‘With luck’, the doctors said, ‘you’ll have (this) and not (that).’ I learned the ‘with luck’ was bait, a ruse to lure me into hopefulness. Sure I had breast cancer;… Read more Yes, I can handle the truth. I’m a conflict manager →
For the most part, I felt loved and supported when I told people I had cancer. There were good, bad, and ugly reactions, which I’ll share so you don’t offer the bad and ugly unless you want to.
Here’s my list of the great things about a double mastectomy: 1. Without a breast to squish, the seat belt politely lies flat from my shoulder to the clasp at my waist.I no longer have choreography, like fishing catch and release, to find a comfortable place over or under the breast to fit the diagonal strap.
It’s the fad title; The Year Of Living …. whatever, fill in the blank with your choice of taking a year of one’s life to live Simply, or Biblically etc. etc. etc. Having breasts amputated is rarely a first choice for dedicating a year. When homegrown breasts are gone, there’s three options: either they’re gone for good, or substituted with prosthetics or reconstructed surgically. My treatment over, my choice among those three:
Here’s what I discovered from what’s called the Cancer Journey; it can be a trip. A vicious cancer colonized me, doctors cut out my breasts and lymph nodes, poisoned me with chemo, and irradiated me. How can I reconstruct my life? I’m not delusional or trapped in the twin tyrannies known as positive thinking and good attitude. If there’s an upside to living breastlessly, I’m gonna find and write about it. Breastlessness isn’t all great, but some of it is.
Those of us speaking out against creating certification for conflict resolvers don’t seem to have a lot of allies. The weight of popular opinion is that certification with standardized credentials should (must) be done. Here are the reasons I disagree and have a cautionary point of view:
Deborah Sword 