Last Monday I had the first surgery in a phase of breast cancer reconstruction. Basically some of my back moved to my front via my armpit. It's as gnarly as it sounds. I've had three drain tubes trailing directly out of my skin for over a week now. Totally reminds me of The Matrix. 

It's been a hard week or so. The night after my surgery I stayed in the hospital, pretty much drifting in and out of episodes of American Greed. My nurse was 15 minutes late with my morphine the first time. He made some joke about how my doctor had so no more morphine, and I told him it wasn't funny at all. The second time he was 45 minutes late. I'm sure there was a reason, but it just goes to show people can decide their hustle based on how they feel about you. Not so well played, Rita Arens.

I didn't really understand what had happened to me until I finally found an animation that wasn't too gross. Now I understand why the healing has been going what to me feels like so slow. I was back at work four days after my lumpectomy, after all. It was way too soon emotionally, but I was fine physically. This time has been the opposite, except for two big cry days.

Last night I went to sleep at midnight and Beloved woke me up at 1 pm. I remember getting up with my alarms to take hydrocodone at four and eight am and my other pills at 9, but each time the fog enveloped me again pretty quickly. If he hadn't woken me up, I think I could've slept 24 hours straight. I do feel better, though.

The reason I wanted to write, other than to capture how this has been (the somewhat primordal scent of limbs not fully lifted in days, the clicking and hissing of hospital machinery in the wee hours, the passing fear that your actual skin might die during a commercial break) -- is to say I found myself searching blogs for what to expect in the ensuing weeks. I've had my first surgery, and now I anticipate my second, which will be much easier, much quicker. I'm amazed at how open and honest the bloggers are, even sharing pictures of what their expanders look like in naked breasts. I wonder, if this would've happened to me years ago when I was more comfortable sharing all my feelings on the Internet, if I would've posted pictures, too. Most of what I find is about reconstruction after masectomy, but my lumpectomy was so extensive and my radiation so effective, I'm essentially being treated like I lost the whole damn thing. 

So hear I am, someone who blogged so faithfully for so many years, surfing and searching the blogosphere for other people's courage and raw authenticity. It feels great to know I can do this, that the whole emergence of blogging created a safe space to say things we all want to hear and no one is able to find in the scientific journals or legally approved medical websites. 

I have to go now - evidence of my past blogging lingers in my inbox. This month I emailed with a woman whose cat had the same surgery I blogged about years ago, and two boyfriends have emailed about my 2013 post on eating disorders and relationships. 

This is beautiful and amazing, that we can all talk together about these hard things in these ways. That I need it so much now feels like a beautiful irony. 

IMG_0251

I've used this boot twice before. Seriously, this is ridiculous.

In the past, however, it's been my fault. Stress fractures from running longer and harder than a nonathlete with flat feet should. This time, a very tall, very large horse accidentally stepped on my foot and broke a toe. The doc with the X-ray warned me if I didn't wear the boot, I'd end up with arthritis and also not be able to run without pain. He also told me that if I were eighteen, I'd probably heal within a week. 

Thanks, motherfucker.

So this week, I wore this giant sofa on my foot to my corporate job with a normal black leather boot on the other foot. I clomped around the office for four days before giving myself a giant overcompensation injury, supination. In other words, I woke up on Friday morning barely able to put any weight on my left foot. I broke a toe on my right foot.

So, yeah. 

I iced my left foot and realized my Mac was down to 60% and I'd left the power cord at work. I headed in with a sneaker on my left foot and a sofa on my right foot and kissed any hope of looking cool at work goodbye for at least six months. There's something about looking physically weak at work that is especially threatening to me. Clomping is not my jam.

So now it's been a week. The doctor initially told me I'd be in a boot for three weeks. I think I'm going to get an X-ray next Saturday, just to see. Maybe I'm closer to eighteen than he thinks.

