May love and laughter light your days, and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours, wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world with joy that long endures.
May all life's passing seasons bring the best to you and yours!
~ Robert Frost

Welcome!

Welcome to my blog. This is my story of how I faced my risk of breast cancer, the decisions I made, the support I received and my week by week recovery from surgery. I chose to have a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with immediate DIEP reconstruction at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston (March 2010). For more information on my 'Medical Team' please see tab above. I also have a wonderful circle of friends who have supported me throughout. They have provided us with lots of delicious meals and desserts. Many of those recipes are included above under "Feed the Flap" recipes. "Feed the Flap" is a term I coined when trying to increase my abdominal (fat) flap to ensure that I was a good candidate for the DIEP procedure. This was not something recommended by any medical professional, it was just something that made sense to me. I think it worked!! Feel free to join me on this journey and feel free to post comments.

Select the tabs on the left side marked Week 1, Week 2, Week 3..... to go immediately to the surgical/recovery part of this blog.


Wednesday, July 29, 2009

A Year From Now

A year from now I want to be on the other side of my breast cancer. I want to be sitting at the lake with nothing more on my mind than the weather and a good book. I want my children not to worry about me. I want my husband to go out and play golf without worries. I want to be normal. I don't want to be glued to the internet for the latest information on breast cancer, reconstruction, etc. I don't want any residual pain from my bilateral mastectomy and DIEP reconstruction. I want to be free of it and be moving forward.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love this post. I love the future in it. And I love you for looking to it.

Joanie said...

Well, thank you!!! I can now say that all of that is true. I am free of breast cancer, free of worries of breast cancer, free of stressing over surgery for breast cancer. My life is back to normal! My kids' lives are back to normal and my husband's life is back to normal. After a tough year, I will look forward to sitting by the lake with nothing much on my mind!

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