Missy Diggs

Let’s say that in one week you are scheduled to have major surgery, surgery that will alter your physical appearance and leave you scarred for the rest of your life.

And let’s say that when you asked your surgeon if she had any pictures she could show you, of other people who had had the surgery, she totally shocked you by saying, “No, not really. I don’t have anything like that.”

And let’s say that all the books you have been able to find on the subject are either focused on how plastic surgery can make everything look almost normal again, or on how artistic lighting, photography, and PhotoShop can shift the focus of a photograph to make everything look all dreamy and almost normal.

Then let’s say you decide to go to flickr and search on the name of the surgery, and you find all kinds of totally straightforward and undoctored photographs showing all kinds of people before and after the surgery you are about to have. I am unbelievably grateful to the women (mostly) and men who have bravely posted pictures of their scars, their drains, their bandages, their stitches, their tattoos, and their specially designed garments to this public photo sharing site so that people like me can see what we are really in for.

And I would like to take a moment to draw attention to Rebel1in8, or Rhea Belle clothing, for her beautiful designs that allow women to dress in a way that flatters their new figures, without pushing the oh-so-common expectation that “post-mastectomy” garments are those that have pockets in the chest for you to put a prosthetic breast into (not that there’s anything wrong with that; it’s just not for everybody). I find her work incredibly inspiring and hope to embrace her world view as I learn to dress my new body too.

And the ability to find important information that is somehow missing from more traditional venues, that is one of the many many reasons that I heart the internet as much as I do.

Two weeks from tomorrow, I will be in the hospital in Houston, having a bilateral mastectomy.

Although I have known from the time I was diagnosed that I would have to have major surgery as part of my treatment, this particular surgery is my choice. Well, that is to say, the right side MRM (modified radical mastectomy) is not really optional, and I know that, but the left side “simple” mastectomy is “prophylactic.” The idea being that I won’t be able to get breast cancer in a breast I don’t have. (there’s approximately a 20% chance that I would develop cancer in the other breast over the next few years.) Of course, my decision is also based on things other than that, such as: the thought of being lopsided and asymmetrical drives me crazy; I don’t want my spine to be pulled out of alignment by having different weights on each side of my chest; I don’t want to “have to” wear a prosthetic on one side to avoid making other people “uncomfortable;” I don’t want to wear a prosthetic at all in the Texas heat; I suspect there may be cancer undetected in the other breast already (it sometimes happens, and since my cancer is hormone driven and my breasts have gone through several hormone-influenced changes in my adult life, I don’t want to take any chances.).

On the other hand, even though I have a lot of reasons supporting this decision, and even though I have been very sure that this is what I wanted almost from the beginning….. well, as the time approaches I realize it is not so much that I am happy with this choice as it is that I am unhappy with all the other ones.

And it kind of sucks to have to make an important decision when you don’t like any of the choices.

It is also almost time to tell the Vivid Girl about what is coming up next, and I have been dreading it for months. Dreading it to the point where everytime she throws a temper tantrum or misbehaves I secretly wonder if it because she senses my weird feelings and that makes her freak out.

There are several books for kids whose parents have cancer, and some are specifically about having a mother with breast cancer. But there is only one book for kids whose mothers are having mastectomies. Isn’t that amazing? One! Our child life specialist found the book for us, and she said, “It’s strange, because there are tons and tons of books for kids about amputations.”

Hmmm.

Again, it would be nice to have choices. Especially because this book, while there is nothing specifically wrong with it, does not address my particular situation. In this book, the mommy has reconstruction right away and tra-la! everything is fine again. So even when I read this book to my kid I will have to do some editing and rewriting. Because I am not eligible for immediate reconstruction, in the first place, and I am not planning to have any kind of reconstruction, ever, in the second place. And this is not a decision I need my four-year-old to second-guess.

It makes you wonder, how hard would it have been to produce two or three versions of the book, to cover more of the possibilities? It makes those Once Upon a Potty books seem even more like the works of an amazing genius: one for boys and a different, but nearly identical, one for girls!