So many people have been curious this week as to what I could've possibly done to end up in a boot. That's kind of crazy to me after two stress fractures, a broken ankle, a plate, five pins and now a broken toe: How do you people get through life WITHOUT ending up in a boot from time to time? I'm now starting to wonder if my lifestyle is unusual or I am just unrealistically clumsy. 

I suppose, though, the alternative is not moving at all. Staying 100% safe from boots and crutches but instead falling prey to high blood pressure or diabetes. I think as we grow older, the side effect of an active life is a little time spent here and there in a medical boot. I might be deluding myself, but I'd rather be riding horses and once in three years break a toe when the gentle giant accidentally steps on me than to miss the reassurance of the smell of a horse's neck while going through radiation treatment. 

When I'm running or riding a horse, I don't feel middle-aged. I feel like I'm LIVING. 

So, here I am. In the boot again. Thankfully, I have two of them and a set of crutches in my house. Just in case. 'Cuz I'm living. 

Dear friends, family, and college buddies I haven't laid eyes on in twenty years:

Boy, was 2017 amazing! Hilda joined the Peace Corps after realizing she couldn't afford community college. She's currently digging latrines in Sierra Leone, which she says is beautiful as long as you don't look at the human feces or feral dogs. We have high hopes she'll wear herself out after a year and come back to join the nursing program at a nonprofit institution of higher learning.

We recently learned there are tax cuts! This is great! We're looking forward to using our return to buy a new SUV that should be able to navigate the crumbling roadways we use to commute two hours each way to a soul-killing office job that will soon be replaced by robots.

In other news, Nancy made it through a round of breast cancer thanks to us learning that you can get an interest-free payment plan if you call the 800 number and tell them you have no money. You, too, could pay $35.18 a month for the next twenty years to each of ten different healthcare providers. #blessed

Little Jerod has been pursuing four different sports at the age of nine. The doctors say his concussions should heal up well and he's excited to play competitive league soccer year-round as long as his games continue to start before 11 pm on school nights. He may even see ten minutes of playing time in 2018. Woot!

Nancy and Alexander are looking forward to celebrating 23 years of marriage in December, when they realized they'll be making the same household income that they did in 1998 despite a 43% increase in healthcare costs. Nancy is excited her antidepressants will soon be covered under the maintenance medicine list on her high-deductible health plan.

What else? The family took an exciting trip this year to Duluth, where they took a tobaggan ride down the steepest hill in the middle of a winter storm. You haven't lived until you've crossed a busy intersection on black ice, amirite?

Nancy is still putting in twenty hours of unpaid work each week at the PTA after a round of budget cuts reduced the teaching staff by 18%. Alexander forwent dental care in order to pay for Hilda's totalled Corolla after they took out the stop sign on Highway 50. Thank God nobody was seriously injured, because man, we haven't hit the out-of-pocket max yet even in December. Even after cancer. But who's counting?

Hope you and yours are having a fantastic holiday season and avoid the Q4 layoffs at your employer. Happy New Year!

They say scent in the strongest tie to memory. What I will remember from this time is the scent of me.

I weathered radiation treatment during a hot Missouri summer. They told me I couldn't use normal deoderant because it contains aluminum, which is akin to putting aluminum foil in the microwave when undergoing radiation treatment.

This is what I smelled like:

• Burnt flesh

• Lavendar

• Linseed oil

• Aloe

• Musk

• Neosporin

• Aquaphor

• Eucerin

• Dead skin

• Sweaty polyester

• Wicking athletic bras

• Wet cotton

I finished my last radiation treatment last Friday. Since then, I've shed a layer of burnt skin, brown, almost black.

Underneath is the fuschia of regeneration.

Skin is pretty amazing stuff.

It itches. My God, it itches. I've tried not to scratch, but even the reapplication of Aquaphor after each shower has ruined at least ten tshirts and countless bras, and now with the skin so raw and new I'm not sure what I will wear to work tomorrow, when I'm sure they expect me to return anew and healed now that the treatment is over.

