Trouble Times Three

Trouble comes in three’s, they say.  It’s been sniffing around our house for a couple of weeks now.

It’s my own fault.  I invited it right to my doorstep with my cocky attitude.  This double mastectomy at long last left me with a feeling that I had some measure of control over my destiny. 

Will I never learn?

On a Wednesday night two weeks ago, my husband, who insists on walking home in the dark every night from his part time job at the city library, was assaulted.  He had just purchased a couple of chicken sandwiches during his walk home when he noticed two young men following him.

“Can I do something for you boys?” he turned around to face them.

They wanted his wallet.  “I don’t have any money,” John told them, refusing to give up the wallet tucked inside the chest pocket of his jacket.

“Why couldn’t you just hand it over?” I demanded later in exasperation.

“And be forced to cancel my credit cards and get a new driver’s license?”  He was indignant.

The thugs followed him to our driveway – yes, to our own driveway  - kicked him to the ground and searched for his wallet.  John huddled close to the ground and grabbed the leg of the man in front who was kicking him in the head.

“Let’s go!” the other one finally yelled in frustration.  “He doesn’t have a wallet!”

They didn’t leave, however, before stealing our chicken sandwiches.  Consequently, the police log in the paper the next day reported John’s call.  “Food was stolen,” the report read. We looked at each other and burst out laughing.  But John was sheepish.

“I’m feeling pretty foolish,” he said.

Much more was stolen from us than a couple of chicken sandwiches.  While John has promised me that he will drive to and from his job at the library from now on, we both find ourselves looking behind our shoulders, checking to make sure we really locked the doors, and pondering a move to a safer neighborhood.  Maybe there is no safer neighborhood.  Besides, we’d really miss the good people living on our block.

It wasn’t two days later, still reeling from John’s assault, that I received a call from our next-door neighbor.

“Can you come over?” her voice shook.  “I’ve just been diagnosed with breast cancer.”

Something inside dropped clear to the pit of my stomach.  Anne is one of those women whose sweetness spills right out of her smile and eyes.  She and her husband Scott are the greatest neighbors in the world.  They trundle over a crockpot of potato soup when you’re feeling under the weather and carry over their adored baby granddaughter to let you hug as long as you want.

Now Anne was scared to death.  Although her cancer was early, she had scheduled a bilateral mastectomy due to a complicated pathology report and a significant family history.

“Dr. Goering’s performing my surgery,” she said.

I was filled with confidence.  Johnny Goering had graduated from Central Catholic High School and had been a student in my husband’s classroom and mine.  He was one of those earnest, true-blue boys.  I remember the time in my seventh grade English class when I unwittingly sat on a planted whoopee cushion.  Johnny Goering laughed so hard he nearly fell out of his desk.

Thirty years later, he performed my colonoscopy.

Go figure.

Had my sisters and I not sought out a breast cancer specialist for our particular situation, I would have gone straight to John Goering for my double mastectomy.  “Take ‘em off, Johnny,” I would have told him.  “And be quick about it.”  He would have, too.  He might be the best surgeon in town, but I’m still his English teacher.

“You’re in very good hands – the best,” I assured Anne.  We talked about all the particulars of double mastectomies, and she asked lots of questions, her voice quivering sometimes.

“This is the hardest part right now,” I told her.

“I know,” she said hoarsely.  “I wish I didn’t have to worry about my girls and my little granddaughter.”

Don’t we all?  Would there ever be a cure for this hideous disease?

Anne would be all right, I convinced myself.  Her cancer was early and very treatable thanks to her vigilant mammograms, and she had a wonderful surgeon. All would be well.

Then our son Tommy called.  “Mom?  I thought I’d better tell you about this before you read it in the paper.”

That sinking feeling of doom was becoming all too familiar. 

While working at his part-time job at HyVee in Omaha where he attends college, Tommy was stocking shelves when he heard the security officers screaming for customers to drop to the floor.  A man had just shot another young man in the parking lot.  The victim, who was shot in the head, lay dying as the shooter rushed into the store - the same store where my youngest son was stocking shelves.  The killer was apprehended by the security officers who managed to take away his gun, but every customer and employee in HyVee that night was shaken by the event.

