Thanskgiving

Kenny has epilepsy.

I never in a million years thought I’d be so happy to know one of my boys suffered from such an affliction. The flip side, however, is that his seizures could have been caused by a brain tumor or liver failure.

I’ll take epilepsy any day.

“It means I’ll probably be taking medicine for the rest of my life,” Kenny said calmly on the phone yesterday, “but other than that, I can do anything I want.”

That’s the way life is.  It’s a series of trade-offs.  You’re diagnosed with epilepsy, but you don’t have a brain tumor.  You cut off your boobs, but you don’t get breast cancer.

The CallThatNeverComes came.  My surgery date is Dec. 16^th.  But I feel nothing but thankful today.  It’s like the old Biblical story of Jacob wrestling an angel.

“I will not let you go until you bless me!” Jacob told the angel. 

Sometimes, you have to wrestle an angel or two for the blessings in your life.

Tomorrow, everybody in my family, including my young stepbrother Nolan and his fiancée, and my youngest sister Caroline and her family, will be under one roof to celebrate Thanksgiving together.  We’re gathering a little earlier this year because Deb’s surgery is Tuesday.  We couldn’t possibly have Thanksgiving without Deb.  Who would organize the yearly Christmas gift draw?  So tomorrow evening, all 60 of us will descend upon my brother Tom’s house where he and his beautiful wife Sheryl will calmly deal with the masses.

My stepmother Kris is lugging over 20 pounds of mashed potatoes, my husband John will make his world famous stuffing, and Terri will bring the corn and macaroni casserole that I crave every Thanksgiving.  We will eat and laugh and thoroughly enjoy each other.  And I will be as thankful as I’ve ever been in my life.

This Thanksgiving, it occurs to me that I’m not only thankful for my family, but I’m thankful for those special women in my life who have wrestled blessings from angels.

My lovely friend Lisa Willman is a breast cancer survivor, and she’s never looked back.  In our growing community, she’s the woman who keeps our town progressive as she organizes hundreds of volunteers to man our Events Center for the State Fair and the state volleyball tournament.  If that’s not enough, she and my other friend, Julie Pfeifer, co-founded our town’s GRACE (Grand Island Area Cancer Endowment) Foundation that raises hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to help women with breast cancer.

Julie, like my sister Terri, is the beautiful mother of six kids.  She was one of the first people I turned to after Terri’s diagnosis.  A five-year breast cancer survivor, Julie underwent a double mastectomy, treatment and breast reconstruction and has been so comforting and informative.

Jane Kittridge, in her 70’s, is one of the most striking women I’ve ever known.  Ten years ago, she elected to have breast reconstruction after a double mastectomy for cancer.  “Don’t be afraid of this,” she looked my sisters and me straight in the eyes dispensing motherly encouragement.  “And when you’re my age and everybody else’s boobs are down to THERE,” her eyes twinkled, “you’ll be upright and perky!”

Donna Northup is like a second mother to me.  The mother of nine, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in her 60’s, but her deep faith carried her through and has inspired me for 25 years.

And, of course, there’s my sister Terri.  “This mastectomy and reconstruction stuff is no big deal at all!” she promises. I’ve been a little crazy lately, but I know full well I’d be a disastrous mess without my beautiful little sister showing me the way.  Terri makes Deb and Mary and me brave.  She’s wrestled her angel to the ground, and she helps us believe we can wrestle ours, too.

Finally, I will think of Mom this Thanksgiving Day.  Mom didn’t win the battle against breast cancer, but she wrestled for the ultimate gift – Heaven.  It’s because of Mom that her daughters will survive.  We will see our children grow to adulthood.  We will be there for weddings and grandchildren and old age. 

But I know Mom’s been with us for those special events, too.  She and Dad are both with us, and their presence is strongly felt in all our lives.  I have no doubt they will be with us for our Thanksgiving celebration – enjoying the laughter and the stories, caring for us, loving us. They will stick close to my sisters and me as we complete this journey together.

And they will help us wrestle our angels.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Slippery Slope

In one week, I broke three toothbrushes right in half.  One after the other.

Brushing my teeth is one of those mundane tasks that allows my mind to fixate on things like seizures and mastectomies.

“You broke three toothbrushes?” John’s eyes were wide with amazement.  “I don’t think I could even break one.”

My husband is 6 ft. 7 in. tall and 260 pounds.