Except it's not really over yet. The radiation is still working inside me, and will continue to work for a few weeks, shining the flashlight over the dark room to make sure no cancer lurks in the corners before we shut the door for now. Until the next mammogram. And the next mammogram will reveal a completely new me, the me that is: after.

I will never smell aloe again and not think of this time.

But I am relieved. It is over. For the first time since April 2017, I can look at life through eyes unclouded by breast cancer. And that's a good thing.

ONWARD.

I am supposed to be at a Royals game with Doug French right now. I'm not, because in spite of the fact he's in town this week only, I had to text him while bawling in the parking of KU Cancer Center in Lee's Summit and tell him I just couldn't do it. I needed to go home.

I went in to my third week of radiation expecting to be in and out in about fifteen minutes, like usual. That is not what happened.

Let me preface this by saying my cancer team is made up of decent, good people. There is not a bad apple among them. That said, I think it must be very easy for people who treat lots of cases to forget that for most people they treat, this is the first time. It's a good lesson to remember in any job you do, whether you drive a school bus or operate on people's spines or manage new college graduates -- if you interact with the public, some of the people you deal with are scared or intimidated, and it's not only your job to do your job, it's also your job to monitor them and respond in kind. If you want to be really good at what you do, that is. This is a lesson I'm internalizing through this experience, and I hope it makes me a better person overall.

Today after I lay down (this is the closest approximation visually I can find) and closed my eyes and listened for the beep and thought to myself that this is the second-to-last week, this will soon be over, the therapist came out and told me for the second half of treatment, the doctor would come out and draw on me for "the boost."*

I did not know what the boost was. I did not know the boost was coming. There was no warning about said boost.

I did not know they were going to fucking boost my radiation. With a large attachment that looked like the machine Dr. Evil uses. This is the best pic I could find that looks like the normal radiation machine. Now picture a huge scope that stops about an inch from the lumpectomy scar. That's the booster ray, or whatever it is technically called.

I'm lying there, and one of the therapists whips out a Sharpie and starts drawing on me, making some notes that she keeps on a piece of paper she rests on my stomach, like a desk. They chitted and chatted and breathed and sang to Phil Collins, and the longer it took, the more I started to get ANGRY. I was angry to be the one on the table. I was angry about the new bill that shows up every damn week saying I owe hundreds of dollars after insurance. I was angry this was taking so long. I was angry I was half-naked for the fifty-first time in front of virtual strangers.

At one point the therapist apologized for the awkward positioning, and I replied that everything about this entire experience is awkward, and she took it wrong. She said, "I suppose at some point, you're like, whatever," she says good-naturedly. "I don't even see nudity anymore. I just see tattoos."

I know she meant well, but I do not feel whatever about my health or my body. I still think of myself as having to lie there half-naked. I would still like my dignity back. I would still prefer not to have people draw on my secondary sex characteristics with permanent art supplies. I would still prefer to be a person and not a pound of flesh.

I would still prefer for this shit to be over and to have my chest back to myself, beat up, scarred, smaller and burned though it may be.

I refrained from punching her, because at no time has this experience become "whatever." At every time I have wished for my dignity back, and to not to have to bare my breasts to half of Jackson county, and to not have to have Sharpie marks and tattoos that mess up my expensive bras and to not have nurses tell me to just slather on creams to stop the itching that leach through said bras to my professional clothing, and oh, by the way, I haven't been able to stop working in that professional clothing during this experience, so if my left breast goes up in flames during a meeting about open enrollment, I can neither itch it or go slather on cream. I just have to white-knuckle my way through.

Life does not stop for cancer.

After all that is done, the radiation oncologist and I chit-chat about the typhoon we had in KC last night, and then he gives me some suggestions for other creams. The nurse explains to me what radiation feels like, even though she's never had it. Anger wells up in my chest again at this woman who thinks she knows what radiation feels like well enough to explain it to me.

I cry in the parking lot. I text Doug to tell him I can't do it. I just can't stop crying to make it to a baseball game in less than an hour. My mascara is around my knees and I'm still wearing my work clothes and I have to find itch cream.