For the third time in two weeks, the unthinkable occurred.  It seemed there was no way to protect my family and friends.

I needed a good visit with my little sister Terri. She’s always a breath of fresh air.

“Come see my new boobs!” she invited my sisters and me after her final surgery last week.

We couldn’t wait.  Sneaking up to her bedroom, away from all the Lewandowski kids, we waited in anticipation for Terri to disrobe and display her new breasts.

“Terri!” Deb, Mary and I squealed in unison.  They were beautiful – soft and round without any of those hard plastic expander bumps and edges rippling her skin.  The three of us, in our various stages of development, couldn’t stop staring.  Ter allowed us to poke, prod and examine with wondrous curiosity.  It was the emotional lift we all needed.

“You really think they look okay?” Terri looked at us anxiously.

“I want mine to look just like yours,” Mary breathed fervently.

Terri’s 8-month journey has come to an end.  I’m happy for her.  I’m happy about a lot of things.  I remind myself that my husband and my son are alive and well, unscathed by recent events. 

But I can’t help stewing over the what-if’s. What if Tommy had been carrying an elderly woman’s groceries out to the HyVee parking lot and had confronted the man with a gun?  And what if I had only come home a little sooner in time to help John the night he was assaulted?

“You’re kidding, right?” John laughs.  “What would you have done had you pulled in the driveway?”

I can see those two young men clear as day in the blaze of my car lights kicking and beating my husband, a gentle giant if there ever was one.

 “I would have run them over,” I say with low urgency.  Then I check myself, a little frightened.  Is this what those two young thugs feel?  This overpowering rage coiling up in your stomach like a snake ready to strike?

If I ever thought an operation to remove my breasts would offer me more control over my fate and the fate of my loved ones, I was wrong.  The world can be cruel.  My neighbor Anne knows all about that.

“It’s just as well you aren’t in control of the world,” John scolds me lovingly.  “It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea for you to mow over two guys in our driveway.”

Probably not.  After all, they only got away with a couple of chicken sandwiches.  It could have been so much worse.  I’m trying to be more charitable today.  I really hope those two young guys get help.  I hope they can straighten themselves out and lead good, decent, productive lives.

But most of all, I hope the chicken in the sandwiches they stole was grossly underdone.

And that they got severe diarrhea.

The Unvarnished Truth

A woman I know was shocked to learn I’d had a bilateral mastectomy.

"I’d die before I’d let anybody cut off my boobs!" she sputtered without thinking.

Instantly, she was embarrassed. I told her I understood. I remember when I felt the same way. But that was five biopsies and two affected sisters ago.

The Omaha World Herald interviewed my sisters and me last Friday afternoon in a quiet studio high above downtown Omaha. Unseasonably spring like, the day was warm and hopeful. Our interviewer, Live Well Nebraska editor Stacie Hamel, was wonderfully kind and sensitive. But none of us bargained for the raw emotions that would erupt in that quiet room.

"How did your mother’s death impact you when you were young?" Stacie asked my sister Terri who sat resolutely in front of the video cameras.

To our horror, Terri’s eyes filled. Barely able to speak, she struggled valiantly to pull herself together. "It was very hard," she said at last, her voice barely above a whisper. She recalled Mom’s terrible suffering and spoke of her constant fear that her own breast cancer would return and of the agony she endured imagining her children growing up without her.

Terri’s grief, so instantly unveiled, shook all of us. After her tearful interview, we clustered around to comfort her. Her stoic demeanor these last five months had fooled all of us. It took an interview at the Omaha World Herald with a kind journalist to help us realize Terri was still reeling from her breast cancer diagnosis.

Even more surprising was my youngest sister Caroline’s reaction. Stacie Hamel particularly wanted to talk to Caroline about her reasons for being the only sister who chose not to have a prophylactic mastectomy. Like Terri, Caroline immediately became emotional.

"I’m scared to death," she sobbed. "I’m a single mother who wants to date and have a life again." Even more heartbreaking was the admission that she would possibly have considered the surgery had she been able to afford it. "I know insurance would pay for it," she burst out. "But I can’t take six weeks off from work."