“Oh, I think you probably could,” I snapped at him.

Poor John.  He’s just as fearful for Kenny’s health as I am, and he’s worried about my sisters and me.  John adores my sisters.  He teases them unmercifully, but when Terri was diagnosed with breast cancer, he rose from his bed in the middle of the night to read in the living room.  That’s a sure sign he’s stewing.  Usually, John goes to bed every night, folds his hands across his chest like a corpse, and doesn’t stir until morning.

It’s entirely unfair for me to get so irritable with him.  One night when we were watching the news together, I “sshhhh!”ed him, and he didn’t say a word.  The very next night, he sat in his recliner whistling tunelessly while I tried to read the paper.  I glared at him over the top of my reading glasses.

“What are you, 11?”

He stopped abruptly and left the room.  I felt terrible.  If you knew my husband, you’d drop dead in amazement that I’d dare to either “sshhh” him or snipe at his whistling.  You just don’t do that to John Howard.

The fact that he didn’t immediately put me in my place was disturbing.  I apologized – isn’t that what I specialize in these days? – and he accepted my apology graciously enough.

It’s difficult to describe my husband without giving the impression that he’s an old curmudgeon.  Frankly, he’s the most sarcastic, cynical, yet intelligent person I’ve ever known.  He would have been a great lawyer.  Whenever we argue, I always think I know what I’m talking about.  Five minutes later, however, I’m backed into a corner with not one intelligible word to say for myself.  I hate it when he does that.

But most of the time, I’m crazy about him, and so are his legions of students from the last 34 years.  John is the best teacher I’ve ever known in my life.  He’s a voracious reader and a student of history, and he knows how to communicate his passion.  The kids love his wicked humor, and when they come back from their first year of college, they never fail to thank him for their thorough background in history.

“You were the best history teacher I ever had,” his former students tell him again and again. 

Some people are afraid of him.  Truthfully, I guess we’re all a little afraid of him.  But underneath his big cynical roar is a sympathetic heart of gold.  His students know that about him, and our boys and I certainly know it.

The trouble was, with all these distressing events falling on top of us, John was being too nice, and he was especially careful of every word he spoke to me.  I understood.  When your wife is about to go under the knife to have her breasts taken off, you’re pretty much walking a slippery slope.  It’s a mistake for him to say, “This operation is no big deal at all,” because what your wife hears is, “Your boobs were never that great anyway.”  On the flip side, if he tells her, “This is very difficult, but we’ll deal with it somehow,” he might as well say, “I only hope that I’m still attracted to you.”

Instead, John tried the sensitive approach.  He hugged me and promised to support my decision all the way.  “If this operation will enhance the quality of your life and enable you to be worry free, that’s all I care about,” he said soothingly.

“Yeah, yeah,” I thought.  “But will you still want to have sex?”

John was so sensitive, in fact, I knew it was killing him.  It sure as heck was killing me.  For 26 years, he’d teased me about my cooking, my sleep habits, my endless budgets, and my remarkable lack of memory.  But he hadn’t cracked a joke in weeks.  He was treating me with kid gloves, and I could literally see his tongue bite back one of his scathing remarks.  It was positively unnatural.

Thankfully, it didn’t last forever.  After a particularly exhausting week at school, we roused ourselves to attend the last home football game of the season.  Sitting almost in the front row of the stadium, we cheered on our beloved Crusaders.  As tired as we were, we both brightened when Julie Chapman Hamik, a favorite former student of ours, bounced over to visit.

“How’s Terri?” she said as soon as she plopped herself down for a good chat.  Julie and her siblings had gone to school with my younger siblings, and she was genuinely interested in Terri’s health.

“She’s good!” I said, and then informed her about Deb’s situation and our collective decision to have surgery.

“No kidding!” Julie gasped.  “You know what?  I’d do the very same thing,” she said.  Julie’s always been a little mother hen.  “In fact, I’d get rid of any part that might ever give me trouble!” she laughed.

“Oh, Cathy’s already done that,” John said, referring to my hysterectomy years ago.  “Yeah, I started out with a wife,” he said with his old sarcasm, “and I’m ending up with my college roommate.”

Julie and I stared at him.  A fleeting look of uncertainty flashed across his face.  In all our married life, I’d never seen John Howard uncertain about any thing. 

