First blog post
7 years ago
P-Day.
I groggily blink open my eyes and grumble in protest while fumbling blindly for my phone to see the time while the sun pours into the bedroom.
It’s flat, showing me only a blank screen for all my confused efforts to turn it on. Once I’m awake enough to realise what’s going on I roll over and look at the alarm clock on Mel’s side of the bed.
It blinks red back at me, 11:59am.
D-Day. Well, P-Day.. PreOp day.
One day more, another day, another destiny,
I shake my head, muttering. I’ve never been a morning person but I couldn’t sleep last night because of the anxiety and after pottering around on the computer until 4:30am eventually drifted off full of Toblerone chocolate and cold water.
This never ending road to Calvary..
I start humming. My brain deals with stress in a very unique way - it settles on a song, embeds it and puts it on loop for hours on end in my head.
One more day before the storm,
At the barricades of Freedom,
When our ranks begin to form,
Will you take your place with me?
Absurdly it appears that for P-Day it’s chosen ‘One Day More’ - a company collective song from the musical ‘Les Miserables’. To top is all off it’s a song I don’t really know all the lyrics to so it’s skipping from part to part of the bits I remember.
One more day to revolution,
We will nip it in the bud.
We’ll be ready for these schoolboys,
They will wet themselves with blood..
I’m singing under my breath and doing the accents as I head for the bathroom. Mel is already up trying to press breakfast on me - something I really don’t have the stomach for at the best of times, least of all now. I snap at her but eventually relent and consent to sit down for a bowl of Special-K that looks concerningly nothing like the version we have back in Australia.
I get through about half of it and tip the rest down the sinkhole.
Watch'm run amuck,
Catch'm as they fall,
Never know your luck
'Till there's a free for all..
We’ve worked out the path we need to take to the Preop appointment with Dr Brownstein and it looks very much like we can just catch a bus from about 200 metres up the street to a stop approximately the same distance from his office. I’d like to say that was completely planning, but it’s been a stroke of good luck on our part - anyone coming here for this same reason however would do well to rent this place if from overseas.
I have around 20 minutes between the end of my half-breakfast in which to shower and dress, which I manage to do with a few minutes to spare. Mel recycles yet another SafeWay paper shopping bag into a make shift mudmap and we walk down the winding carbon-carpeted white wooden staircase to the street.
I’m still snappy and Mel is feeding off my stress, returning my verbal jabs here and there while we’re walking to the bus station. I’m trying to control it and do know that I’m being unreasonable, but we’re in a strange city with no idea (really) which way we need to go other than the slip of recycled paper bag in our possession and a strict deadline that’s tight for time.. it’s an environment that doesn’t really promote peaceful interaction.
Here a little dip
There a little touch,
Most of 'em are goners
So they won't miss much.
We arrive at what appears to be the bus shelter and stare at the street map bolted to the inside of the wall somewhat uncomprehendingly. I can’t make heads nor tails of it so Mel asks a nearby about-to-be passenger if they know about the direction of the stop we need to get to.
They don’t.
Mel feels unsure about the direction of the traffic and we argue a bit - but anyone who knows me knows that I have a truly shit sense of direction so I back down from that pretty fast. We (Mel) decide to go across the street to the other bus station to catch the flow of traffic going the other way.
San Francisco, and maybe the USA in general, has an amazingly vivid tapestry of people - particularly the homeless or hard luck cases. As I stand here and cuddle Mel from behind (my way of apologising for being a tool-burger) I’m listening to a shortish caucasian woman with hippie half-moon glasses talking articulately to another woman of african american decent about all the locations in the city that they hand out food and on what days.
She relates her experiences about being respectful and getting to know the food-handlers on a first name basis because they will then be ‘kinder and more generous’ in the portions they give out to her. She shares her process on getting to the front of the queue more successfully so as to get a better variety with her food stamps, and also how she uses the internet in the public library to scope out lists of places that give away organic fruits etc as seconds before they go to market. She’s healthy and well nourished with no immediately apparent traces of addiction.
There’s a real science to it and part of me wonders if this woman has fallen from corporate grace at some stage in her history - she’s smart, proactively savvy and streetwise. She’d be an asset to any logistics team and I’m reminded again how bad America’s economy really must be.
The woman she is trying to knowledge share with is missing most of her teeth, although in her mid thirties and a deep nut brown. She is dressed in gangsta-rap apparel and has a jittery air about her as she speaks in turn about the dangers of receiving her food and being mugged for it on occasion by those in the line bigger and stronger than her.