After that, Caroline refused to have her picture taken with us. Terribly upset, she would have no part of a photo in a large city newspaper that would circulate her image as a woman "marked" for breast cancer.

Soaking up kind attention from our families and friends, I’ve conveniently closed my eyes to the very real dark side of prophylactic surgery.

"If you’re going to write responsibly," my good husband reminds me, "you have to tell the truth."

So here’s the unvarnished truth about an elective bilateral mastectomy: It’s a difficult operation, and it’s not over in a day. The entire process is long and uncomfortable. One morning, you will rise to inspect your scarred chest in the bathroom mirror, and you will wonder why you ever persuaded yourself to do such a terrible thing to your body.

A young woman wrote to me recently that her husband was not able to understand her decision to undergo an elective mastectomy, especially since she didn’t have cancer. "He’s scared to look at me," she said. "I’m not sure if he’ll ever see me the same way again. I wish I’d never had this awful surgery."

Some of us don’t have supportive families to buck us up. Some of us, in spite of health insurance, can’t afford the surgery. And the grim reality of prophylactic surgery is that it’s not 100% effective.

"It’s impossible to remove all the breast tissue," Dr. Grange warned us. "But it can reduce your risk by about 90%."

While I feel liberated by those odds and feel certain that I will never confront this disease, Terri agonizes over the single cell in her breast cancer that may have escaped. "I’ll always worry about breast cancer," she admitted to Stacie Hamel.

After a long and difficult day, we thanked Stacie and said goodbye to Caroline. Deb, Mary, Terri and I fell into my little car and headed back to Lincoln feeling subdued and worried about Caroline.

"Look at that beautiful sky!" Terri exclaimed once we had driven out of town and were tooling down the interstate. Over the Nebraska prairie, the sun was disappearing behind a glowing red horizon, and we felt peace and perspective returning.

"Let’s go to the Macaroni Grill!" I suggested. It was our favorite restaurant, and it had been ages since we’d had dinner out together.

Over margueritas, Coronas and steaming pasta, we relaxed and celebrated our milestones thus far. Mary was two weeks past her surgery and feeling good. On March 3^rd, just days after her 45^th birthday, Terri would undergo one last operation to get her brand new boobs. In spite of the worries of the last five months, we had much to be thankful for.

"The four of us just had double mastectomies!" Mary informed our lovely red-haired waitress. The waitress looked at all of us, astonished.

"That calls for cake," she smiled. She returned with a huge piece of chocolate cake for Terri’s upcoming birthday and also brought the restaurant’s strolling opera singer with her. He sang "Happy Birthday" in Italian to Terri. During his serenade, we could see that the eyes of our waitress were misting over.

"My sister died of breast cancer," she told us.

 I gripped her wrist.

"Have you had your mammogram?" Mary asked in her very direct fashion.

"No," the waitress shook her head.

"Make an appointment tomorrow!" Mary commanded her sternly.

"Don’t be afraid!" Deb said.

Terri reassured her gently. "It’ll be okay."

The red-haired waitress promised us she’d make an appointment for a mammogram the following week.

After she departed, we stared silently at each other. The four of us had made the difficult decision to undergo a prophylactic surgery that comes with no guarantees. But it’s required no less courage for my sister Caroline to keep her breasts. Staying on top of annual mammograms and waiting desperately by the phone to hear the results, good or bad, is an act of bravery in itself.

You choose. Then you live with it.

And you remind yourself, in the meantime, to take time to savor the sunset.

And to enjoy a marguerita with your sisters.

Mary

There’s a painting on the wall of the waiting room at Midlands Hospital.  It depicts a beautiful woodsy scene at sunrise with railroad tracks winding away in the trees.

I could tell you about every painting in that little room, about how the rocking chair leans a little to the left, and exactly where to find the Splenda.

We clustered together – Mary’s three girls, Deb, Terri, Terri’s daughter Patti, and me – waiting to see Mary who was prepped for surgery and talking to Dr. Grange.

“You can see her now!” the sweet woman behind the desk informed us.  Sitting up in bed without a speck of makeup, Mary was smiling and looking like a middle school girl.

