Boob Job

Click Bait, Crisis DuJour, Family, Universal Coverage - In a Bad Way

I’m finally getting around to taking care of a small matter of imbalance. It seems I’ve been a bit lopsided lately. Leaning a bit to the left, if you will. Turns out there’s a reason for that! With the news the doctor gave me, I’ve decided to go ahead and have some work done.

I don’t have all the details yet, but I wanted to keep you abreast of the situation; I’m having a little corrective surgery. Before you panic and start picturing me as a centerfold model in the next AARP circular. It’s nothing that drastic. I’ve just reached an age where the fun-fun mammograms I’ve been having routinely for decades have finally paid off. They found something worth looking for.

To be honest, I’ve been waiting for something to happen for a while. Bad news comes in threes, and after the tree killed our roof two summers ago, and last year we experienced the dubious pleasures of salmonella and the criminal justice system for minor children, I had the feeling the Bad Sh*t Happens Universe wasn’t finished with me. The trilogy was yet to be completed.*

I go through a few more medicinal hoops, ring a few more lab test bells, and the doctors schedule me for surgery in a few weeks. Now all I have to do is tell everyone I know the good news.

In a manner that suits my personality…

I want to have a last hurrah before picking my son back up from camp. I send out a hurried request for a Girls’ Night Out. Friends join me at Noto’s Restaurant on the beach. It’s insanely busy and loud, but has a gorgeous view of Lake Michigan. We chat about everything–which includes someone introducing me to a term I’ve never heard of before. The friend mimes pulling an imaginary peanut M&M from her generous cleavage, saying, “Hashtag: Boob Snack,” and pretends to nosh on it. This seems like a great segue for my announcement.

I order a desert appropriate to the occasion. While handing out our choices, the helpful waiter, Chris, makes the mistake of asking, “So, what’s the big reveal?”

Bodacious Babe Drops the Bombe on the Beach!

In the spotlight, holding up my mounds of ice cream with cherries, I blurt. “I have breast cancer!”

In the appalled silence that follows, the waiter escapes, and I hurry to explain. “It’s really, really small! It’s so small that finding it was very lucky.”

It’s like a micro-tumor. Only about 5-6 millimeters. And today I learned that it is moderately slow growing and is responsive to hormone therapy. I got a grade of Stage 1-A. Or as that doctor put it,”If you have to get breast cancer, this was the best kind to get.”**

Hugs are given and I feel warm and fuzzy, especially after the waiter comes back to tell us he comped me my ice cream! A friend says we should go out more often…and I agree, adding, “We can take turns being the person with cancer to snag a free desserts! Hashtag: Boob Snack!”

We leave the place cackling like mad women and tromp to the nearby beach to take selfies in the sunset. It was the best end to a day a girl can have, surrounded by loving, laughing ladies.

That’s the news, everybody. I go under the knife on August 20th. And while I appreciate thoughts and prayers, I’m even more appreciative of thoughtfulness and practical help. Which leads me to my second bit of news.

Before any of this happened, I signed up to take part in something called GISH, an acronym for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt (the World has Ever Known) which starts JULY 27th. I’ve never done it before and, from what I understand, I will be performing acts of charity while dressed entirely in cheese, or some other wild suggestion, created by a team of very disturbed/imaginative people.

This brings me to you…my adoring friends, my extended family, and wacky Chicago fan club! (Please note the use of the Oxford Comma per your request, K, J, and MJ!) I hope I may call on you all in my hour of need. If I require someone to go out, dressed like sasquatch in a tutu, to serenade strangers on a street corner while playing a stringed bass (the fish, not the instrument) I am totally playing the ‘C’ card and asking for help. It’s either that, or you get to mow my lawn for me. You decide. But, I’m totally milking this cancer thing for all it’s worth. Consider yourself warned.

Tomorrow I get the kid back from camp. So, if I miss your kind words, know that I will look forward to reading them once life gets back to normal. For a given value of normal equal to infinity plus or minus the deviation of the norm over pie.***

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnotes:

*The third movie is always the one where the hero wins in the end, right? So, it’s all good.