Like Naomi Wolf, I find myself wishing for multiple versions of so many children’s books anyway: Alexandra and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. Helen and the Purple Crayon.  Where the Wild Things Are with Maxine instead of Max.  Not instead of, of course, in addition to.

And this mastectomy book! I get making a book that address the most common situation. I don’t know the statistics or anything, but I’m pretty sure most breast cancer cases are operable and allow for immediate reconstruction. I’m also willing to believe that most women opt for immediate reconstruction. And I can see how the first book out on a subject would address the most common situation. But I guess that’s where I’m frustrated. The resources available seem to be years behind the situation.

And I just wish I had a book to read to my daughter right now, explaining how the parts of my body that have done some of the most intense parts of mothering her will never look or feel the same again, and I may never be able to lift her in my arms again, and it will be months before she can rest her head on my chest and snuggle with me again…. but I am still her same strong mama, and I will still be right here in every way that I can.

…. or maybe even if you do not.

Here is a blog I like to catch up on when I am feeling blue:

The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks

It always makes me laugh, but of course I was an editor in a previous life.

And here is a short film you can “Watch It Now” on Netflix, about fact checkers and featuring Bill Murray:

FCU: Fact Checkers Unit

Mr. B laughed, and he is not an editor. So you may want to check it out.

I know I promised this blog wouldn’t be all about cancer, and I think I am doing pretty well keeping it mixed up and light-hearted, but then I sometimes feel like I am not doing enough to educate people about the horrible terrible kind of cancer I have, which is called IBC, or Inflammatory Breast Cancer. It is the most aggressive form of breast cancer, and it presents with symptoms that look more like mastitis (a breast infection that often affects nursing mothers) than cancer, so it is often misdiagnosed. In addition, it is very rare relative to other breast cancers, so many health professionals have never encountered it before, making it even more difficult to find a doctor who can diagnose and treat it properly.

Health magazine just published an article about a blogger and mama, Susan at Toddler Planet, who is also undergoing treatment for IBC. It is a really good article and even features a quotation from my very own doctor, so I thought I would take this chance to “bring the house down” for a few moments and offer some information to those of you who might want or need it.

A few more links to information that I have found helpful:

http://toddlerplanet.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/inflammatory-breast-cancer/

http://www.med.umich.edu/opm/newspage/2007/inflammatorybc.htm

http://ibcwatch.evidencewatch.com/

http://www.ibcresearch.org/

We will soon return to our regularly scheduled programming. Thank you, and good night.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on a couple of crafty little projects. I was wearing some super comfortable but super scruffy plain brown shoes one day and I thought, “If only I could make these shoes look as awesome as they feel!” So of course I headed straight for the handy dandy Internet and did some research and found out that there are people out there who paint their shoes to look however they want.

I decided that I wanted my shoes to look pastel, and metallic, and to have kitties on them. And for one to say “Good Kitty” and one to say “Bad Kitty.” So I ordered the extra special shoe paint from Dharma Trading Co., and when the box came I immediately broke it open and got to work.

Here is the result of that endeavor:

The back of the Bad Kitty shoe says “Is it Caturday yet?” and the back of the Good Kitty shoe says “Everyday is Caturday!”

Here is a link to the true spirit of Caturday.

While I was at it, I decided to do something about my favorite black boots, which were in such terrible shape that Mr. B was always suggesting maybe it was time for some new boots. But new boots cost money, and in my size (11WW, isn’t it terrible?) are not that easy to find, and anyway these boots still ARE great, they just didn’t LOOK great.

So I mixed up some bronze acrylic paint with some of this paint medium stuff that turns it into a more flexible paint suitable for fabric. Then I painted both boots totally bronze, with some help from the Vivid Girl. I wish I had taken a picture at that point, because they looked like grown-up bronzed baby booties and were pretty darn cool.

then I stuck star stickers all over them. I do have a picture of one of the boots at this stage:

then I painted all over the boots, stickers and all, with Neopaque black. Two coats.

