Disclaimer: Not Funny

I had a long internal debate about whether to mention this here -- this is Baby Spam and not Katie Spam, after all -- but I realized that the story of my first year of motherhood would be incomplete without it.  So here goes...

As many/most/all of you know, on Monday morning (June 11) I'll be having a bilateral prophylactic mastectomy at Mass General.  The key word is prophylactic: I have no active disease, just the credible threat of one.  Thanks to the BRCA1 gene mutation that seems to overstay its welcome, generation after generation, I am one of the way-too-many women in my family that faces an 80% (but in our case, closer to 100%) chance of developing breast and ovarian cancer.  I am profoundly grateful that I have the chance to act preemptively where so many did not; however, right now that fact doesn't seem to be making this process any less daunting. 

My most immediate fears are about the physical aspect.  I’m scared of the recovery process.  I’m fearful of needles and pain medicine and stitches and drains and swelling and loss of motion and chronic discomfort.  I’m dreading that first look in the mirror, facing an alien body.  But more than that, I’m unbearably sad at the thought of not being able to hold my precious son close to my chest and rock him to sleep.  I’m devastated that, for a time, I’ll be unable to lift him and cuddle him close and be his normal old mommy.  I feel, already, the sense of loss awaiting me when his unborn siblings arrive and cannot take their rightful place at my breast after their hard-won entry into this world.   

But Owen needs his Mama more than Mama needs her boobies.

So I will dutifully sacrifice two healthy body parts to reduce the risk of my children being left motherless, my husband being left a widower, and my own body being left ravaged by the brutality of cancer treatments. Empowered -- by information, access to world-class healthcare, the support of family and friends -- I will cut my risk of breast cancer from near-certainty to near-zero. I know this disease all too well -- the surgeries and chemo and radiation and bone marrow transplants -- and those things simply do not have a welcome place in my family's future.

So there ya have it. Hopefully I'll be back in no time, writing about my devious schemes to get Owen to crawl around the house after me (since I can't lift him) and get Aaron to make cookie deliveries to the couch (since I can't lift myself).  It's game time. See you in a week or so. And if my first few posts are a little incoherent, blame the drugs.

Cherishing all my mommy cuddles