There is a third woman who, hunched, wisened and chinese, is sitting on the bench to the side who must be at least in her 80’s who is considerably less well dressed. They are all waiting for the bus, and all three of them were in the same line for food.
The correct bus arrives and pulls up just short of the station. Mel and I move down to get into the bustling jostle that has formed, only to be denied entry along with the gangsta-rap woman as the bus becomes to over-stuffed with passengers. The doors slam shut and it pulls away as I look down at my watch.
1:31pm.
My appointment is at 2:00pm with a projected 28 minute travel time thanks to the now rapidly dwindling bus and google maps. Fuck. This is less than ideal.
Mel suggests taking a taxi but a quick scan of the area reveals no obvious ranks and I don’t like my chances of flagging one down with the way the street is set up. We decide to wait for the next bus which according to the sign should be around 3 minutes away.
Which it is and pulls up with *considerably* less people wedged into it. We pile on, take a seat and I stare vacantly out of the window, my foot tapping nervously along to the musical continuing to take place between my ears.
One day to a new beginning
Raise the flag of freedom high!
Every man will be a king..
About 20 minutes into the ride Mel shares with me that she’s not sure that we’re actually going in the right direction, which calms me no end. After some cross referencing of our mudmap and my hazy memory it’s determined that we’re okay shortly before arriving at our required stop, piling off with a few other passengers at the top of a hill.
In the distance the skyline of San Francisco ‘actual’ stretches our like a picturesque postcard shot. Mel starts off down road cheerfully with me trailing behind - I absolutely have no idea how she always knows which way to go but it’s inhuman - and we arrive at 1001 Mariposa Street at exactly 2:00pm.
It’s nothing like I expected.. in my head, aside from errant musicals about french suffering, glass skyscrapers and a marbled lobby had swum, snooty faced receptionists and crazy stuff like that. In reality the building blends in with San Fran suburbia landscape innociously and looks for all the world just like another residential apartment.
I locate the entry buzzer and after stabbing at it repeatedly manage to get a connection to Suite 101 which is Dr Brownstein’s office. The door swings open and we walk inside to a darkish hallway with signs on the walls leading to ‘garage’ and ‘lifts’. Several wooden doors offer up brass number plates and 101 is the closest to the entry so easily found.
An attractive mid twenties woman with sandy hair and huge smile greets us at the doorway and welcomes us inside with an bouncy introduction of ‘Hi, I’m Katrina! Nga.. how do you say it?”
I chuckle and automatically correct her to the phonetic of ‘NighRee’ which she repeats with a nod, then introduces herself to Mel before beckoning us down a small 3 step set of stairs.
I’m mesmerised. If I thought the outside looked nothing like I’d built it up to be in my mind, the interior of office has hit a literal home run on my unreality meter. Directly in front of me is a life-sized tin-woodsman metal statue which *gigantic* breasts sticking out at a comical 90 degree angle.
The whole office has been decorated by someone with an incredibly eclectic sense of style. It’s warm, close, and decked out in predominately of rich brown woody colours. There’s not a hint of clinical hidden anywhere in here and we’re lead down to the main floor to a desk that is covered in glass under which are post-it notes with quite good sketches of a dachshund doodled over time.
The desk is overpowered by a huge, 1.5 metre high wing-backed bright yellow chair with purple stripes that is almost throne like in its presence. I make a quip to Katrina that I like her chair to which she chuckles and quickly identifies it as Brownstein’s.
The man has style, I’ll give him that.
Katrina sits with us and has me fill in some forms that I forgot to bring with me. (“It’s okay, that happens all the time!”) Mel asks a few small questions and we’re given some documentation to read at a later time on post operative care.
Frank makes an appearance and snuffles his way slowly over to us. Frank is Dr Brownstein’s 15 year old dachshund dog who I’d read on his website frequents the office and anyone who brings their dog to their office has instant respect from me. After a prolonged scratch session and inspection of Mel I’m graced with Frank’s attention and feel a little more relaxed once he’s done with me.
Katrina has gone and I stand up to shake Dr Brownstein’s hand as he enters the room. His grip is firm and he is dry man, but there is humour behind his eyes that I suspect is only reserved for people close to him. He takes a seat in his wingback and we resume the post op appointment.
He reviews my patient file and asks me where we come from in Australia, recounting how he has sailed up the east coast and is quite font of our continent, and then starts to talk about how tomorrow is going to go.
My surgery commences at 7:30am but I am asked to be at the surgery centre at 6:30am to commence further preop procedures. It will be during this time I have my chest drawn on and all the druggy goodness pumped into me.
