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, December 8, 2009

March 15, 2010

March 15, 2010! It's overwhelming. The emotions connected to hearing this date are across the board. Relief. Fear. More Relief. More Fear. And believe it or not - pride. I am so damn proud of myself for making a decision. It would have been so much easier to wait and wait and worry and wait.

I will keep this to myself all day. I need to mull it over. I need to see what my 'gut' reaction is. I need to cry a little bit. I need to accept who I am and why I am making this decison.

One thing that does come to mind is that there is absolutely no advocacy from any professional connected to this decision. It's as if each person does his or her own thing. There is no breast center advocate who could help with discussing arrangements for family while I am in the hospital, or helping me to decide if I should come home after the procedure only to drive back to Boston a few days later or someone to just listen as I wrap my mind around my decision. I am not surprised, as this has been my experience from Day One.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts with Thumbnails