Hey!

I keep disappearing from this space.

Just as I started to integrate the new information I wrote about last time, my scans showed (in the words of my breast surgeon), “This breast wants to make cancer.”

January 28th, I had a mastectomy and DIEP flap reconstruction.

My Frankenboob looks amazing. Almost like I went to a Build-a-Bear workshop.

Except after my all-day Build-a-Boob workshop, I had a hemorrhage and lost a tremendous amount of blood. Getting a rapid blood transfusion was not fun - but I was feeling my good blood donor karma as they gave me bag after bag of O+. As they wheeled me into the OR they asked, do you have a health proxy form? Despite everything going on I asked, “Is it because you want to give them an update? Or because they may have to make a decision?” Awkward silence. “All of it,” she said.

When I filled out my health proxy I never imagined actually needing it.

My eternal optimist is in hiding.

She got it wrong. I almost died.

But I didn’t.

And now I’m mostly home recovering. I watched endless episodes of Long Lost Family. (British and American versions). My fetish was children put up by adoption by teenagers who ultimately ended up married and having families so when they are reunited they’re a full-blood intact family. Perhaps that speaks to my own yearning for full-blood siblings and birth parents who remained a couple. I guess watching that show allowed me to sit with and nurse that interior wound along with the physical.

I received TREMENDOUS support from friends - especially Anthony, David & Jackie who called/texted/came daily when I was the biggest mess. Jackie drove over a car full of “stuff” I’d need - like a one person mastectomy shower. Anthony took off work for two weeks and moved into our guest room and literally took care of me like a baby. I had decided to end the relationship just a few months before my recurrence and he still showed up in the most heroic way imaginable “milking my drains” multiple times a day for weeks. It was humbling really.

Just wanted you to know this happened - that it’s happening.

And as for me? I am sick of writing everything like it’s a fucking Editor’s Letter. It’s all so pat. This is what happened, this is the meaning behind it, and we all cheer in the end. I’m not cheering. I feel like I’ve been water boarded over the past few years. Every time I feel like I’m coming up for air, a big hand comes down and shoves my head under again. Divorce, Cancer, Your-father-was-not-your-father, Cancer. I don’t feel bad or scared per say. I’m just sitting in this new space now that I can’t define - Samuel Beckett called it The Unnamable. I am left without language worth sharing.

I am just here. I will write again if I have something worth sharing or an update I think you would want to know, like today’s letter to a friend, which is what you are. Thanks for that. Sending my love to you.

xo atoosa

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