** Unless one could be diagnosed with unnaturally young and perky boobs after 50? It could happen. Right?

***This is not a typo. MMmmmm…PIE!

27 thoughts on “Boob Job”

  3. You get an A+ for attitude and just so you know, I was thinking I clicked on the wrong blog when I saw that cleavage shot, because I don’t read “those” kinds of blogs, generally speaking, although Fifty Shades of Gray started as a blog so they can be pretty lucrative. And I must also ask: Is there an M & M in there I’m missing?

    Best Wishes K. Fingers and toes crossed, thoughts and prayers and positive energy and all the good stuff. Keep us informed of your progress. XO

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    1. I am rarely drawn to the risque and titillating either. But, every once in a while, my bawdy side pops out. And, since the ‘twins’ are going on hiatus for the time being, I thought they deserved a day out on the town. Only one boob will be vivisected, but the other one will be there to support her. Sister in arms, in the war against breast cancer. All hail the pink ribbon army.

      It’s entirely possible sleep deprivation wrote the above statement. I’ll try to get some sleep so I’m less slap happy when next we chat.

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      1. K after I read your post I went to Ross Murray’s Drinking Tips for Teens and it was a post about broken penises. The word was everywhere in the post, and he is speaking from his experience as a prostate cancer survivor, in the most hilarious terms. It was so surreal to read your post and then his, I told him I felt I had either crossed into another dimension where Larry Flint is God and cancer is the funniest thing that can happen to us, or I just know some awesome bloggers, which is of course the case. I once had a breast biopsy and afterwards they wrap you up in a huge ace bandage and I had to laugh at how much my physique resembled Just Pat from Saturday night. The laughs get us through so much. Here is to much more laughter in your future and to giant ace bandages and broken penises and vivisected boobs. Stay well. You are in my thoughts with all the best intentions and wishes K.

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    1. Thanks. It’s odd, your comment came with a little yellow highlight. Are you a super secret agent or did you have to login in a way unfamiliar to me? (Which would be any way beside having a WordPress I.D. to me.)

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    1. Bring on the words. Words are my weapon against a cold, cold world. Sometimes the right word at the right time does more than all the chicken soup in the world. So, thanks. I’ll look to be up and reading everyone’s posts again in no time. But, for now, ducking under the covers until I feel like coming out again.

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      2. Oh ugh! Was the pun about “milk” and “jugs” intentional or inadvertent? If the former kudos (and shame on you) and if it’s the latter, never admit it. Claim all puns on porpoise! (All dolphins do!)

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      4. I love puns, and it was certainly an attempt to be funny…. if I could have figured out how to use ‘jugs’, it woulda been better. 😀
        As for that fishy reference to dolphins, that might be another tail entirely. 😀

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  7. Dang. I’m sorry to read that. Love the boobie dish tho 🙂
    I had two mammograms this month and lefty goes back in 6 months. Here’s the thing though: the imaging is so hi-tech and incredible, we can catch that stuff at 1-A and that’s freakin fantastic. That’s how I look at it anyway. There are, of course, a lot of complicated fears and other emotions that come with it, and that’s what sucks — I understand that from a similar perspective. I had cervical cancer ten years ago, also an easy one to catch and eradicate immediately, but it wasn’t easy to cope with all the feeeelings. Best of luck with your procedures.
    I am available for tutu and serenade, but it’s way too hot to get in a suit heavier than swimsuit 😉

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    1. Sadly I missed your comment and GISH is over. Otherwise, there was an option to create a swimsuit out of an Ugly X-Mas Sweater that would have been right up your alley. You can probably find them online, in case you seek inspiration upon hearing this. And thank you for the support. Knowing people beat cancer everyday is a reminder that it is possible.

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  8. Loving your insane ability to smile in one way or another through everything, and wishing you all the good fortune in the world with your impending surgery and whatever else follows. If you could bottle and sell your positivity, you’d make a million. Go girl! 🌈

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    1. I almost snorted a laugh. I have never been described as positive before. Thank you. Now I can show this to my mother and say, “See! You can stop calling me your little ray of sunshine now!” But, that might be a tad aggressive. But thanks. I’m trying on new hats to see what fits.

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    1. Thank you. Not belated at all. Good wishes are always welcome and, I believe, accrue interest in the waiting. I heartily accept all forms of good will credit. Except Discover. I do not like what I discover now that I am over 50. It is rarely a pot of gold under a prismatic light spectrum.

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