“Mom,” her teenage daughter Steph said immediately, “as soon as we came to the hospital this morning, Katie wanted to check out the cafeteria.”

Katie, a six-foot athlete who doesn’t weigh a hundred pounds soaking wet, glowered at her older sister.  “I did not, Mom.  I’m only worried about you.”

Ken, Mary’s husband, anxiously paced the floor, but Mary smiled serenely.

“Dr. Grange wants to look at the sentinel node,” she said.  We sensed apprehension behind her calm smile.  Because of a small spot that surfaced on Mary’s MRI, Dr. Grange explained that checking out the sentinel node, the first node where breast cancer would spread, would be the wisest course.

“Otherwise,” Dr. Grange said, “if the pathology report would indicate disease, we’d have to go back in later.” 

A little frisson of fear swept the room.

“It won’t be anything,” I ruffled Mary’s hair.

We kissed her goodbye, and in the waiting room, Katie and Steph, along with Jessica and Patti, sprawled out on the floor.  Long-legged and carelessly beautiful, my four nieces settled down for a game of cards.  Ken fidgeted in the rocker, and my sisters and I pretended not to be nervous.

When our stepmother Kris and our brother Tom arrived, however, we instantly brightened.  Kris and Tom always make it better.  Kris regaled us with a story she’d just read in the newspaper about the paralyzing blizzard in Chicago.  A courageous city bus driver, trapped in the blinding mess, rose majestically to face his passengers.  “We’re all going to die!” he screamed.

Kris, who has the most contagious laugh in the world, giggled helplessly, and pretty soon we were all howling over the distress of the hapless bus driver who, along with his passengers, thankfully did manage to survive the storm.

Kris’s ability to laugh has been life giving to all of us.  No one has had more reason NOT to laugh than Kris.  Almost 30 years ago when she was four months pregnant, her young husband Tom was killed in a car accident.  She raised little Nolan alone, and when he was six-years-old, she met and married our own widowed father, Dick Brown, and became the instant mother of ten more children.

Kris was 40, and Dad was 60.

“Just give me 20 years!” she begged. 

He could only give her ten before he collapsed on his treadmill at the age of 70 and died.

It took Kris and all of us a very long time to get over Dad’s death.  Dick Brown had been bigger than life and every thing to all of us.

“You know,” Kris pondered one evening as my sisters and I sat with her over margueritas.  “I hope the name of my third husband is Harry.”

We looked up, surprised.

“Then I can say I’ll marry any Tom, Dick or Harry.”

She couldn’t say it with a straight face.  After a stunned second, we laughed.  We laughed so hard, we cried.

Kris and our brother Tom are very close.  Tom is the rock steady member of the family.  Always and forever our baby brother, he nevertheless inherited Dad’s ability to radiate calm strength by merely sitting quietly in the middle of a room.  All our brothers are like Dad in that respect, but Tom has driven through three hours of early rush hour traffic to be present at all our surgeries.

“Except mine,” Deb accuses him frequently.  “You didn’t come for mine.”

Tom chuckles.  “Now, Deb.  You know you’ve never been my favorite sister.”

An emergency at the retirement facility Tom oversees kept him away from Deb’s surgery.  Otherwise, he’d have made the long trip for hers, too.

Tom was ten-years-old when Mom died.  I’ll always remember how he comforted our grandmother.  Devastated at the loss of her only child, Grandma suddenly broke down during Mom’s funeral, her shoulders heaving with sobs.  Sitting next to her, Tom, my sweet little brother who’d just lost his mother, reached up to pat her consolingly on the back.  He’s been that same sweet boy all his life, and the elderly residents at his nursing home adore him.  But not as much as his big sisters do.

As long as Kris and Tom are with us, we can manage those three long hours in the waiting room.  Even Ken began to relax.

“I’ll certainly miss all of you,” the sweet grandmotherly desk volunteer told me on my way to get coffee.

“We’ll miss you, too,” I said.  “Let’s exchange Christmas cards!”

After three and a half hours, Dr Grange and Dr. Montag finally pushed open the swinging doors.

We waited breathlessly.

“No evidence of disease in the node!” Dr. Grange smiled.  “She did just fine.”