Julie and I exploded.  I laughed so hard I had a coughing spasm.  My lord, it felt good to laugh.  It was a huge release from all the worry that had been weighing me down for so long.  All through the fourth quarter of the game, I snorted like a kid in church and struggled in vain to recover my dignity.

“Please!” John pretended to be shocked.  “Get a grip on yourself!”

There are as many different ways for good husbands to comfort their scared wives as there are husbands themselves.  Some send roses, some give their wives jewelry, and the real romantics even write poetry.

My husband is mean to me.

When he teases me about my cooking or does his dead-on impression of the way I discipline the cats, he makes me laugh until my stomach aches.

And I know that what he’s really telling me is that he loves me.

And that he thinks I’m a tiny bit insane.

Over the Edge

I’ve been a little snappish lately. 

“Snappish” sounds so much nicer than “bitchy”.

Between waiting for Kenny’s test results and for the CallThatNeverComes for my surgery date, I’m irritable and impatient.

Last week, I asked three students to sit out in the hall.  Three.  I apologized to one of them immediately, a sweet eighth grade girl who’s never given me an ounce of trouble.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” I said.  “I’m a little out of sorts, and I took it out on you.”

She reached out to hug me.  “That’s okay, Mrs. Howard.  I know you have a lot going on just now.”

My throat tightened. Nothing can choke me up like a child’s forgiveness.

To combat the growing stress, I walk long miles every day and say my Rosary.  And in the middle of the school day, I shut my classroom door during my free period and savor the silence.  But last Tuesday, Mr. Schumann, the assistant principal, strode into my classroom and said, “Say…,” and I knew I wouldn’t be enjoying my free period that day.

The band teacher had gone home sick, he explained.  Could I cover her eighth grade band class?  It had been one of those days already.  The sixth graders weren’t catching on to adverbs at all, and the repair shop had called with the news that the van needed new struts and shocks.  Little things piling up on big things.

“Yeah, I can cover it,” I said to Mr. Schumann.  How could I not help him out?  He was always so good to me.

Subbing is not a dream job, and subbing for band class is a nightmare, plain and simple.  “I really don’t want to do this today,” I groaned, as I trudged down to the band room sixth period.

To my surprise, the room was dark, and the door was locked.  “Dang!” I hissed.  I’d left my keys all the way back in my classroom.

Just then, through the glass pane of the door, I saw a small head pop up from inside to grin maniacally at me.

Just like that, I was furious.  “Listen, you little twerp!  Let me in right now,” I yelled through the closed door, “or so help me God, I’ll beat the crap outta you.”

The door opened immediately.  Bueller is a very small boy, and he stared at me with huge eyes.  The lights exploded to life, and one by one, 26 eighth graders wriggled silently out of their hiding places behind the piano, the drum set and from the instrument closets.  The shock on their faces mirrored my own.  I felt as if I rose above my body to survey the scene.  Had I really called Bueller a twerp?  Not only that, I said “crap”, a word I thoroughly despise, and had threatened to beat it out of a kid.  Not in 34 years had I ever talked to a student like that.

“We were just trying to scare you,” Denny, a nice boy, spoke timidly for the group.  “We thought you would think it was funny.”

The silence was agonizing.

“Get your jackets,” I said abruptly. “We’re going outside.”

It took two seconds for the words to penetrate, then they whooped with joy.  I took them out to the football field, instructed them to do any thing they wanted, but to stay inside the fence where I could see them.  Then I got on the track and walked.

Pounding the asphalt, I circled the track again and again.  And I prayed.

“God, forgive me,” I pleaded.  What was wrong with me?  Bueller could be a little pill sometimes, but he hadn’t deserved that.  He was probably sensitive about his size, and I had called him a twerp.  Possibly, I had destroyed his already damaged self-esteem.

I walked and walked and prayed and prayed.  The October sun shone bright, and a mild breeze whistled softly through the trees.  The kids were having so much fun laughing and playing.  There is nothing so pleasant, I thought, as the sound of kids playing outside.  After a few miles, my perspective was better.  It was time to go.  I called the kids and sent them reluctantly back to the school building.  But first I had to find Bueller.

A girl screamed.  There was Bueller trying to poke a sand burr into the back of her neck.  It’s always easy to find that kid.

“Bueller!” I called.  He turned instantly and dropped the sand burr.  Busted.  I read the expression in his face.  He walked slowly over to me.

“Listen, Bueller,” I started hesitantly.  “I want to tell you I’m really sorry for what happened inside.  I was so wrong.”

