The best bridge between despair and hope...

...is a good night's sleep, they say.

They also say, "don't burn bridges."

Two nights ago, I couldn't sleep. I can't really point to the reason, but I just couldn't sleep. "They say" insomnia is a common complication of cancer treatment. "They say" it can last for years. I made it through the night and the next day, though. I used to sleep 4 or 5 hours a night for weeks on end - and that's a maximum. It wasn't as easy as it used to be, but I made it through.

Then last night, sometime around one am, when I could barely hold my eyes open, I got the hiccups. For the last few weeks, I've been getting these bouts of hiccups that seem to have no cause (although that's fairly common), but new for me, they also seem to have no cure.

Fast forward to 3:45 am - less than 12 hours ago. I'm laying on my back on the couch, still hiccuping, with tears streaming down my face and filling my ears. For many years - the last couple of decades or so, anyway - I've lived with night terrors born of my past. As a result, for most of my adult life, I never really enjoyed a "good" night's sleep, not on a regular basis. Except for a four or five month period before my cancer diagnosis. My life and my state of mental health aligned in such a way that I began sleeping through the night. Every night. For nights on end. Then I had to get a breast cut off, and that screwed everything up.

Now, two years later, my surgery wounds are healed, but chemical menopause, acid washes (I refuse to call them hot flashes any more), and an apparently malfunctioning diaphragm rob me again and again and again. "They say" the best bridge between despair and hope is a good night's sleep.

I wish my bridge was more than a precarious, Indiana Jones-esque, frayed rope mockery of a contraption.

*Sigh*

Today, I shared the following with a new person in my life. It was so much easier with visible physical wounds. Now, with no visual signs of illness or injury, I am left to wonder if it's my body or my spirit that needs more time.

"...Yea, this cancer thing pretty much sucks. I was triple positive - stage 1 - grade - 1, 3 months of weekly chemo, then 9 months of Herceptin (artificially induced flu on a menstrual like schedule :-) - and that ended in November of last year. I am not to the "alive" point, yet, but I have had some crazy amazing opportunities to teach - to speak with people - to walk with people - because I am such a TMI person - well, it's been phenomenal. I had been dating my fiance for 6 months when the diagnosis came... but I'm not going to make myself cry, so I'll stop there :-). If you are on Facebook and add me, that's where I chronicled my journey - which, honestly, I've really let up on, but continually go back and try to pick up again. The time I had healing, being sick, having surgeries - it gave me time to write. I had to write and share to get through it, but now... this time in my life is *so* much more stressful than any of that ever felt like... I don't have the energy. The stability, really, to look that closely at myself at the moment. I have to keep life and family together, which it sounds like you know all too well. My then-boyfriend/now-fiance quit work and school to help me keep my job, life, family, and sanity together, and now, as a one income family with canceled extra classes and a variety of other cute financial surprises... it's pretty darn exhausting. But I'm coming back. I can feel it. It's just so darn slooooow.

...I've been... in the role of the most experienced through most of my cancer trip - there were a small few who had walked this path before, but even at 45, I am much younger (for now, I'm sure you are well aware of) than most diagnosed women, so very few in my life, in my circle knew anything of what might come for me. Some very amazing people came into my life that *had* walked this before, and without them... I would be lost. But this, now, post-treatment and pre-recovery, this is hard. This is so much harder than cancer and surgery and chemo and all of it. And there's no damn "final appointment" date. Really, a "this ends" goalpost would make such a difference. Thank you. It was kind of nice, really, to write this with no worry of freak out or embarrassment or pity."

And the saddest piece to me, in this moment, is I kind of feel just like I did when I started this. If that's the case, then what's the point?

Probably the point is to convince me to quit asking what's the point.

To Be Or Not To Be...

It kind of really is the question.  Should I be "this thing" or this OTHER thing?  Should I watch a show or play Diablo?  Should I start planning classes or start writing a book?  Should I get out of the house today or...?

Or stay inside like I have for months now?  I remember having energy...  I remember looking forward to *do things.*  Anything.  EVERYthing.  Everything takes so much *energy.*  There's a quote I included in my ScholarRevelationEntry that was supposed to inaugurate the "new" blog and  it goes...

"I am an old scholar, better-looking now than when I was young.  That's what sitting on your ass does to your face." ~Leonard Cohen

It's a nice sentiment.  I don't think he's right.  Not when I look in the mirror.  Sitting on my ass is probably just...  flattening my ass.  The Invisible Scholar is just sitting here on her ass, stewing in a lack of motivation and often overwhelming lethargy.  Just last night, all of the amazing, strong women of Spokane's 2015 "Listen to Your Mother" got together again to celebrate our experience this year.  I didn't go.  I spent all day holding myself and everything together and just...  had no happy left to share at the end of the day.  Little desire to celebrate something that now feels like a lifetime ago.  I've lived a lifetime in less than a month, it seems.

That statement is rather self-pitying.  And false.  And self-indulgent.  I could only be so lucky as to live *my* lifetime of experiences in less than a month.  I've had some pretty damn awesome experiences.

