If radiologists are sirens beckoning their patients towards a dangerous shore, surgeons are saviors - eagles that soar from the sky to whisk the newly diagnosed away from danger.  They see patients after the diagnosis but before the toxins take their toll.  They deliver good news.  Tumors suddenly seem tidy, removable, survivable. For the first time in a week, I think I can beat thing.  Breasts or no breasts, hair or no hair, maybe I can beat this thing.  

The surgeon is pregnant.  She is glowing and full of life.  She is a harbinger of hope - perky, positive, powerful.  She represents everything we are desperate to hold on to.  We talk about kids, siblings, Book of Mormon - things that make us wonder if we'd met at a park or school fundraiser would we have been friends?  Would she and her family have come to dinner?  Would we take the time to stop andto chat on the street?  But it isn't like that.  Truth is, she will come in an out of our lives.  She will deliver us from one danger into another.  She will wish us well and we will speak kindly of her.  We will tell people we are grateful for her skill, her humor.  We will remember her as a bright spot in a dark place.  But after she is gone, the hard part will start.  The part that changes a person from the inside.  

The surgeon walks us through most likely treatment.  Removal of the tumor, mastectomy most likely.  One breast or two is up to me.  She talks about reconstruction and implants and ways of saving skin.  She talks about chemo and radiation and the timetable ahead. 

The list of fears I have is long.  Some are big ( can my heart handle this?).  Some are petty (will I gain a lot of weight? It seems so unfair that chemo is more likely to make you gain weight than lose it.)  Will I be stupid after all those chemicals have their way with my brain?  I'm far more attached to my brain than my breasts.  Will I still feel like me at the end of it all?

Even if I I survive, will I be a functioning member of my family?  I was supposed to go back to work.  I was supposed to find way to make enough money to help send my kids to college.  Marc has been counting on me to find a way to ease the financial burden that is about to hit and now I'm part of the problem.  I've been in serious avoidance about restarting some sort of lucrative career and it dawns on me that maybe I was so terrified of going back to work, that my mind created this tumor so I wouldn't have to.   In the end, will they all be afraid to confess the awful secret they've been keeping - that mom isn't really mom anymore and sometimes they wonder if the struggle was worth it?

How much harder will the future be for everyone if I'm fat, bald, breast-less, and stupid.  Maybe Marc will find himself thinking about what life would be like with someone young and healthy?  Is he thinking about it already?  I doubt  he's shallow enough to worry much about the boobs.  But the other stuff - the physical limitations, the financial limitations, the mental limitations, those are big.  They could be impossibly difficult for him.  It's really too big to get my head around, so I choose to focus on what I can control.  Most likely, it will be a sucky year.  A sucky year for all of us.  No more, no less.  And that sucky year will presumably be followed by a series of less sucky years. And the next year of my life, more than any year before it, will show me what I'm made of.  I decide I will do what I can to be an example for myself, for my family.  I will try to find the grace to handle what is coming my way with humor and dignity.  Sure, there will ups and downs, but there will be a future.   And for now, Marc is with me.  The surgeon had given us hope and that has brought us together.  Right now is good.  Right now feels strong.  Right now feels hopeful.  Right now we have to get ready to go to dinner with friends.  Friends who know nothing about what is about to happen to us.