Something

"I'm sure it's nothing. I'm sure it'll be okay." How many times have I said these words to myself and to those around me when it comes to cancer scares? I'm saying that now. I've been having a consistent pain in my leg for two months now, and my oncologist wants me to get an MRI to get it checked out. I was pretty happy and surprised that she's taking that action because they don't just hand out MRI's to anybody with a leg pain in Canada. But she wants to figure out what's going on with my leg, and this is the best and safest way to do it now, given the pregnancy. Still, I'm sure it's nothing...right?

Anton and I met with the ob-gyn again for our monthly check-up. She got the notes and recommendations from the plastic surgeon who did my TRAM-flap, but she has other ideas about how this pregnancy will progress and how to deliver the baby.
The problem is, none of my doctors have any experience at all with a woman in my situation, who is pregnant after having had a bilateral mastectomy and TRAM-flap reconstruction. So everything that they think about the situation is theoretical. The plastic surgeon believes that since I don't have abdominal muscles, I can't push out a baby and will therefore have to have a C-section, which would require cutting into my mesh. The ob-gyn would rather me have a vaginal birth and use a vacuum to suck out the vaboose, which kinda freaks me out. I know it sounds superficial, but I don't want my baby to have a cone-shaped head (I also know that it won't stay cone-shaped for long, but I can't hold off on taking pictures until the vaboose has a round head again). We meet with the ob-gyn in a couple weeks, so we'll find out more then.

We're off to a young adult cancer survivors retreat today, specifically for couples. It's good to get connected with folks who've gone through similar situations, especially because it's so easy to become isolated. Even though young people are resilient, it's quite difficult to just "get over" cancer. Thankfully, there is this space to talk about what's still there, even when the cancer is gone.