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.


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

It's all about the FEAR.....

Here is another post from a previvor's blog.....this says it all, for now....
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From this blog:  http://goodbyetoboobs.blogspot.com/

3) The worst part of surgery is the fear and anxiety I felt leading up to it.

It's hard for me now, a month removed, to quantify exactly how scared I was before my surgery. But it goes without saying I have never been more anxious or more fearful of anything in my life. And now: nothing. No fear. No anxiety. When I said before mastectomies only remove breasts, I was only half truthful: they also remove the anxiety. Nothing about recovery -- not the soreness, not the painkiller-induced fog, not the emotional vulnerability -- is as difficult as living life under the crushing weight of fear and anxiety. I know it sounds simplistic, and this is a statement that can only be said with the benefit of hindsight, but here it is: surgery isn't so bad. The shit I put myself through before -- now that was torture.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an honest entry...our thoughts are with you!

Unknown said...

Thanks for reposting from my blog! I hope it is helpful. Surgery was the best -- and hardest -- decision I ever made. Life on the other side of all of this anxiety and stress is so much more peaceful!

Thanks for reading,
Steph
goodbyetoboobs.blogspot.com

Joanie said...

Thank you for your kind comments. This really is the most difficult decision I have ever made and I have had to make at least two other very very tough (life changing) decisions in the last few years. But none of them required removal of body parts. I truly appreciate your support.

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