We rose laughing to hug our two favorite doctors.  Four sisters and four double mastectomies.  This most difficult part of the journey was over, and we’d come through it pretty much unscathed.

“Dr. Grange, I’ll miss you!” Deb said.

“We’ll expect you at Thanksgiving!” I joked, clapping her on the back.

We collected our coats and threw away empty coffee cups.  Mary would remain in recovery for another hour, but we were leaving that small waiting room for the last time.  I moved the rocker back to its accustomed corner and cast a departing glance at my favorite painting on the wall. 

This little room had been good to us.

And I hope I never see it again.

Waiting for spring

There isn’t much that ruffles my little sister Mary’s calm demeanor.

On Thursday, the day after tomorrow, she will be the last of us to undergo an operation to remove her breasts.

"Mom," her 20-year-old daughter Jessica tearfully confided, "I’m so worried about your surgery. What if something goes wrong?"

Mary stared at her in amazement. "What could go wrong?"

If Mary doesn’t ever think to worry about herself - and she doesn’t - the rest of us do. I’ve had to reach out frequently in the past week to hug my slightly built, fine-boned little sister. She is precious to me. I wish for the day after tomorrow to be only a distant memory for her.

My sisters and I are in a holding pattern right now. Mary waits for her double mastecomy, Terri waits for the final operation to exchange her plastic expanders for soft, comfortable implants. Deb is waiting to finish her expander fills while I’m hoping just to start mine.

"I’m feeling like a sixth grader today!" Deb crows. That’s her joke as her chest slowly fills out with the expanders. After the next fill, she hopes to have developed into a nicely rounded ninth grader.

I’m just trying to hit puberty.

A few weeks ago, when I was feeling particularly ravishing in my husband’s over-sized flannel shirt and a pair of sweat pants blown out in the crotch, I inspected for the first time the pair of falsies the hospital sent home with me.

"Just slide these in the provided camisole," a kind nurse instructed me in the hospital, "and you can get dolled up for Christmas!" she said brightly.

I haven’t "dolled up" for any thing in six weeks. But the thought of returning to school motivated me to pull the falsies out of their box. Sliding them underneath my shirt, I discovered in the mirror that I was instantly transformed into a flannel-covered Dolly Parton.

John was just coming through the front door stamping the snow from his feet, and I sauntered into the living room to greet him.

"Well, hellooo, Handsome," I crooned, arching my back seductively against the door jam.

He laughed. "Didn’t the hospital know what you looked like before?"

I abandoned the falsies.

Terri and Deb have warned me for weeks that it’s difficult at first to venture out into the public fray without breasts.

"Some people stare right at your chest," Terri informed me.

"And some of your friends won’t know exactly what to say," Deb said.

They’ve been right on both counts. But going out into public again is one of those hurdles every woman who’s endured a mastectomy has to overcome. Tomorrow I return to school for the first time, and I’m nervous. One hundred sixty-five students will stream in and out of my classroom. Truthfully, they wouldn’t be human if they didn’t try to sneak a glance or two at my boobless chest.

I understand.

But what I fear is the TotallyCluelessKid. Like my little eighth grade nemesis Bueller.

"Mrs. Howard, what kind of surgery did you have?" Bueller will surely ask in oblivious innocence.

I could tell him it was a transgender operation.  And that wouldn't be far from the truth. "I was living a lie, Bueller," I’ll say. "And please. Call me Mr. Howard."

He’ll stare at me, bewildered. "But your husband is Mr. Howard!"

I’ll shrug. "So now you have two. I’ll be the slightly more effeminate one."

Except that Bueller won’t know what "effeminate" means, and then it just isn’t funny anymore.

I’ll worry about Bueller tomorrow. Today we’re snowed in, and I’ve been given a reprieve from Bueller for one more day. Two thirds of the country is gripped by paralyzing wind, snow and sub-zero temps. I’ve been gazing out the window all day longing for blue skies, porch swings, singing birds and whistling mailmen.

What a long winter it’s been. And there’s more to come. My little sister Mary is having her breasts removed Thursday. Tomorrow, my boobless chest has to withstand the scrutiny of a hundred sixty-five pairs of adolescent eyes.

