TMI

Working an overnight 12 hour shift is hard. And by "hard," I mean "I don't know how I do it."

The best nights are spent getting some things accomplished with a healthy dose of knitting and watching Netflix movies on the computer. The worst nights are like this one. The computer is still involved, but it's surfing for information. It's reviewing medical publications and before and after photos and support group sites. The computer has my eyes stuck against his monitor as though my life depended on it...and, I guess in some ways it does. The research is intensive when one is planning to cut out their breasts and re stuff them with some synthetic component - something that most likely keeps them from feeling like they did, looking like they did, moving like they did, but most importantly from causing their host to hear "You have breast cancer." I can't fucking stop searching for too much information.

This process is interlaced delicately with a web of emotion and memory. I cry every time. I can feel the new patterns of synapses firings establishing themselves and preventing the next round of thought to diverge much from the last. Mom. Dead. Cancer. I watched the suffering - I'm sick of talking about it, I'm sick of thinking about it, I'm sick of knowing what I know and I bet everyone else thinks the same damn thing. Actually others have more patience than I give them credit for. Still - I've numbed their ability to hear me just as I have my own.

When I agreed to look into this prophylactic procedure, I thought I knew a bit about it. I mean, all that reading, reading, reading had to count for something, right? Well...kind of. It's more complicated than I thought and I have no idea how I'm going to handle this. No fucking clue. Drugs, I guess. Lots and lots of drugs.

Pills to help me calm down before I go to the consultation with the surgeons. Pills to relax me on some little plane that gets me to the hospital for the procedure. Pills to help me sleep the night before The Big Day. Pills to sedate me before they put me under. Then an IV. Anaesthetic, anti nausea, pain management. Drains. Bandages. Mounds of pain where my pleasure used to be. A few days in the hospital. Pills to fly home with minimal pain, without much stress. Pills to get me back into my bed. Pills that keep me from remembering when I last took them and who was just there and if I was a good hostess in my little apartment all cut apart and stitched up. Let yourself in. And please, please don't believe me for one second when I say I'm fine. Because I won't be fine. I'm going to hurt and I'm going to be scared and sad and lost and needing my hair washed for me. I'm going to have to need like I've never needed before and that is the worst information I've come across yet. It wasn't found at the American Cancer Society website or the brochure from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. It popped up from inside, attached to a warning note with a picture of mom on it, and a list of insecurities that ran strait off the page. Too much, I say. Too much inforfuckingmation.