Yesterday I cried several times at work. Big, splashy tears. It felt so strange to have my co-workers think my IV bruise was a spider bite, like life is that normal. I ended up telling a few more people because I thought I might scream.

I made it through the day, and last night I stood in the shower for 45 minutes with a bar of soap gently trying to work off the dressing stuck on with dried blood like superglue. Finally it came off and I was do relieved the incision didn't start bleeding I cried again. This is a wet business, DCIS.

I put a ton of Neosporin and five butterfly bandages on the gnarly incision (frankly, it makes me kind of queasy to think what is gone) and went to sleep with my arm in a pillow. I dreamt someone wanted to sell me a grand house with an inside swimming pool and I said to Greg we couldn't afford this place if one window broke because the ceilings are fifty feet high and woke at five in the morning wondering what that meant.

My girl and I have clashed a bit, which has always been my biggest fear with maternal cancer. I worry I'm rising too much to her teenage criticisms, which are unfair in the way of teenage and not personal, though it feels that way. I wish I could say I'm such a big person I don't mind if challenges arise when I'm less than a week out from losing an ice cream scoop of breast tissue, but you know what? I'm not. I still feel pretty damn sorry for myself, I admit it.

My doc called this morning to say there was no DCIS left in my pathology, which is way good news for my health but also there is a touch of "so I went through all that for nothing?" And even though I know it's not for nothing, we needed to know the margins were clear, I look in the mirror at what I am now and remember what I was a week ago when unbeknownst to all of us, the cancer was taken by the biopsy.

Bygones.

But props to the biopsy guy, right? Here's to you, dude, because those were small samples. WTF? Get down with your bad self.

There seem to be many steps left. My girl is mad at me. The road feels long and rather lonely. My incision hurts. My pride hurts. My mothering instinct hurts.

I guess I'm not the poster child for doing breast cancer parenting right.

Fuck it.

ONWARD.