Will it really only be the second day of February?

I need it to be spring.

If he dares to see his shadow, I swear I’ll torture and kill that freaking groundhog.

A Few Good Men

My husband is the best husband in the world.

And I will remind myself of that the very next time I discover his nose hair clippings in the bathroom sink.

It’s no accident my sisters and I married good men. This last Monday, as I watched my brother-in-law Brian and my poised sister greet the streaming family members and friends attending Brian's brother's funeral, I thought what a smart girl my sister Deb was to marry such a lovely man. We were all smart to marry lovely men. But then, we were raised by a good man.

Dad was 6 ft. 7 in. tall with shoulders as broad as a table top. When Mom died, he tried very hard to fill her shoes and become both father and mother to ten kids. But it was rough going at our house for a while.

Without ever raising her voice, Mom somehow delegated jobs all around and kept our home humming with an easy, careless grace.

Then she was gone.

Without her gentle guidance, we floundered.

Dad, who gradually let little home repair jobs slide, nevertheless seethed in irritation when he thought we weren’t holding up our end.

"Brick by brick!" became his familiar mantra for the way his ten children were demolishing his home.

One Sunday morning after Mass, with all my siblings crammed into the old brown station wagon, Dad suddenly took a long route home and pulled into the driveway of a strange house, to the surprise of my brothers and sisters. The roof was missing shingles. On the porch sagged a decrepit old sofa on which the owners of the house lounged in the warmth of the sun and gazed in lazy interest at the strange family parked in their driveway.

"This is where we’ll be living," Dad said solemnly, "after you kids decide you're finished wrecking our house."

My brothers and sisters, horrified, slid low into their seats. "Take a good look!" Dad ordered, oblivious to the curious faces of the residents on the porch.

The irony of these lectures presented by Dad in such dramatic fashion was that he could barely remember to change a lightbulb himself.

Every night, he herded us all into the tv room. Lonely for our beautiful mother, Dad’s chief consolation was reclining in front of the television set surrounded by his ten kids. But it was a risky business for all of us to be huddled in that room together. The broken latch of the tv room door, which Dad never did get around to repairing, posed a big problem. If the door was knocked shut, we were locked in. And inevitably, someone always forgot and shut the door.

"Dammit!" Dad swore. "Why can’t you kids leave that door alone?"

The only way out was to remove the screen from the tv room window, lower one of the little kids outside, and have him run inside the front of the house to unlock the tv room door which, fortunately, could be opened from the other side.

One time, somebody knocked the tv room door shut, but all the outside doors were locked.  We were not only locked IN the tv room but OUT of our house.  We sat around and sang "I Had a Dream, Dear" in four part harmony until my brother Rick came home from work with his keys and freed us. 

Through the years, the old house was coming apart at the seams. But Mom must have been watching out for all of us when she sent Kris. Several years after Mom’s death, Dad met our wonderful stepmother, and she managed to restore order to his life once again. But in the intervening years, Dad muddled by as a single parent.

If home repair wasn’t his strength, his devotion to us certainly was. Profoundly aware that my younger brothers and sisters were feeling bereft without Mom, Dad ratcheted up his nurturing skills. With great gentleness, he ushered my little sisters through puberty and sat down with each one of them to have "the talk." One day, when Terri was laid low with cramps, Dad rushed out to purchase the necessary sanitary items and several brands of pain relievers besides.

As well, when we got older and endured breast biopsies, Dad suffered right along with us. Distressed about my first bad mammogram report, I realized I couldn’t tell Dad about it.

"Cathy," he called me after my biopsy, "why didn’t you tell me?"

I wept. "I’m sorry, Dad. I was upset, and I didn’t want you to be upset, too."

He was silent for a long time. "Babe," he finally said, "I’ve got broad shoulders."

Dad always made us feel safe.

I miss him.

My husband John reminds me of Dad. Although different in many respects, John is just as devoted to his family as Dad was to his.

This last Friday, John accompanied me to Omaha for my doctor’s appointment and even followed me right into the examination room to hear what Dr. Montag would say about my slow healing incision.

