Telling

Rereading the last post, I'm aware that I am feeling quite a bit better than when I wrote that five days ago (probably if I weren't, I would have posted more here!). There's no question that work is a wonderful antidote to these feelings: I'm busy as a bee, and it feels great to be up and about, surrounded by people, doing what I feel I'm good at, and making decent money by doing it.

An odd question has come up: whom do I tell about the cancer and to whom do I pretend that nothing has happened? Now that the first level of family, friends, and key superiors at work know (the latter in case I had to take time off), it seems odd to answer the innocent (and usually meaningless) question, "How was your vacation?" I'm constantly tempted to say, "Fine, if you don't count surgery for breast cancer." You can't just say "Lousy", because then you're expected to provide an explanation. So either I tell them the truth, or I say, "Okay, thanks, and yours?". I've never been able to say things I don't mean with ease, so the bland social response feels uncomfortable to me. But at this point telling Tom, Dick and Harry what happened also feels uncomfortable...like I'm begging for sympathy. And what can they say? "Oh, I'm so sorry." "Yeah, thank you..." I'd reply. Not satisfying to me, and probably embarrassing to them. This is probably why I told almost no one at work when my mother died years ago. I'm weird that way: either oversharing or undersharing compared to other people.

Still in a distressing amount of physical discomfort, hard to describe. There are occasional flashes of pain in the breast, but that's not the problem. It's more like a constant, tight, heavy, stinging feeling that I can't forget about and that's not relieved with OTC medication or ice or heat. Maybe it will go away, but it hasn't changed that much in a couple of weeks.

This Thurs. I have an important appointment to see my old oncologist, Dr. L. (randomly, she may be the only black female oncologist on the staff). I have lots of questions for her: WTF? is pretty much the first one. Why didn't the MRI pick up the DCIS and the extent of it? is the second. Does this mean that even MRIs don't see all that's in there, that there could be a lot more that the surgery didn't get? Then I definitely want to know what she thinks about the surgeon's decision not to operate further in spite of the "dirty" margin. And the question of radiation, and the possibility of further hormone treatment...and so on. I should take a tape recorder with me. Maybe a human one.