Astonishment, followed by relief, flooded his face.  A reprieve!

Then confusion.  “Huh?” He was puzzled.  “Sorry for what?”

For a second, I thought he was kidding.  But then I sighed.  Bueller could never remember a single thing that happened 30 minutes ago.  He lived strictly in the moment.

“Never mind,” I ruffled his hair.  “Go on in.”

In gleeful abandon, he skipped – yes, skipped – to catch up with his classmates.  Blowing past Levi, a boy twice his size, he screamed “She-ZAAAM!” in his ear.  Levi jumped and painfully covered his ear.  Enraged, he went after Bueller, who skillfully crumpled to the ground on all fours to send L sprawling and tripping into the dirt.

Bueller darted back up, laughing maliciously, then ran to make a mighty leap into a huge puddle that a small eighth grade girl had just carefully skirted.  The splash drenched her, and Bueller, running backwards, laughed demonically.  “Ha! Ha!  Watch your step!”

I breathed long and exhaled slowly.

Little twerp.  I oughtta beat the crap outta that kid.

Kenny

Don’t ever tempt the fates by complaining that you can’t handle “one more thing!”  Life always decides you can.

By late October, Deb’s surgery had been scheduled for November 23^rd.  Mary had decided, because of her insurance deductible, to wait for her operation until after the first of the year. 

But I was getting antsy.  I didn’t want to sit around for weeks and months to think about having a double mastectomy.  Dr. Grange and Dr. Montag, however, were having scheduling conflicts.  “We’ll call you as soon as we figure it out,” Dr. Grange’s office assured me.

There was nothing to do but wait.

One afternoon at school, just before Halloween, my husband John strode through my classroom door.  Something was wrong. I could tell by the way his lower lip quivered, and, in a flash, I knew it was one of our boys.

“It’s Kenny,” he said.  “Regis University just called.  He’s had a seizure.”

The words were like a physical blow.  “Where?  When?” I babbled.

“Just a little while ago,” John was trying to be calm for my sake, I knew.  “He’s in an ambulance, and they’re taking him to Denver General.”

I was all for abandoning our students that second, jumping in the car, and making a hell bent trip to Denver.  But John was more practical.  “I’ll call my brother Dave, and you wait for a call from the hospital.”

In my mind, the word “seizure” meant death.  I feared for my oldest boy in that moment as I’ve never feared before.  Both our sons had endured surgical procedures and a few health scares, but there’d never been any thing like this.

Kenny had graduated from Denver’s Regis University a year before and had landed a job in their alumni department.  He, like our younger son Tommy, was an athlete.  He had played college basketball just as now Tommy played college football.  I had always worried about sports injuries, but Kenny was a working stiff now.  He was supposed to be safe.

John located his brother Dave who worked in Denver. “I’ll get right to the hospital,” Dave said, without another word. 

Moments later, Kenny’s boss Penny called.  “I’m almost at the hospital,” she said, “and I’m meeting Katie there.”  Katie was Kenny’s girlfriend.  Penny explained that Kenny had slumped over his desk when a co-worker noticed that he was convulsing.  The co-worker and another young woman in the office had somehow managed to lower Kenny’s 6 foot 10 inch frame to the floor only to watch helplessly as he suffered a full blown seizure.

Katie called next, and she’d been crying.  “We haven’t seen him yet,” she said, “but I’ll call you as soon as we do.”

I sat at the desk in my empty classroom while John left to deal with the administrators to find substitute teachers for us.  We would leave for Denver as soon as possible.

“Oh Lord,” I prayed with my head in my hands.  “Please don’t take Kenny from us.”

The phone rang again.  “Mom?”  It was Kenny.  The sound of my son’s voice was a benediction.  He had just fought his way out of a fog, he realized, to discover he was in a strange hospital, but that his uncle and his girlfriend were nearby.  He remembered nothing, he said, but a couple of brief moments in the elevator and in the ambulance.

“Kenny,” I asked, “how have you been feeling?  Did you have any kind of warning at all?”

For the last few weeks, he confided, he’d been having little episodes – mostly in front of his computer screen.  He’d suddenly experience a feeling of de’ja’vous  and struggle to remember some elusive dream before he snapped out of it.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can,” I assured him.

