Cancer is hard

Today I'm thankful for...

Getting to visit friends during Lulu's chemotherapy session

Lourdes coming home

Save passage to SF and hopefully a safe trip back

No fog

As the morning sun shone through the west facing window of the hotel room Lulu stunned me with, "All this is really hard". My first thought was "Hard" was she talking about getting out of bed this morning? But I knew from her tone that she talking about going through the cancer treatment. How do you respond to your wife that starts the day with those words? Like I often do in difficult situations, I replied humorously wit, "Really honey, you don't like leaving your almost 3 month old premature baby in the intensive care unit five hours away, spend two days getting needles stuck into seemingly every open space on your body, while they pump toxic cancer drugs into your body. Knowing that you're headed for surgery to remove both of your breasts, and possibly more surgery to put them back, and then expose your body to radioactive ions every week for 6 more months? Then having to go through artificial menopause, and not because your body says that it's time, but because the doctors say that you have too. All the while, you're knowing that all this may not save your life?

Even though I said it all jokingly, we both knew how true every word was! We started our day with a very serious tone that I wasn't sure that I had ever experienced before?

Yesterday we met the breast surgeon. This was a highly charged time for us. We had an idea of around when the doctor would prescribe Lulu's surgery, but much less of an idea on what would be the extent of the procedure? We had been discussing what Lulu felt about how aggressive that she wanted to be with the surgery, and whether or not she felt it was best to have a bi-lateral mastectomy? She never wavers from taking the "I want to do what is going to give me the bast chance of living to see my kids grow up". She made this the focal point of the conversation with the surgeon. So, in quick order (not much different from selecting from a limited menu at a fine restaurant, very surreal that she has to make these choices in short order), the surgery date and the type of surgery were decided. Lulu was scheduled to have a bi-lateral mastectomy with nodal removal on the right axilla. Then a reconstructive breast surgery at a later date with a plastic surgeon. I have been supportive with no breast reconstruction surgery, but when Lulu heard that there was a possibility of reconstruction, she was excited about having breasts again. (I'm waiting for the subject of size is brought up, I will be neutral on this one).