I apologize. He's like, "For enduring radiation? Please." And that's how I know our eleven years of friendship is so worthwhile - those friendships I made while blogging are so worthwhile. I know I'm not around as much, but you are my people in a way the 90 percent of my people in my new day-to-day probably will never be, because I'll probably never show them as much of me as I have shown you.

I stopped crying finally. I drove to CVS. I looked on the shelf for the anti-itch new cream. I couldn't find it. I went to the pharmacy counter and got a guy to come look for me. Finally, he says, "What is this for?" And I say, "Radiation burns."

AND HE STARTED MANSPLAINING HOW RADIATION BURNS ARE JUST FOR MOISTURE BECAUSE THEY DON'T HURT.

Friends, that young man is really a lucky young man, because I am able to control myself.

I muttered I'd probably go with my radiation oncologist's recommendation and went home and cried some more. I told Doug I'd make this funny when I blogged it, but it's still not funny. It just sucks.

However, there are only eight more treatments left. Eight treatments until I get to stop thinking about cancer for the first time since April. Maybe there will be some smooth water.

This week is the one-year anniversary week of my lay-off from SheKnows Media.

It's been a year. I got laid off. I got a new job. Two months in, I got cancer. I'm almost done with cancer treatment. It's almost G's birthday. He'll be forty-four.

ONWARD.

*According to science, the boost does work for DCIS patients, of which I am one. SCIENCE.

Today I had my first radiation treatment. When I walked into the dressing room I've been in several times before, I noticed the dirty laundry bag.

(I inquired whether either I or my clothing were actually radioactive biohazards, and they assured me the linen bags were misleading and needed to be replaced.)

The person who does the radiation (nurse? specialist?) led me back to the room, which she assured me was always dark and cold. There, in the middle of the floor, was a bench with the same 50 SHADES OF GREY pegs to hold onto above your head.

We quickly dispensed with the niceties of the cape, and I gripped the handles and shut my eyes while the woman told me to just lie there "like a sack of potatoes" while they manuevered me into the proper position for nuclear reaction. (I don't know if that's exactly what radiation is, but hey.)

Then they took about 35 X-rays while speaking to me through an intercom. They assured me they could see me and hear me via microphones and two TV monitors in case I decided to freak out. As I listened to today's line-up, "Jack and Diane" and something I feel very confident was by the Black Eyed Peas, I stared at two red lights in the ceiling, wondering if they were the lasers that would radiate me.

Then I wondered if my eyes might laser shut.

This morning, I didn't put on dry shampoo because the ingredient list contained aluminum, and they told me not to wear normal deoderant that works in summer because it contained aluminum and I pictured my head starting on fire.

Then I wondered, while waiting there, if my shorts would actually become radioactive, which would make me sad, because they are both linen and Athleta and those are two things I don't have a lot of in my life.

I listened to "Jack and Diane" and wondered if my entire cancer experience would be narrated by '80s hits while the machine reared up its head and started rotating its way around me. It didn't actually show any laser beams, as I had anticipated, but it fried one side of me then rotated around and hit the other, all in the space of about ten minutes.

I went back to the closet and put on my clothes. A nurse took me into a room and told me about the healing properties of aloe vera, which the lab pharmacy would sell me at cost for ~$2. When and if the burns got worse, she had samples of other lotions that I own from when the little angel was a very chapped-face baby.

She said the fatigue was cumulative, so I probably wouldn't notice it for a while, and if I felt tired, I should get some exercise. I realize that seems counter-intuitive, but I've always found the if you can't take a nap, the best cure for a case of the tireds is a brisk walk around the block, preferably outside.

They gave me a schedule leading up until the Friday before Labor Day. I left. I sold some books at Half-Price Books. I bought some hanging plants on clearance at Walmart that I thought I could save from certain Walmart death. I took them home. I hung them up and gave them plant food and water. I ate dinner with my parents and the little angel.