"I think we’re going to be okay," she smiled reassuringly. New tissue was at last growing beneath the wound, she said, and more surgery wouldn’t be necessary. After a few final instructions, she and Erin, the P.A., departed, and I smiled in relief.

"Let’s go shopping and buy you some new clothes," John said. "We’re celebrating today!"

I hugged him close. "Thanks for being so good to me, Johnny."

He hugged me back. "Don’t you know I’d do any thing for you?" he murmured low in my ear.

He would, too.
Just like my dad.
And I’ll remember that the very next time he eats the last piece of cheesecake.

Nothing's so bad...

I hate this damn plastic in my chest.

Why did I ever bother with reconstructive surgery? It’s left me with a wound that refuses to heal and an attitude so bleak, I don’t even like myself.

"Turn that frown upside down!" my husband the comedian tries to cajole me. But I’m not cracking any smiles for him or anybody else.

I would die, just die, to crawl in my big soft bed and snarl into my favorite position on my side. I’m sick of that ancient recliner I’ve been sleeping in for the last month. But nobody tells you that you can’t lie on your side with expanders in your chest. There’s no give to that plastic. You might as well have a couple of frisbees sewn inside yourself that poke you in the ribs and dig into your sides.

Oh for a nap. On my side. In my bed.

"It gets better," Deb and Terri promise. I’m sure it does. It gets better if the surgeon fills the plastic with fluid so that the edges become round and soft. But that doesn’t happen with a slow healing wound.

"It’ll be a while before we can fill you up," Dr. Montag warned.

If I could go back in time one month from today, I’d tell my surgeons, "Don’t bother with reconstruction! I’ll be happy with my boy chest."

And I would. Oh, I would.

"No, you wouldn’t," Deb says. "Once you get on track and have your fills, you’ll be glad you went for reconstruction."

It hardly matters now. The die has been cast, and I have no choice but to see the whole miserable thing through. But it galls me that Deb and Terri have been so patient and uncomplaining while I’m such a baby.

Sometimes I need to be shamed out of my petulant attitude. Sara Ockander, a friend of mine half my age and half my size, for that matter, reminded me how grateful I should be. "I’m sure you realize," she said, "how lucky you are that, in the middle of all of this, you’re not facing radiation and chemo like so many other women."

That brought me up short. I suddenly thought of an old Irish saying - "Nothing’s so bad that it can’t get worse."

The worst became a reality for a lot of good people in the last couple of weeks. A young man in Millard, Nebraska, marched into his high school and shot his principal and vice-principal. The principal, an energetic young man, will survive. The vice-principal died. She was a kind woman with a lovely family who’d had the unpleasant duty of disciplining a student, never imagining he’d return to take her life and his own.

Before she was even buried, tragedy struck in Tucson. It was the same sort of senseless violence, unfathomable and shocking. Six people are dead, including a beautiful little nine-year-old girl, the apple of her father’s eye. A young congresswoman lies fighting for all the rest of her life.

And right here at home, our family deals with its own tragedy. My sister Terri called this afternoon. "Did you hear? Brian’s brother died a couple of hours ago."

We sat grieving on the phone together for our adored brother-in-law. Brian’s brother had been rushed to the hospital last night with a perforated colon. It would have been treatable except that he had waited too long, and infection set in and shut his organs down. He was Brian’s only surviving relative from his immediate family.

Suddenly, a little irritating plastic doesn’t seem quite so bad. In fact, what seems most imperative is that my brother-in-law feels the comfort and love of family, even if it’s the family that came tagging along with Deb.

So many families have been torn apart this week. I’m grateful for mine. I’m grateful for my brother-in-law whose dead pan humor and devotion to my sister has endeared him to all of us.

And, even though I know it’s only plastic, there’s no denying I’ll be grateful when it’s gone from my chest.

And I can take a nap.
On my side.
In my bed.

Go to the Devil!

Note to self: Never write a blog after a three-day migraine. The
world is an infinitely better place when your head isn’t pounding.

It also helps to have a friend like Peg Ley. Wise and comforting, my high school typing teacher has always been an icon to me - and to about a million other former students as well. I visited her a few nights ago, snuggling into the deep leather comfort of her living room sofa with a cup of hot tea to boot. Peg is much the way I imagine Mom might be had she lived - ageless, beautiful, nurturing.