When the second coat was all dry, I carefully pulled off the stickers. I was hoping this would give me “reverse stencil” effect, with sharp outlines on all the bronze stars peeking out through the black paint.

It worked a little, but two things went wrong: first, the corners of the stickers tended to lift up a bit, so black paint got under them, so the outlines were not that sharp. Second, when I pulled off the stickers the black paint sometimes pulled off with it from around the edges of the star. So I mixed up some more bronze paint and used a tiny paintbrush to sharpen up the points and fill in the middles of the stars. It was a lot of steps, but it turned out looking pretty good, and I can’t wait to wear them!

We also got possession of a pair of shoes that were too small for our friend Clarissa so we were going to pass them on to our friend Honorae. (Our house is often a hand-me-up/hand-me-down warehouse, which I love) But these shoes had some little pink leather flowers on the straps that were looking pretty sad and tired, and the toes were very scuffed up. So I painted over the pink flowers with new mardi gras colors, and painted flowers in the same colors across the scuffed up part of the toe. Pretty cute, I think.

In all cases, I sprayed the shoes generously with clear acrylic gloss when they were all finished, and let them dry for 24 hours. I’m hoping this will protect the paint and keep the shoes looking fresh.

Of course, I am pretty hard on shoes so I may have to paint these babies again someday. Which would not be all bad.

This has been one helluva week or so.

But first, let me introduce you to a storytelling technique that I learned from a play I saw on PBS many years ago. I think it starred Dick van Dyke and Cloris Leachman (But I could be wrong) as an older married couple who were broadcasting their last radio show after many years. It was called something like “Breakfast with Les and Bess” and I thought it was really good at the time. In particular, the actress who played the ditzy daughter was awesome. Details later if I bother to look it up. (It had Shaun Cassidy! How did I forget that?)

Anyway, the storytelling thing goes like this: the person telling the story starts out with an exciting, positive line, and everyone listening goes, “Yay!” Then a more unfortunate detail follows, and everyone goes, “Awww.” And it alternates like this for awhile, with your hopes rising and falling until finally…. well, I don’t know what finally happens. Maybe you just tell the story and keep piling up details until everyone is sick of listening to it and going “yay” and “aww” and then you deliver some sappy punchline. I don’t remember, and I’m not promising anything about how this post is going to go either. But if you want to play along, here we go.

About ten days ago, I had my very last chemotherapy treatment. (yay!)

And then I felt really bad for about 8 or 9 days. (aww!)

but I managed to have some fun anyway. (yay!)

But also I couldn’t really sleep or eat much and I was having the worst. ever. hot flashes. (aww!)

On Sunday we went to the Craft: magazine release party at the WorkShop, and it was really fun. (yay!)

The Vivid Girl won a door prize, which was a super-cool snappy pouch sewn together from fused plastic bags and line with cute fabric, made by Future Craft Collective. (yay!)

And I made a fairly cute button bracelet. (yay!)

And the next day, the divine Mr. B surprised me by revealing that he had submitted my Barbie project to the Craft: blog, and they had posted about it. (yay!)

And somebody left a comment saying that putting my own hair into my child’s doll was creepy and weird. (aww! or maybe Yay!)

And other people left comments saying that they thought it was cool. (yay!)

The Vivid Girl spent her own allowance this week on a sewing kit, which made me swell with pride. (yay!)

And I had a fabulous acupuncture treatment from the amazing Dr. Wang, and I could literally feel the weird hot flash energy leaving my body during the treatment, and I haven’t had a hot flash since. (yay!)

Though I still couldn’t really sleep last night. (aww!)

but I feel a lot better anyway. (yay!)

and now I am done with this post. (yay!)

except, my camera is out of batteries so I cannot post any pix now. (awww!)

I will post them later. (yay!)