The drive to Denver was endless.  But I was comforted by the fact that Katie would keep an eagle eye on Kenny.  John and I were quiet for most of the six hours in the car.  Silently, I thanked God that Kenny was alive.  I thanked him for the good husband who sat beside me, for his unfailing dependability and for the way he made me laugh every day of my life.  I thanked him for Tommy, who was back in his Omaha dormitory room worrying about his older brother, and for all our family members and friends.  We were so rich.

“What’s a couple of boobs?” I said to God.  He’d given me the best of every thing.

It was a joy to see Kenny.  The seizure had left him with a crooked back, a kink in his neck, and a swollen tongue that mangled his speech, but he rose to greet us with his familiar sweet smile. 

I hugged him close, all 6 feet, ten inches of him, and John gripped his shoulders.

Our boy.

“Cat scan was normal!” Kenny pronounced.  He was scheduled to visit a neurologist in a few days and would undergo several additional tests.  But for now, at least, he seemed healthy enough.

For two days, I savored the sight of my oldest son.  I did all the things I never got to do since he’d grown up and moved away.  I rubbed his sore back with liniment, smoothed the cowlick on the crown of his head, and reached out to hug him whenever I felt like it.

Kenny, Katie, John and I hooked up with Uncle Dave and drove to Greeley to visit Grandma Howard in her new assisted living facility.  “Did you get your encephalitis shots, you two?” she wagged a finger at Kenny and Katie.  They looked at each other.

“I think you mean meningitis shots, Mom,” John gently corrected her.

“Oh, that’s right!” Grandma smacked her forehead.  “Don’t either of you even THINK about getting meningitis!”

We busted Grandma out of the nursing home and took her to a restaurant where we met John’s other brother Cliff.  Kenny regaled his uncles with hospital stories, Katie’s eyes lit up when she spied the chocolate shake she ordered, and Grandma told us all about a particularly disgruntled resident who nevertheless turned on the charm for any male within a 10-foot range.

I sat contentedly in the middle of the food and laughter wishing Tommy, our younger son, could have been there with us.

The next day, it was time for us to go home to Nebraska.  “Call us as soon as you hear any thing about your test results, Kenny!” I hugged him.

“I will, Mom, and let me know about your surgery date,” he hugged me hard.  We promised each other we’d get through November and December and that 2011 would be nothing less than a banner year.

But the New Year seemed an eternity away, and I was scared.

Why was my son having seizures?

Deb

I’ll tell you something about my sister Deb.  When she was a teenager, she was evil.  Evil incarnate.

One afternoon in high school, she dropped by the gym to collect Mary, Terri and Caroline, who had just finished a rigorous basketball practice.  Sweaty, tired and famished, my three little sisters fell into the back seat of the car. 

Suddenly, however, their heads shot up.  On Deb’s lap was a carton of delectable chocolate-covered donuts.  The three little girls glanced quickly at each other.  You had to play it cool with Deb, they knew.  Pretending nonchalance, they sat back in their seats to bide their time and wait Deb out.

As she pulled the car out of the school’s circle drive to head home, Deb popped a donut in her mouth.  “Oh my lord,” she rolled her eyes in orgasmic pleasure.  But Mary, Terri and Caroline remained indifferent to her ecstacy.

Deb stuffed another donut in her mouth.  “SO fresh,” she murmured.

Finally, Terri asked timidly, “Will you be eating all the donuts?”  She was careful to keep any hint of sarcasm out of her voice.

“Yes,” Deb said shortly, her mouth full of donut.  “All of them.”

Instantly, Terri was filled with rage.  “You know what?” she spat out.  But Mary and Caroline shot her a warning look.

“What?” Deb’s chocolate smeared mouth smiled innocently at her in the rear view mirror.

With difficulty, Terri regained her composure.  “I’m not really hungry anyway,” she shrugged.

After demolishing the fourth donut, however, Deb appeared to have reached her limit.  The three little girls watched intently as she brushed off her fingers and neatly closed the carton of donuts.

Hope was alive.

Deb sighed with satisfaction, picked up the carton with the remaining eight donuts, and casually tossed it all out the car window.

She still howls about that story.  Deb’s always believed she’s the funniest person alive.  But over the years, she’s actually experienced remorse from time to time for the terrible things she used to do in high school.

“Oh, I wish I’d been nicer to my classmates,” she moans, or “Why didn’t I study harder in school?” or “I should never have set off those firecrackers in the boys’ locker room.”