In spite of losing her husband and best friend of more than 60 years last May and suffering a heart attack herself, Peg refuses to be unhappy.

"How do you do it, Peg?" I asked her not long ago.

"Every day," she said with simple but eloquent resolve, "I choose to be happy."

Someone once said when you leave the Ley house, you always feel better than when you came. I departed from Peg’s house that evening feeling loved and contented. It didn’t hurt either that my sister Mary brought over chicken lasagna after I got home. Steaming, fragrant and brimming over, that lasagna spoke to me. It spoke to Tommy, too, who was still home from school on Christmas break. We looked at that beautiful pasta. Then we looked at each other.

"We have to save some for Dad," I said faintly.

In the same second, we tore into that lasagna as if it was our Last Supper. Tommy could easily have inhaled the entire pan, aluminum and all. I could have, too, for that matter. But Tommy’s a 280 pound offensive tackle. I was doing my best, however, to match him pound for pound on Mary’s lasagna.

Mary lingered for a moment before we devoured her dish.

"Have you heard any thing about your surgery date?" I asked.

"No," she waved her hand dismissively. "I’ve practically forgotten about it."

That’s Mary for you. Unlike the rest of us, she’s never once stewed about her annual mammograms.

"Who ARE you?" I once said in exasperation after she nearly forgot to schedule a mammogram. "How is it that you never worry about this?"

She was genuinely surprised. "Isn’t that why we have mammograms?" her eyes widened. "So that we can catch any thing early?"

To this day, I fail to comprehend that wise and sensible logic at all, and so do the rest of my sisters.

"I’ve just been in the hospital a few more times than all of you," Mary shrugged. "Things always work out."

It’s true. Mary started out her infant life with a prolonged stay in the hospital. When she was 36 hours old, her obstructed infant bowels required immediate surgery. It was a long time before she came home to us, and I remember falling in love with her the first time I saw her nestled in my mother’s arms. With scads of soft brown hair, she was tiny, beautiful and perfect in every way.

We teased her all her life that she was Dad’s favorite. But I think it was true. Dad was very protective of his little daughter who’d struggled so valiantly to survive her first week of life. In fact, we were all protective of our little Mary.

"I know I’m younger than she is," my sister Terri once told me, "but I always worry about Mary!"

Endless bouts with her sensitive kidneys sent Mary to the hospital several times, and I know my mother always feared Mary would be frail forever.

But she grew up into a beautiful, poised young woman with the carriage of a queen. She and her husband raised three gorgeous daughters, all who look uniquely like Mary and walk with the same regal bearing.

Often, we’ve been tricked into being a little overprotective of Mary. But there is not a stronger, more competitive girl in the world. I’ve been humiliated many times on the tennis court by my little "fragile" sister. In high school, she and a group of feisty, determined little girls, who still remain close today, managed to snare the school’s first state championship volleyball title.

And it was that same grit that helped her survive our mother’s death. Mary was 15-years-old when Mom died, and without complaint, she stepped into the role of chief cook and bottle washer.

"Little Mother," Mom tenderly murmured from her sick bed as Mary prepared meals and cared for our youngest siblings. The shy little dark-eyed girl who always hovered so close to Mom became my mother’s primary nurse. She bathed her, fed her, soothed her and often climbed into bed to hold her.

After Mom died, Mary mothered my two little brothers, Tom and Jeff, and became a pillar of strength for my grieving father. In the meantime, though, she was determined to be happy. Resuming her life at school, she enjoyed her friends more than she ever had before. And with that determined "Go to the Devil!" look in her eye that I knew so well, she earned a state volleyball championship gold medal.

My good friend Peg Ley and my little sister Mary are very much alike. Refusing to surrender to grief or worry, both choose to be happy. Every day, Peg chooses to attend a grief support group, climb on her treadmill, and engage with her legions of friends.

And my sister Mary, joyful and serene, nevertheless confronts the enemy, breast cancer, with the same steely look reserved for every opponent she’s ever faced on the other side of the net.

"Go to the Devil!" it says.

And I feel sorry for the Devil.