So tomorrow is the surgery.  I’m ready to have it behind me, to start the healing process and to know that I have done everything in my power to combat these BRCA genes for now.  While I am not nervous about the surgeries themselves, I still find myself fixated on the ways in which I will change post surgery.  How being thrust into menopause will effect me, how it will effect the MS.  But I am trying to keep my eye on the prize.

I was speaking to a friend recently who brought up the fact that I had opted for the most aggressive treatment in regards to these genes, and it occurred to me that I was never given an alternative.  All three of my surgeons said this was what I needed to do to ensure my survival, so I’m doing it.  I asked every question imaginable, read up on these genes to the point that I could have an advanced degree in hereditary cancer genes, and I am comfortable and secure in the fact that this was the only way to proceed.  Of course, I keep trying to explain that to my boobs and my ovaries and they just look at me like I’m bat-shit crazy.  Well to hell with them, I won’t see them after tomorrow anyway…

This is the deal, to proceed in hopes of living a long, healthy, fulfilled life.  I figure with how much I am losing over the next 24 hours, I’m making lots of room for new things.  Things like Alaska and Israel with my kid, and seeing him graduate from college and med school (please, please, please).  Things like riding a mechanical bull, and working on 8 plays next season.  Things like a crazy big love which up until now I had only seen as a thing of the past- but what the hell, I mean there’s going to be LOTS of room after all.

Other than that, I haven’t much to say today, except this.  I am incredibly grateful that I have so many people who love me and who have my back.  Along the way, sitting in doctor’s offices, waiting for mammograms, MRIs and blood work I have met a lot of women who have readily shared their stories with me and some of them had no one to take care of them.  I spoke to a woman who opted not to have chemotherapy post mastectomy because she had no one to help her.  No matter how hard things have gotten I have had so many people here to pick me up, dust me off and set me right again that I feel I won’t live long enough to thank them.

And to my family–I know how hard it is to be the person in the waiting room- we have all spent more time in them than should be allotted in one lifetime, so let’s make a pact to take a break from operating rooms and waiting rooms for awhile after this go-around.  BRCA genes be damned.

This will likely be the last entry for at least two weeks, but I’m sure I’ll have plenty to report and pictures for show and tell.  Until then…