No, Deb isn’t evil any more.  She wouldn’t be classified as a saint, exactly, but she’s dang close.  Deb is such a good person, you could pretty much liken her transformation to the conversion of St. Paul.

In our own enormous, sprawling, generational family, Deb is the rock.  She’s the one who reminds everybody to send Uncle Carl a birthday card, who arranges the Christmas gift draw, and who plans the Thanksgiving menu.  She’s the first person everybody calls for sympathy, for advice, and for bucking up.  She’s as lovely inside as she is out, and we utterly depend on her.

The news that her biopsy revealed atypical hyperplasia and that surgery would be required sent us into a tailspin.  I had the same queasy feeling in my stomach I used to get when I was a kid and Mom got the flu.

Deb was the strong one.  Nothing was allowed to happen to her. 

“I’m fine!” she convinced us all.  “This isn’t bad news, really.”

That’s the thing about Deb.  She always makes the rest of us brave.  She forces us to do the right thing, and she manages to turn the whole lopsided world upright again.  She gives us hope.

But, lordie, she was an awful teenager.

More news...

Here we were, the four of us, right back in Dr. Grange's examination room.  I'd always known we'd be seeing Dr. Grange again.  Only this time, Terri came along to offer us moral support.

She looked so good three weeks after her double mastectomy.  Refusing to wear the falsies the hospital sent home with her, she opted instead for lean and breastless and looked like a slim adolescent girl ready for a good game of kickball out on the playground.  She had just started her reconstructive surgery , and her oncologist would shortly start her on Tamoxifen, a medication that would help to reduce her chances of ever getting breast cancer again to practically nil.

But Deb, only days before, had undergone a stereotactic biopsy for two suspicious areas that had turned up on her mammogram and MRI.  The results had come back as atypical lobular hyperplasia, a pre-cancerous condition.  Mary's MRI had also revealed a suspicious finding, and suddenly, we knew breast cancer was a stark reality for all of us.

Deb called for an appointment, and now Dr. Grange was describing options for treating her hyperplasia.  "Your situation is a bit complicated," Dr. Grange carefully explained, and talked at some length before Deb politely interrupted her.

"I would really like to have a double mastectomy," she said quickly.

Dr. Grange threw back her head.  "Thank God!" she exclaimed.  Dr. Grange never recommended a mastectomy herself, but she was obviously glad Deb had come to the decision on her own.

"Now," Mary suddenly cleared her throat, "here's the thing."

Terri snorted.  Whenever Mary started any sentence with, "Now, here's the thing," we could expect some kind of bomb shell to drop from her mouth.  Mary, who had grown up as our shy little shrinking violet, had a way of making people's jaws drop now that she was a self-assured adult.

"I want a double mastectomy, too," she said without any preamble.

Dr. Grange gasped in amazement.  "Oh, my God!"

I figured I might as well make her day.  "I'm thinking I might choose that route, too," I said.

Dr. Grange threw her hands up in the air.  "Oh, my God!" she said again.

I have to confess, I was really hoping she'd talk us all out of it.  Maybe she'd know of medication that would save us from breast cancer without the radical sacrifice of our breasts.  "Is this a crazy idea?" I asked her.

"No," she said firmly.  "Even though Terri hasn't tested positive for the breast cancer gene, there's something going on in your family." 

Scientists had only been able to identify two breast cancer genes, she explained, but suspected there were many other hereditary genes.  Mom and her grandmother had died in their  40's, Terri and Deb had been diagnosed in their 40's, and as a result, the risk was rising steadily for the rest of us with each newly infected family member. 

We could hope to catch it early or head it off at the pass. 

Before we left Dr. Grange's office, we knew we'd go full boor and finally try to put this thing behind us forever.

The next stop, a couple of weeks later, was at the office of Dr. Marie Montag, Terri's plastic surgeon.  Erin, the energetic p.a., showed us all the different implant options and even allowed us to observe as she injected Terri with a saline "fill".  When Terri's chest expanders, inserted during her mastectomy, were eventually filled to Terri's liking, she would undergo one final surgery to replace the expanders with implants.  Artificial nipples would be an option down the road.  The fill took half a minute, if that, and then Dr. Montag's assistants filed Deb, Mary and me into separate examination rooms to measure us and take pictures of our breasts for insurance purposes.

