and brother showed me what true strength is. My friends taught me how to be a friend, and complete strangers taught me about community.

And then, as suddenly as it began, it's over. The dust settles, and I have found myself in a different place than where I started. It is disorienting, the quiet way it all left, but I am here. And I am happy.

Driving in, we passed the new Children's Hospital. They were breaking ground two years ago when I started this whole process. And now they are almost complete. Maybe it's no wonder that I am a little less than enthusiastic about another procedure today--hopefully my surgeon is more excited than I am!

....Still going!

Despite the tattoo-ing setbacks, we are continuing with the reconstruction. In roughly 2 weeks, I have the go ahead to do the 'structural modification'.

Then, once everything calms down, we will try the tattoo again >gulp!<

This has been over a 2 year process, and, if there is one thing I should have learned by now, things are never by the book for me.

Mom--don't worry. Your baby girl will not be getting any more tattoos. Ever.

About a month ago I went in for the tattooing. The process itself was surreal--a strange sort of arts and crafts hour. You pick the placement, then the size (?!?) then the color. And that was the oddest part for me. There were maybe 20 different little paint tubes with labels like "Sandstone", "Desert Sunrise", "Victorian Rose", etc. Seriously? I don't want the concept of rocks or rose thorns in my bra! Can we get the person responsible for naming nail polish colors at OPI to have a go at this? Anyone who can name a color "Lincoln Park After Dark" or "To Eros is Human" has to have a better shot at coming up with something fierce.

I digress. After mixing 5 different colors together, the tattooing began. Keep in mind, I have very limited feeling in my chest because my nerves are still in the process of growing in. And the doctor gave me plenty of local novacain. And guess what, it STILL HURT! People who get recreational tattoos--you have my respect.

Standard follow up is 3 days of bacitracin, then 4 days of lanolin cream. 7 days of plenty of bandages. But this is where I should have known better. Nothing goes "standard" as my husband loves to remind me. I developed an angry allergic reaction to the bacitracin, and the resulting hives carried the ink out of the tattoo area and my body metabolized 90% of it. The remaining 10% looks like my daughter took a light pink crayon and tried to make her first circles. More of a shade or a promise of what should be there versus a facsimilie of the real thing.

Rats. Well, follow up is in 1 week and we will see what the options are.

...Are starting to put me back together...AGAIN!

I've been quiet for a while b/c some times you want to move on with life, not be stuck in the limbo of cancer. Almost half a year has past since the last part of my reconstruction, and it's time to wrap it up.

On Monday, I am beginning the final phase--I humorously refer to it as the 'hood ornament' phase. My doctor appreciates the humor in my label, but it truly belies the technical genius required at this point.

Let me spell it out (I will try to keep it delicate--my mom reads my blog). I call it the hood ornament phase because, well, while a hood ornament has no function or purpose, a car looks ridiculous without one. The same is true in my case. Because of the stage and invasiveness of my disease, I had to go through a "non-nipple sparing mastectomy." The end result is I look like a Barbie doll--all form but she doesn't quite look naked when she has her shirt off. Or a car with no hood ornament.

So what's the big deal? Going through treatment, there was no big deal.  But later, when the dust settles and the emotion sets in, there is something vaguely unsettling about the conspicuous lack of detail. Clothes don't fit quite right either--you can kind of dent in a little if you aren't careful.

The first step is to tattoo the color back on. Yep. Tattoos. How do you get *that* job? Around 2 months later, I will have to undergo another proceedure where they reconstruct the aerola complex. It's a delicate procedure of grafting and suturing that ends up completing the form--and voila! I will be done.

Monday morning I am taking the first steps of the end of my journey!

It took me a long time to figure out what scared me about battling cancer. "Dying" might be the obvious conclusion, but I never really thought I wasn't going to make it. Alright, maybe once or twice I breathed my fear about that to those closest to me, but it echoed around the periphery of my thoughts and did not occupy the center.

And it wasn't pain. Pain is just something that is. Pain is your body's way of telling you something is wrong. It gives clues into the mechanics that need attention.

My real fear came from the feeling that everything was breaking down, and it would never get better. Perched at the beginning of an inexorable decline, I only saw the slide. The real fear came when I began to lose hope that I could rebuild. That I could nurture my heart and body to repair itself. I am a fairly competent person, but I lacked the knowledge of how to put the pieces back together.

I began by looking at nutrition and exercise and realized some limitied improvement. But my energy was still low, my sleeping poor and my pain high. My skin had small wounds that wouldn't heal and I was getting signs that my immune system was attacking my body. I wasn't fixing the mechanics; I couldn't undo the damage done by chemo.

Then I met Dr. Jay. A combination of eastern and western medicine and understanding, Dr. Jay helped me interpret my symptoms and turn the corner on healing. Through accupuncture, adjustments and vitamins alone, I find that I have something I have been missing for a while.

Hope. Hope that things will get better. That they are getting better.

A new article was posted in the New York Times yesterday, citing that the conventional wisdom of the past 100 years for treating cancer in the lymph nodes is changing.

To sum it up: in the past, if you had tumors in your lymph nodes, doctors would advocate surgical removal. Possible side effects were lymphadema and infection, not to mention more scarring.

New studies are revealing that surgical removal is not necessarily any more effective than radiation and chemotherapy for treating lymph node tumors.

This was a decision I had had to face. During a radical mastectomy, they do a quick biopsy of the lymph nodes to see if the cancer has spred. If they find anything, they remove while doing the mastectomy. Since they didn't find anything, I had nothing removed.

The issue came later, when they did a more thorough biopsy they found that I did actually have tumors in my lymph nodes. So we were faced with the decision of more surgery and some radiation, or no surgery and more extensive radiation.

In consultation with the radiation oncologist and the surgeon, they both indicated that radiation can potentially be as good if not better than traditional surgery at defeating the tumors. So I went that route.

Nothing ever tells you that you did the 'right' thing, because life and the human body do not observe 'right' and 'wrong' answers. There are varying shades of grey. But it every so often it is reassuring to think that someone may agree with you.

After a bout of introspection today, I realize I have been waxing a bit serious lately. For a short break in the existential navel gazing:

http://thedailywh.at/post/2051389246/afternoon-snack-animals-are-weird-sings

Thank me later--after you tell me what the h*** most of these animals are!