Still Polly

"Go ahead and swipe," she said. Huh? Oh, right, swipe the card. "It's asking you if you want cash back." Huh? Oh, sorry. "Go ahead and push the green button." Oh gosh. Sorry again. I think she was holding back a sigh. "Sorry. I think we're all a little... sleepy this time of year," I told her. "So many things to be distracted by. The mind wanders." Her reaction: Blink, blink, blink. Obviously I made no sense to her whatsoever. But, this was not the kind of conversation you typically have with the sales clerk at Big Lots on any random Tuesday in December. It's Advent. It's really hard to have Advent right before Christmas. Couldn't Advent be some other time when you're not on a black diamond slope careening toward December 25th? It's supposed to be a time of preparation, of waiting in expectation for Jesus' birth. But really for me it becomes a time of preparation of "stuff" -- pr...

"He'll tell you everything he's going to do, step-by-step, so there won't be any surprises," the nurse was telling me. She was taking my blood pressure with one of those thingys that go on your wrist and you hold up to your chest. She was holding my arm the whole time. I asked if she could tell I was nervous. "Yes, your hands are shaking." I told her it could also be the large Diet Doctor Pepper I had just chugged on my way in. See in Polly-philosophy a delicious Diet Doctor Pepper makes everything better. This was my first tissue expander "fill" at the plastic surgeon's office. The reality was, I was scared to death. See, as much reading as I had done on tissue expanders and how they work, I never got to the part about how it was going to feel, for me. I understood the mechanics of it, but not the experience. She was right, Dr. S did say everything out loud before he did it. I was lying on the table with the doctor on my right -- t...

"Okay Google," I said to my phone. "Can you wear a bra when you have a tissue expander?" Yes, I seriously asked my phone that question. Before it could answer me Bob walked into the room so I pushed the off button -- hard. I'm in that place again. The place "in between" that makes me do stupid things like search "tissue expander" online. Shudder. (Those of you with weaker stomachs, don't try it. There's stuff out there that I can't unsee.) When I was first diagnosed with cancer but knew nothing about anything I found myself online searching. Waiting was too hard, and I was impatient. And after all, there's this thing called "the internet" the source of all wisdom. So I would search and end up going down rabbit holes on medical sites reading medical journal articles that may as well have been written in a foreign language. Nonetheless, I'd pick up some words here and there, understanding  just  enough to fre...

"Yay! I'll get to have a drain again!" The nurse chuckled. Yes, I was being slightly sarcastic, but only slightly, because this time we're talking about my reconstruction surgery. So it's -- exciting? Strange, but yeah. I had two drain tubes when I had my mastectomy. So I know what that feels like, what that looks like, how to "somewhat" hide them, how to empty them, and what really matters -- volume, simply volume. I still laugh thinking about how I learned that bit the hard way. Remember?  This time I'll only have one. (By the way, I fight Howard-Hughes-ish urges to ask to keep these types of things as morbid cancer-survivor souvenirs. More reasons to pray for me.) "Which saint is that?" Dr. S asked me. He had just walked into the room with his nurse and a third year med student and he noticed I was holding a saint card. I told him it was St. Anthony, my patron. It happened to be the feast day of St. John Vianney, and we talked ab...

It's gonna be a great day. This is becoming my catchphrase, at work and at home. This gets more laughs than the best joke I ever told. I think people don't believe I mean it. But it's not sarcasm, it's true. It's gonna be a great day. One Saturday in early July I was getting a ton done around the house. As Bob likes to say, I was "TCB-ing" -- taking care of business. Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning hard floors, scouring bathrooms. I took the vacuum apart and cleaned it. I even cleaned out the refrigerator, which included liberal use of the garbage disposal. I was on probably my third load of laundry when I heard the scream, "STOP RUNNING WATER! SHUT IT OFF NOW!" My heart jumped out of my chest. I screamed back, "I'M NOT RUNNING WATER!" But then remembered the washing machine was running. I sprinted to the thing and hit the emergency stop button. By the time I got downstairs, Bob was standing under a waterfall. This was not go...

An old friend of mine coined the phrase, "Indecision is the key to flexibility." When I thought I had lots of hair. February. I am circling a decision. I get right up to it, stare it down, then shake my head and move on. It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult. But for some reason it is. Am I ready for my first post-cancer haircut? It's a small decision. There were bigger ones. I don't know how many times during treatment caregivers and others would ask, "So are you working through all this?" I always said yes then asked, "Do I have a choice?" I "decided" to keep working during cancer treatment because since they got all the cancer in surgery everything about treatment was preventative, not curative. That and the bills still need paid, cancer or no. Of course I did take the required 6 weeks off after the mastectomy. So I was on short term disability. They said doctor won't allow a mastectomy pati...

