Hello there

I'm a lucky lucky lucky person. Today I had a teddy bear dropped off at my door, a bookshelf booked, a delivery of wine and trashy mags (sublime) and the visits and hugs of friends. I'm honored.

Inventory of my distress:

My bionic plug in site cath thing is healing, now I can feel a small pentagon under the skin, under the thick gross skin and tissue. It seems disgusting - I think it's our animal instinct to reject a foreign object in our body - a stick coming out of an eye, a fang sunk into an arm, a sword impaled in a shoulder blade, even the mouth-parts of a little bug seem grotesque when magnified by National Geographic and you see the daggered little blood sucking nature-straw inserted into the epidermis. 

So to have a completely non organic monolith SEWN in to me is a bit of a horror show if I think, REALLY think about it. So I mostly don't. But that straw, that long thin plastic scratchy straw tube snake curving around the inside of my veins inside... What is it? When I rearrange myself on the couch to get a better view of America's next top model's top next top cretin, what is that little tiny twinge way deep inside my chest? Is it nothing? Or maybe did the end of that alien stiff PART actually scratch the inside of my vein? Is it tickling the top of my HEART? How big is the tube? How wide is it? How wide is my vein? Is it getting in the way of anything? Does the blood flow through it AND around it? I mean seriously folks, heavens to Betsy, the surgeon says she installed it, but what in the hell does the word "install" actually mean in this case? Will it clog my vein ? Will I suddenly drop dead from a 9 inch long long blood clot? I feel another twinge. 

What if it the catheter thing up at the top right under my skin BREAKS OFF and then that tube goes flailing wildly right into my heart, trying to go around the corners, the atriums, tying itself up into a pretzel, tangling and strangling - causing my entire heart to constrict an attack. Am I making this up? Look away look away look away.

Moving over to the left side of the chest we have lumpectomy site number two. Left breast, side, more under arm than front-boob. Let's just say I couldn't wear one of those side cleavage side boob dresses to the Oscars. 

Go about halfway down her arm on the right picture. Now jump off her arm and land on the luscious boob. Right there.

The 2 inch long red scar is still hidden under a tiny sticky tab "steri tab" thing that I can't peel off, or shouldn't, the whole thing is sad and sunken and caved in like a failed soufflé, and sore and numb at the same time (bipolar) but it doesn't hurt very much anymore really.

I'm feeling pretty normal actually right now. This week I am having a huge big fat long meeting with my oncologist in which I will ask many questions and many things will be revealed. I'm also having another one of those with my surgeon. So by Friday I'm going to be really smart, and I'll even have my dates for chemo, and a detailed list of all the poisons that are soon to be portably catheterized into me.

And I'm very much looking forward to an old friend coming to visit me from New Jersey. Margaret on Wednesday. That could be a cool band name. Here is a picture of a picture of us when we were 21: