When I miss a day of writing here

it's usually because I feel like crap. This time it was because our wireless internet modem was on the fritz . . . and now I can't even remember what I was going to say yesterday.

Nevermind, today I met Ben Hornik, he'll be the plastic surgeon who makes a reconstructed breast for me. The timing is going to be something like this: 4-6 weeks after chemo will be the mastectomy. After I heal from that I'll have 6 weeks of daily radiation, then several months later, depending on how I am healing, there will be two operations to bring back my rack. The first will reconstruct the left breast, the second will deal with reconstructing a nipple/areola and perhaps lifting the right breast for symmetry. The two operations will be months apart so that my reconstructed side has a chance to heal completely. I think I'm getting this all right, I hope so.

Interesting factoid: women who smoke tobacco have a might higher rate of failure in reconstruction simply because the nicotine constricts the blood vessels making the healing more difficult.

Ben's a nice guy, new to Kaiser, the only plastic surgeon working at Kaiser in Oakland. He spent an hour explaining all of this to me and Neska, who went with me. I trust him to make things look as nice as possible, he actually used those words or something similar, and after all the reconstruction is cosmetic, doesn't HAVE to be done, and I'll be walking around with a prosthesis for quite a few months. As Neska pointed out, I may get used to having the prosthesis and decline reconstructive surgery. I seriously doubt this . . . I just can't wrap my head around having just one breast. As nice as that one breast may be, they generally come in pairs and I need to have a pair of them to feel whole.

So much of the timing depends on how I am healing from what went before. For example, Ben said that if I end radiation with no skin problems (most women DO have skin problems from radiation) then it will be that much sooner that my reconstruction will start. Hard to plan a life, G-d knows.

Looks like my birthday on March 21 will be free from any lingering nastiness and before any new nastiness appears. That would be very nice. Funny how I used to say "I'm almost 50 . . ." and how I stopped mentioning that after the diagnosis. Now I just say I plan to live to 100.

I'm staying as busy as I can this week to stay alert and happy, and I just signed up for Netflix to keep me occupied when I have nothing better to do. I feel and look good, I think. I just can't stand that it will be so many months until this process is complete, and perhaps up to a year after that until I feel normal. Damn, that's a very long time.

Pray for complete healing.