On the night of June 13th, I had a horrific dream....I write the exact date down because it marked the countdown of my last month with my breasts. Yup...I am now less than a month away from having my PBM..One month away from having my boobs taken off of my body...On July 13th, I will no longer have my boobs......Kind of scary when I put it that way..In one month from today, I will be up in Albuquerque, boobless, in pain, and hopefully, already feeling a little peace that cancer will not reside in my breasts.Reality is sinking in and is starting to scare the living shit out of me, to tell you the truth...
Anyways....On to my dream....I dreamt that I woke up from having my surgery and everything was so wrong. I remember being in so much pain, (which, yes is wrong, but is totally expected), and I remember having the two drains coming out of each breast/axillae area....The drains were exploding with blood, but I couldn't lift my arms to do anything about it...Then, I remember, in my dream, looking down at my breasts, after the surgery, and they had left on my nipples, and a lot of breast tissue-basically had not even done mastectomies on me.....(I am planning on having skin sparing mastectomies. This means they will save the skin, but take all of the tissue in my breasts, along with the nipples and areolas...I've written about this in a previous blog....) I remember how FURIOUS I was, because I had planned, researched, prepared, etc, for my surgery, and then to wake up with breasts, still fully intact, was just messed up......I just kept thinking in my dream, "I will get cancer now....Why didn't they take my breasts? I wanted my breasts taken off, so I won't have to worry about getting cancer anymore, but now I have to continue to worry. WTF!?" I remember hating my boobs....Pure hatred for my breasts....Is this a type of coping mechanism, where I am trying to trick myself into hating my boobs, so that I won't miss them at all when they are gone? WEIRD!
That dream totally sucked major ass...I know anxiety is starting to set in, with just wanting to begin this process....I've already begun my journey with all of this BRCA stuff, and I now just want to get the surgery done, and even though I know I will have to have a few surgeries over the next couple of months, I just want to start this chapter of all of this.....So I know anxiety and fear kind of fed my dream...In less than a month, the new journey will begin and even though I'm scared as hell, I know that I am strong and too stubborn to let anything get me down. With or without boobs, I am still Angela....
1 comment:
That does sound like a terrible dream - but here's the thing - it's just that - a dream. Because you've taken measures to make sure that your doctor knows what you want, and you've been clear about it. You are making important choices about your health care and not just leaving it to chance. Dreams like this before our PBM's are totally normal though - just our fears following us around in our slumber. You'll be okay though, lots have traveled the path before you and made it out the other side, and you will too.
Teri
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