I have been sort of obsessively looking back at the calendar and recording dates. It was Saturday, July 9th last year. It was a hot day and I had been out working on some landscaping. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for using the 4-wheeler's wench to pull some dead bushes up. We had inherited lots of very dead knockout roses (a.k.a "stupid knockout roses"). I dug around the roots to loosen them, then let out the wench, put the cable around the trunk and hooked it, then reeled the cable back in, pulling out the bush. Worked like a charm. Anyway, when I decided to be finished for the day, I was gross and sweaty so I went in to take a shower. My bra was pinching me, which is no big surprise because as we know all bras are useless and uncomfortable, especially when you've actually been moving around and not posing for a VS ad. And I had been doing a lot of moving. I fidgeted with the bra while the water was warming up and realized. It wasn't the bra that wa...

"I like your shoes." I was hoping the cute nurse WAS looking at my shoes and not my toenails. Both big toes are still gross, still cut back to about 1/3 or less, and showing no signs of growth, despite daily medicine. I told her what I've told a bunch of people recently who have said they like these particular sandals, that they are probably 12-15 years old, and from Walmart. And that it's amazing they're still intact. And how they do go with everything. Shoes. This was my visit with a plastic surgeon. Once I was alone in the exam room I wondered if there is a class for medical professionals in which they recommend a compliment to put the patient at ease. I was thinking back to how many times this had happened to me over the course of the better part of a year -- so many nurses, so many compliments on my outfits, my eye color, my hat, my wig, my whatever. And you know what? It did put me at ease most of the time, at least for a moment. It's a nice ...

"It's in there," Dr. H told me. "Yeah, I can see it." "I can't see it," I said. "I usually do this in a bright room in front of a mirror." Taking my contact out of my right eye, in a very dim room, was harder than it should have been. But, I had felt something on my finger, and Dr. H said it was in the case, so here we go to the next room for the next tests. Now that I'm post-treatment I'm in the process of getting my regular annual exams set back up, and for whatever reason I decided to start with my eye exam. Maybe it was on my mind because Bob, the guy with "better than perfect vision" our whole lives together, just started wearing glasses. (Don't call them bifocals around him, though, egad, they are progressive lenses ! Get it right!)  I carried the leaky case with me into two more rooms. The first had a piece of equipment to test your focus (I guess) and one that takes huge pictures of both eyeballs. Lat...

"Your hair is stunning ," she said. The woman worked in the building She was wearing a skirt suit, heels, and a badge. "I used to have a pixie," she went on. She had very curly hair, about shoulder length. She told me she has a hair appointment on May 6th and said she might just go back to it after seeing mine. I think I said, "this is just what came back after chemo." "Good for you, you look amazing !" And she disappeared down a hallway. I sat there, stunned. I had been stunned before she walked up. More to the point, I was in shock. I had just had my infusion port removed. I opted to have the port removed in the doctor's office instead of the O.R. This way I could drive myself and not bother anyone. When I made the appointment the woman on the phone said it was my choice and said it really depended on "how squeamish you are." I was feeling pretty confident and relaxed when I went in. I was shown to a room with a big chai...

"Will you even feel like celebrating?" Bob text me. Today was my last of 28 daily radiation treatments. We had planned a celebration dinner tonight, and a day off tomorrow with no plans other than to do something fun to celebrate the end of cancer treatment. I waited a long time before responding to his text. No, I don't feel like celebrating. For a couple of reasons. After almost 10 months since discovering the lump that was cancer, I don't have a plan. I now just have appointments. It's a little scary to think about. A fellow radiation patient and I were discussing this last week. After having people surrounding you with care -- weekly, even daily care -- suddenly you're done. It's something I've joked about, "what will I do now?" But it's a real feeling, almost like being abandoned. And then there's the matter of "the burn." This past weekend things changed for me. I had been sporting the bright red, rashy burn ...