"Did you smile for your picture?" Deb asked me later.  I had, actually, from force of habit, but then remembered to stop myself.  It felt too ridiculous.

"I smiled," Mary said calmly.  "Why not?"

Dr. Montag said it would take six to eight weeks for our insurance companies to authorize the surgery but that Deb should be able to go a little sooner due to her hyperplasia.

We felt suddenly deflated.  Any hopes of getting it all behind us quickly evaporated.  But at least Deb would be first.

And hopefully, we were all in time.

Surgery

I wish you could meet my brother-in-law. 

Paul Lewandowski is tall, good-looking, kind, and an All-American great guy – the kind of guy you always hope your daughter or your little sister will end up marrying.

Deb, Mary, our brother Tom, Tom’s little girl Kelsey, and I sat in the waiting room of the hospital.  We’d all had a chance to hug Terri before her operation.  She was calm, focused and ready.  Now Paul, who had stayed by her side until she was wheeled into surgery, walked out to join us.

“Well,” he said shakily, slumping into a chair and rubbing the moisture from his eyes, “she told me I’m supposed to make you laugh.”

I wanted to hug him.  But sometimes, hugging’s the worst thing you can do, especially when it’s your emotional brother-in-law trying to pull himself together.

Terri’s last minute instructions to Paul before her surgery didn’t surprise any of us.  She and Paul are two of the funniest people I know.  Their kids are hysterical, too.  A big family has to make its own fun, and the Lewandowskis are masters at creating their own entertainment.

One of their favorite “road” games started with my nut-of-a-sister.  In their extended family van, the “good ol’ Econoline”, they jokingly call it, Paul would pull up to a stoplight, and Terri would pretend to be dead asleep for the benefit of the other drivers on the road.  Smashing her face against the passenger window, she’d relax her gaping jaw and unleash a long drool of spit from the corner of her mouth. 

Paul was the straight man.   His role was to remain alertly business-like as he stared intently out the front window with his hands gripping the wheel precisely in the 10 and 2 position.  But the six Lewandowski kids in the back would rock with laughter and provide Terri with play-by -play commentary.

“Okay, Mom,” Ben would snort, “the guy’s just looking over.  Oh man!” An explosion of giggling shook the Econoline.  “You should see his face!”

Reaction is every thing to the Lewandowskis.  If they can’t shock and mortify their fellow man, what’s the point of living?

Paul kept his promise to Terri that morning in the waiting room.  We talked and laughed and played “Go Fish” with our niece Kelsey.  But all eyes were on the clock.

“We’ll be in the operating room about three hours,” Dr. Grange had explained to us, “unless we find something in the lymph nodes.”  The plan, she said, was to check the sentinel node, the first node where breast cancer would spread.  If the sentinel node was clean, there’d be no need to check the others.

After three and a half hours, we were getting jumpy.  Every time a shadow passed by the swinging doors of the operating room, our hearts skipped a beat.  Finally, though, Dr. Grange and Dr. Montag came striding out the door.

“Nothing in the nodes!” Dr. Grange reassured us right away. 

The relief was enormous.  Deb hugged both surgeons, and we all clasped each other with happiness.  Terri would be in recovery for the next hour or so, the surgeons explained.  By the time we finished lunch, she would be in her hospital room.

Kris, our stepmother arrived, and our youngest sister Caroline.  And finally, we were allowed to see Terri.  I was a tiny bit anxious to see my little sister without her breasts.  It’s hard to admit that.  Would she be traumatized, I wondered?  Maybe she’d be drowsy and out of it from anesthesia.

She was neither.  Alert and smiling, she greeted us triumphantly.  “I’m on the other side!” she sighed in happy relief.  And even without her boobs, she was still Terri.

A nurse strode into the room to check Terri’s morphine drip.  “How would you rate the pain,” she questioned, “between 1 and 10?”

“It’s around 4,” Terri quipped, “but I want you to keep the morphine coming, so I’m saying 8.”

The nurse laughed and assured her the last thing she wanted was for Terri to feel pain.

“When can you go home, Ter?” I asked

“They said tomorrow if I’m doing cartwheels,” she said. “I practiced one in the hall just now.”

All the way home, Deb, Mary and I marveled at Terri’s humor and resilience.  “Life is good,” I sighed.

It was good to enjoy the moment.  As it turned out, it was only a moment.

Deb and Mary were scheduled for their yearly mammograms in two weeks.

Deb would be next.