Nope. It won’t. Never has, never will. Unless some of those science fiction things happen or I become a superhero who can stop time. It could happen?
I’m about a week out from surgery. Writing this on Tuesday, may not get it published until Wednesday. This week is lots of work and little things and a party. Gotta have a party. Dinner with our neighbors one night, party on Saturday, hopefully get my toes done after asking my surgeon if pretty toes were okay for surgery. Approved! Off I go. Get my hair chopped some more. Chiropractor appointment.
All pretty normal stuff. It’s just weird to think this is the last time I’ll be doing any of these things with my tatas and reproductive organs. We’ve had a lot of fun times, after all.
I don’t think it’s truly possible to fully wrap your head around this kind of thing. I look fine. I feel fine. I am fine. But… next week I’m going to remove body parts. It’s not because I was injured and they need to remove my X part so I will survive. It’s because of cancer. Because if we do this, it’s less likely I’ll get cancer.
Does it remove the risk entirely? Nope. But reduces it greatly.
So, here we are at the choice bit. I choose to accept this and move forward with my life. I can pretend that all my diet and exercise finally worked, just in a really weird way, so maybe I need a running coach and aim to do a 5K because I’ll be able to run without holding my tatas down.
I choose to be happy. I am lucky. I have so many people who love me. I have so many people praying for me and my recovery. So many people are thinking about me and hoping I do well. I’m not really sick. I honestly never have been through this whole thing. The most sick I got was before I started treatment and drank too much wine and who knows what else. Not my finest hour, but it was part of my grieving process, I think. I’ve been moving through the process and I think, at the moment, I’m at acceptance.
That doesn't mean that I won’t backtrack and have “Why me??” moments. It’s a process. Not a one and done.
It’s weird how everything in my life has kind of been leading up to now. I spend a crazy amount of time listening to people talk. I’ve had Carol Dweck mentioned quite a few times in talks and I do need to read some of this Stanford professor’s literature on mindset. But I’ve heard a lot about it in talks I’ve captioned. And I feel like somehow, somewhere along the way, I adopted that mindset for my life.
I don’t let little things get to me. I’ve gotten much better at that over the past year. Working on mindset is a process. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. That’s so cliche. It’s like an armor, though. Someone could say something to me that could be taken badly, but i don’t. Maybe I’m just oblivious. That’s entirely possible.
I don't let other people’s opinions or thoughts dictate how I am going to live my life. And I try to project kindness and happy out into the world as much as I can. Although, it’s okay to be sad. I imagine I’ll be sad a lot this coming week and the weeks that follow. I’ll be missing a piece of me, although I am thankful it’s only physical.
Homework for today for readers: Be kind to anyone you meet. If they are coughing, maybe avoid them though. And if something happens to you that can be fixed - flat tire, stepped in dog poo, etc - don’t get too upset about it. This thing is fleeting and has no bearing on the arc of your life. It’s a moment. A crappy moment (see what I did there… hahaha… I’m funny), but a moment that you won’t remember a year from now.
And maybe read something by Carol Dweck and give me a summary to review.