Some of them even occurred on this couch that is currently hosting my ever-more-flattening ass.  So the answer, then, is "to be."  To be what?  My Inner Breast Cancer Badass asks a most important question.  "Does it really matter," she whispers.

The Power of Cleavage

I wonder how many women have debated *not* going through with breast reconstruction after scheduling the thing.  How many women are torn over this decision?  I know there are women - many women - who choose no reconstruction, but my interpretation is that they were NOT torn; that they knew they didn't want a reconstruction at some point *before* scheduling it.  But I don't know that, for sure, I haven't looked.  Maybe I should.

(Some time later...)

So, I did.  I read for about an hour or so.  First thing I learned; it's called "going flat" when you don't reconstruct.  Another thing; most women who "go flat" are doing so after a full-on, double mastectomy.  The few single (one-sided) mastectomies I found that didn't opt for reconstruction, most wear prostheses: rather heavy gel fake breasts.  Some don't, but most are saying no to reconstruction because they are scared of more surgeries, their health won't allow it, or they worry about the complicated, long process that is reconstruction.  And the process is lengthy.  First, there is a major surgery (if you are going expanders and not trans-flap, which I am) during which we will augment the left and place a spacer under the right.  The spacer gets inflated every week for 6 weeks or so.  Once the reconstruction side is the "right size," you wait 3 months - THEN you get the mastectomy side rebuilt.  Then there comes the "do I want a nipple constructed"-type decisions, along with a myriad of other, relatively minor procedures to tweak and perfect.  All in all, at least in the path I've chosen, you are looking at a year to a year and a half of surgeries and recoveries; most small with a couple of bigger ones thrown in for good measure.

Oh yeah, and implants aren't permanent.  They have to be replaced, eventually, for almost everyone.  The "average lifespan" of implants - 10-15 years.

Do I want more breast surgery at 60?

Do I want more surgery now?

These are the times that try a woman's soul, lemme tell ya.

I could be all ragey and say things like, "breasts aren't beauty" and "women shouldn't be defined by their bodies" and "this is all trivial when compared to cancer and chemo" and...  blah, blah, blah and not get the reconstruction.

But the truth is, I've always wanted a breast augmentation.  For as long as I can remember, I've never particularly liked my chest.  And now that I'm one week and two days away from the first "perk" of breast cancer (I can't count how many times I've heard some variation of "well, at least you are getting something out of this), there's this nervous nelly inside of me saying the same thing over and over and over again...  "there's no turning back...  there's no turning back...  there's no turning back..."

And some of the scenery I expect on the next leg of this journey?

A year of procedures - and, most likely, noticeable discomfort.
The myriad of potential complications.
The celebratory well-wishes of friends and family.

There is more I could list, but there are two pieces that threaten to pick up my phone and cancel the surgery.

1.  I am *so tired.*  I am SO TIRED that sometimes, I just don't want to do *anything.*  I don't want to get up, I don't want to eat, I don't want to watch tv, I don't want to read.  "Doing" something always involves a decision.  I'm tired of making decisions.  The way I feel right now, I don't want to decide anything ever again.  And this surgery is a big decision.

And 2.  There are many people that don't care that I have only one breast and they have supported me and walked with me and loved me through this whole process.  When chemo ended, though, there was something of a perception that the journey was over with my last infusion, but it wasn't.  It isn't.  I felt almost...  guilty when explaining to people that I wasn't done, that the road I am on doesn't have an end in sight.  That's really hard for people to hear, though, and even harder to explain - over and over and over again.  Sometimes, though, easier is all you can really do.  I just started agreeing how great it was that I was through with the hard part.

But lying is only easier in the moment.  I don't like lying, and I don't do it very well.  Lying leaves little stains on your soul; it punches you in the gut every time you do it.  It makes me want to cry.  Lying is only easier in the moment.

And I don't want to lie about more than I already do.  I wonder how many people will want to celebrate my new boobs with me when that's the last thing I want to do, because again, it will look like I'm "through the hard part."

Maybe I'm scared it'll be "over" for everyone but me.  Maybe I'm scared there is no such thing as recovery and moving through this.  Maybe I'm scared that I'm going to be scared for the rest of my life and have to hid it behind a smile and a lie.

Maybe I would give anything to have my chest back like it was: saggy, stretch-marked from years of nursing, and a bit too small...

...if it meant never having breast cancer.

Maybe there is nothing that can make me feel "better" about all of this.

When all of this is said and done, maybe I'm scared that everyone's perception of "over" will simply leave me sitting alone in the fear that "over" doesn't exist.

I've always said that "afraid" doesn't apply to me.  Nervous?  Yes, but afraid?  Not me.  I can't say that anymore.  I have now been afraid for 278 days.  278 long, nauseating, exhausting days.  Reconstruction will make me look whole again, and yet, I'm afraid "whole" might no longer be in my vocabulary.  I am afraid the cancer will come back.  I am afraid that no matter how healed I look, I will never feel well again.  None of this makes me feel healed and well and "whole."

Maybe it's as simple as wanting to look as broken and scarred on the outside as I feel on the inside.  Looking at all of the ink on my body, it's easy to see that I wear my pain "on my sleeve" for everyone to see.  Why should this be any different?