"I didn't marry you for your hair," Bob said. "I married you for all this."  He pointed to the mantle. "You married me for my decorating ?" Well, for sure if he was marrying someone for their hair, it wouldn't have been me. And if he was going to marry someone for their decorating, he could have done worse. But of course he meant all this . This life we've created together. This little exchange happened on Christmas morning during a crying jag. I had showered and changed into some new clothes that were gifts from Bob. I was struggling to choose a hat to wear with the outfit. I found one that matched perfectly, which he pointed out. But instead of taking the compliment, I fell apart. "I feel so ugly," I told him. See, there was still the matter of BEING BALD. During the baldest time, when my head was super smooth and shiny, I was self-conscious about going without a hat even in front of Bob. My appearance had changed so much...

"We're toe twins," Bob said. Bob's got a big toenail that is... unusual. It's very thick and last I checked pretty gross. The toenail on my right big toe is now super thick and weirdly white, and I was telling him about it. "Yeah, I guess that makes us toe twins." This was before I looked closer and discovered that it's pulling away, and is, pardon me for being graphic, leaking pus. (In other news, the big toenail on my left foot now has a stunning tortoise-shell color.) Dr. M told me to soak my feet in Epsom salt water. "And if it falls off?" I asked him. "Just wrap it up," he told me. And here's a bit of trivia for you: it can take a year and a half for a big toenail to grow back. So no pedicures for me. Chemo problems. Still happening. I've been saying how radiation treatment is much more physical than chemo was. I've got a precise outline of the treatment area, filled in with what looks like a nasty sun...

BEAM ON I had to pick something over my left shoulder to look at. This is to keep my throat out of the line of fire during radiation. There's a sign mounted high up on the wall to the left in the radiation treatment room, white with big black block letters. BEAM ON lights up when the stuff is happening. BEAM ON. It makes me want to laugh. It's so "straight at it," right? The BEAM is ON when it lights up. the BEAM is off when it's off. Sometimes BEAM ON stays on for several seconds (about the length of a Hail Mary). Sometimes it's on for just a second. Now that I love BEAM ON I almost get irritated when this big, huge, rotating piece of equipment blocks my view of it. Most of the time, it's just me and BEAM ON, alone in the room. I think BEAM ON is my Wilson . Monday I didn't think BEAM ON was cute at all. I know, I said I was hoping to find things about this part of my treatment that would bring me closer to God, but Monday that feeling was jus...

"It just means you've got blue eyes and you've been in the sun." Dr. B told me. I was back in the dermatologist's office to have the little spot on my arm treated with liquid nitrogen. She had done a biopsy a few weeks ago and it was diagnosed as actinic keratosis, a precancerous lesion, which can develop into squamous cell cancer -- the type of cancer I had in my breast. So taking no chances sounded like a good idea to me. A little freeze and in 3 minutes I was out the door. Quite a contrast with the other appointment I had last week. Mapping for radiation. And just like that the celebration of being "finished with chemo" came to a very abrupt halt. Like everything since my diagnosis, nothing went the way I imagined. "You'll lie on a table," they said. Lying down? That sounds comfortable, I thought. "We'll make a mold of your body for precise positioning," they told me. I imagined being cradled in memory foam. ...

"Mommy..." I was in the aisle looking at towels when a woman and her young daughter turned in. The little girl said, "Mommy," then something about me. Did she say BALD? It kind of sounded like bald. But she may have said "her hair is white," which I know, sounds nothing like "bald." "Her hair is bald?" Maybe. But that doesn't make any sense, even for a kid. This was it. I had been waiting for it to happen, and when it finally did, I was too "got" by the incident to really hear and remember exactly what the kid said.  I looked down at her and we made eye contact. She was so cute. She became embarrassed when she realized I heard her, and she turned her back toward me. The next part I did hear. "Sorry about that," she said. It was surprising how adult that phrase sounded coming from a 5-year-old. "It's okay," I told her, and pretended to keep looking at bath towels, while thinking: ...

"Today you graduate." Dr. N patted me on the head. My teeny tiny (white) Mohawk is coming in nicely, and it makes me giggle to think about him feeling comfortable enough with me that he touches. As usual he asked how I was feeling and if I was experiencing any neuropathy. I told him no, just the annoying side effects he already knew about. He asked if I had met with Dr. M about radiation, and I let him know I'm all scheduled for prep and ready to go. And that was it. I will see Dr. N every 6 months for the next 5 years. A couple of hours later I was all finished with chemo. Just like that. Looking back on the last 20 weeks, there were lots of funny things that happened. There were so many times Bob and I laughed. I wish I could remember them all. Here are some things I do remember. Side effects are funny things.  Not funny "haha" of course. They can be really serious and painful for lots of people. I had my share of awful ones early on. Many days I ...