I thought maybe this radiation thing won't be so bad.

It remains to be seen. They say the fatigue and skin burns will come later. But the worst fatigue I've ever felt in my life came when I was unemployed and not taking my meds for microscopic colitis and I developed a Vitamin D absorption problem and my friends, I wasn't sure if I would ever be able to work again because I COULD NOT WAKE UP in the mornings. Fortunately, now I take 50,000 units of Vitamin D once a week and I get up before seven on the daily, but let me tell you if something is off with your body the struggle is real even to get out of bed. I always used to think people were exaggerating. Not anymore. There are lots of people who struggle with chronic fatigue every day. Please understand that feels like not trusting your body to rev up at all. It's terrifying to think you might actually not be able to get out of bed. I hope I never experience that fear again.

So, in a way, having a Vitamin D deficiency, after one day, was scarier than radiation. For sure having a broken leg and a plate put in was scarier than radiation.

It's funny. I always thought cancer treatment would be the scariest thing ever. I realize I'm at the low end of the scale, but it's still cancer treatment. I now measure medical hell on a scale of CAN I MOVE to OMG I MAY NEVER WALK AGAIN.

There have been a lot of moments along the way on this cancer journey where I've seriously questioned my ability to go on, but today is not one of them. But, tomorrow I'll be two hours late to work because of radiation. And that will go on, two hours late or two hours gone early, for 22 work days. That's the hard part, the logistics. The hard part is not fighting cancer, but fighting cancer while the rest of the world goes on like everything is normal when it is so not normal for you.

ONWARD.

Yesterday I went to the radiation oncologist's office to finish what I started before I called a halt to wait for genetic testing. I'd already talked to the financial counselor (you know it's bad when they have one on staff with her own office), and they made me pee in a cup again even though I informed them it was Shark Week and really, it'd have to be a miracle, but you just never know, honey, women find themselves pregnant all the time with no knowledge of how that happened.

After that, we went to the CAT scan room, which was very cold. I had my choice of three different levels of robes to put on in the dressing room, which locked with a little pool-ball keychain that I got to keep with me. I thought it was kind of cute they were going to let me pick which robe I would wear before I showed my chest to an entire room full of people.

I don't remember ever having a CAT scan before. When I asked about the cause, it was "to determine my course of treatment." I had to lay down on a bench, topless, while the nurse marked me up with Sharpie and stuck some little metal BBs to my boobs. She told me to put my arms above my head and grab the pegs, which let me tell you, felt VERY 50 Shades of Gray and not in a good way. Then she covered me up because there was a dude in the sound booth or whatever, and I guess she wanted me to have some shred of dignity after showing my boobs to half of Jackson County, Missouri.

After a while, the oncologist came in and verified the BBs were in the right place, and they rolled me into the CAT scan machine. There was music in the middle of the machine, somehow, and Little Red Corvette was playing. Every time I rolled in, I saw this:

And I really wanted to tell whoever designed the machine that THIS IS A USABILITY ERROR. No one rolling into a large, Prince-playing casket wants to be reminded they are going nuclear. I mean, seriously?

After that level of hell was over, the nurse told me it was time to get my tattoos. I thought I was getting one, but oh, no, it was six. And just because they are "just like a freckle" does not mean I wanted them, at all. Add insult to injury when I realized instead of a proper tattoo gun, she was just going to dab some ink on me then stick me with the medical version of a thumbtack six times. The sternum was the worst, but if you've ever considered getting a side-boob tattoo, let me just advise against it. That is a sensitive area, the ribcage.

Then it was done. She told me I can't wear normal deoderant until this is all over because there is metal in deoderant and it causes a reaction. So I'm buying stock in Tom's of Maine because that is my option in Missouri in 100-degree heat. I go back next Tuesday at noon for "the long one," whatever that means, then I have 21 more weekday sessions of lasers (which, I don't know if that's what it is, but that's what I'm picturing), then maybe this nightmare will be over for a while.

