BRCA JOURNAL: CHAPTER FIVE

In fact, I was part of a study and had been screened even more often than most high-risk women.

During the year preceding my surgery, I had had a mammogram and two MRIs of my breasts. My last MRI had been performed just three months before my surgery.

On the car ride home, I called my dad first. I reached him at his office. “Dad,” I said, “close your door.” I explained everything the doctor had told us. Through his tears, he cried, “I am so glad you were always smarter than me, honey.” God, that felt good.

So Long, Regret; Bye-Bye, Uncertainty

At the exact moment my doctor told me the pathologist had found cancer in my left breast, all of my regret, doubt and uncertainty about having the surgery flew right out the window. The surgery really had been the right thing to do. If I hadn’t had it, who knows when the cancer would have been caught. It could have been too late for me, like it had been for my grandmother, aunt and cousin.

The regret that had previously consumed me was immediately replaced with a great sense of resolve. I didn’t feel great yet, but I knew I would get through it. I was healthy and I was strong – if not physically, then mentally.

When I couldn’t reach a coffee cup in the cupboard as I always had before the surgery, I laughed at how goofy it was that, at 5’8”, I had to climb up on a step stool to reach it. When I didn’t feel comfortable driving, I took a cab. When I got stiff from having to sleep propped up on my back night after night, I just shrugged it off. When I tired easily and had to take a nap, I didn’t fight it. In time, I knew all would be well.

As the weeks passed, I became stronger and everything just seemed better. I began the process of having the expanders filled, and my breasts began to again look like breasts as I had known them. I was able to drive my kids to school, work out and go back to work. I could even reach the coffee cups.

Now, except for some tightness in my arms and chest, I feel as good as ever. I can carry the kids and the groceries – sometimes both at the same time. We go to the park, the zoo and the museum. Jim and I have resumed going to parties, events and out for our weekly date nights. I have planted the flowers, cleaned out the closets and tried new recipes.

I took the kids on vacation, began potty-training the baby, threw a birthday party for my eldest and watched my son play his first game of T-ball.

In short, I have been living life – which was the whole purpose of the surgery in the first place.

My second surgery is coming up at the end of May. I do not feel any of the trepidation I had with the first one. In fact, I am looking forward to it. It’s just another step toward getting back to normal. Okay, maybe a little better than normal – I will have the boobies of an eighteen-year-old, after all. (Did I mention no bra needed?)

Oh, yeah, and I will be healthy, too. That’s not so bad either.

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Michelle Meklir McBride is an attorney in Chicago. Michelle has helped make SU2C a reality and was instrumental in aligning SU2C with Major League Baseball. She sits on the boards of two cancer research foundations: Little Heroes and the Noreen Fraser Foundation. Michelle dedicates this piece to her husband and three kids.