ONWARD. #medicalink #yolo #whatthefuck

Hi. If it feels like it's been a long time, it has. I had blood drawn for genetic testing on June 9. The medical oncologist's nurse called me with the results this week, on July 19, six weeks later. I was told we'd have the results in two weeks, so the six weeks thing was sort of a shock. As days became weeks became months, I actually had about a three-day period in there that I forgot completely about the cancer thing. That was kind of nice, like when you wake up from a dream where a thing you want to have happen happens and you haven't realized yet it isn't true.

But! They called this week, and they told me there is no BRCA mutation, which means no need for dramatic surgeries and I can continue with the original treatment plan of 22 sessions of radiation. KU Cancer Center does radiation on weekdays, so we're looking at slightly less than five weeks once things get going hopefully next week. First I have to have a CAT scan and get a tiny tattoo so they can line everything up on the daily without fear it will wash off. Fortunately, I already have two actual tattoos, so this idea doesn't freak me out. However, I never expected to be getting ink done for medical reasons, so there's that. I have considered turning it into something else when this is all over, but I'm not really into tattoos in that general area.

I didn't realize how much I was stuffing my feelings down until I got the news this week. Since then, I have cried daily over long-past events like Sandy Hook and Tamir Rice. I have grown irrationally angry over small slights to my daughter. I remembered on Monday that I got cancer out of nowhere and got really mad. I lost my grip on gratitude about three hours ago, and I am clawing my way back to the person I really want to be. We're on an hour-by-hour schedule here at Camp Rita.

I am so flawed.

At work this week I've been dealing with situations I don't have a lot of control over and having those self-aware snapshots where you realize I didn't do this on purpose but I bet this other person thinks I'm an idiot. I do not relish scenarios in which someone else thinks Rita Arens doesn't understand the Internet (a real quote at one point in my career), but I'm also growing more aware the older I get that no matter what I do? Someone will always think I'm an idiot. And probably I am enough times to sort of warrant it. And enough not at other times to warrant telling people who think I am to go to hell.

I'm working on not caring so much.

I feel like so much time has passed since February when I started this new life with a new job after eight years of working from home, a commute and a new set of challenges with a teenager and a husband who travels up to 75 percent of the time, depending on the month. A new health condition. Most of the time I'm fine, but sometimes I have this anger that bubbles up. My husband counsels me not to send the email, not to say the thing, and I'm listening. But the flip side is that I checked out so hard last week that I almost gave up on radiation entirely because I didn't want to beg a doctor one more damn time to please give me the results of that test you took over a month ago. Being made to feel you're overreacting to your cancer is beyond unacceptable, but it happens.

I'd love to end this post by saying how much I've grown since I last wrote, but that would be a lie. I've survived. I've vacationed. I've trashed about half of PARKER CLEAVES and am growing increasingly uncertain if I will ever finish it. It's hard to write with this commute and my husband's travel. It's hard to find time to work out. It's so hot it's hard to breathe, and I like hot. But this is insane hot, so hot that if I try to go for a walk at work at 8:30 am I soak my shirt through in a half hour outside.

I hope I can find my writing inspiration again. I don't feel much like a writer these days. I worry it was a phase I went through in my thirties. Because I still have a lot to say -- I just can't find the right structure to say it in. Maybe when this health scare passes, my mind will feel free to concentrate on stories again. I hope so, because most of what I've ever cared about has been told through stories.

Watching my daughter watching the sun
makes me reflect on the races I've run.
Hers are still all out in front.
Mine reflect how I was wont.
Out past forty and turning the corner
forget whatever I had planned.

But the waves that grind pink shells to the sand
also carry great ships into land.
Old man in blue trunks with a metal detector
hoping to find some middle class treasure;
we are all here trying to recapture
the first bead on the strand.

They always say you're nothing without your health.
I learned that this year, through their stealth,
breast cancer was hiding
in my body subsiding,
I used to fear really big things.
Now I understand--

the worst things can be held in your hand.