He estimates 2 to 3 hours of surgery time and assures Mel that she will be able to see me about 15 minutes after he’s done. He also assures me that he will come and see her directly once the operation is completed and give her a rundown. She seems relieved by this.
He then pulls out a drain device and demonstrates how it will work, and gives examples of how the fluid coming out of them will change over the next week. He explains that if we see particularly large amounts of deep red fluids coming out that we are to call immediately and to remain vigilant in checking the differences.
I’m told that I will be fitted with special stockings that will keep my legs circulated during the operation and that I should continue wearing these for the next couple of nights - however if they itch or cause me discomfit I am to discontinue use and NOT call him.. particularly not at 2am in the morning as another patient did once.
I chuckle and assure him that I’ll be making no such call. He nods and then asks me to come over to behind a partition and remove my shirt. I do so, then remove my bra plus supporting sports bra that I use as additional support and sit bare chested on a clinic table while a conversation continues between Mel and the Dr.
It’s a weird feeling to sit here exposed with the air flowing around me essentially in public. I’m looking forward to this becoming more natural.
Dr Brownstein returns his attention to me and examines my breast tissue. He seems quite pleased with what he sees and assures me that we’ll see a good result, which sets me at ease considering that size was a key concern of mine. I ask questions about my stretch marks (I have extreme sets of them thanks to my size) and he responds by saying that my concern about these will not be as big as I think once I see my chest revealed.
I actually believe him and am relieved.
He finishes his examination and asks me to dress once again, we close the conversation and exit the office, walking back up the street again to the bus stop. I breathe deeply, once, twice and then a third time.
P-Day done.
O-Day tomorrow. Early tomorrow.
And I suspect no sleep tonight.
Tomorrow we'll be far away,
Tomorrow is the judgement day.
Tomorrow we'll discover,
What our God in Heaven has in store.
One more dawn,
One more day,
One day more..
It’s flat, showing me only a blank screen for all my confused efforts to turn it on. Once I’m awake enough to realise what’s going on I roll over and look at the alarm clock on Mel’s side of the bed.
It blinks red back at me, 11:59am.
D-Day. Well, P-Day.. PreOp day.
One day more, another day, another destiny,
I shake my head, muttering. I’ve never been a morning person but I couldn’t sleep last night because of the anxiety and after pottering around on the computer until 4:30am eventually drifted off full of Toblerone chocolate and cold water.
This never ending road to Calvary..
I start humming. My brain deals with stress in a very unique way - it settles on a song, embeds it and puts it on loop for hours on end in my head.
One more day before the storm,
At the barricades of Freedom,
When our ranks begin to form,
Will you take your place with me?
Absurdly it appears that for P-Day it’s chosen ‘One Day More’ - a company collective song from the musical ‘Les Miserables’. To top is all off it’s a song I don’t really know all the lyrics to so it’s skipping from part to part of the bits I remember.
One more day to revolution,
We will nip it in the bud.
We’ll be ready for these schoolboys,
They will wet themselves with blood..
I’m singing under my breath and doing the accents as I head for the bathroom. Mel is already up trying to press breakfast on me - something I really don’t have the stomach for at the best of times, least of all now. I snap at her but eventually relent and consent to sit down for a bowl of Special-K that looks concerningly nothing like the version we have back in Australia.
I get through about half of it and tip the rest down the sinkhole.
Watch'm run amuck,
Catch'm as they fall,
Never know your luck
'Till there's a free for all..
We’ve worked out the path we need to take to the Preop appointment with Dr Brownstein and it looks very much like we can just catch a bus from about 200 metres up the street to a stop approximately the same distance from his office. I’d like to say that was completely planning, but it’s been a stroke of good luck on our part - anyone coming here for this same reason however would do well to rent this place if from overseas.
I have around 20 minutes between the end of my half-breakfast in which to shower and dress, which I manage to do with a few minutes to spare. Mel recycles yet another SafeWay paper shopping bag into a make shift mudmap and we walk down the winding carbon-carpeted white wooden staircase to the street.
I’m still snappy and Mel is feeding off my stress, returning my verbal jabs here and there while we’re walking to the bus station. I’m trying to control it and do know that I’m being unreasonable, but we’re in a strange city with no idea (really) which way we need to go other than the slip of recycled paper bag in our possession and a strict deadline that’s tight for time.. it’s an environment that doesn’t really promote peaceful interaction.
Here a little dip
There a little touch,
Most of 'em are goners
So they won't miss much.
We arrive at what appears to be the bus shelter and stare at the street map bolted to the inside of the wall somewhat uncomprehendingly. I can’t make heads nor tails of it so Mel asks a nearby about-to-be passenger if they know about the direction of the stop we need to get to.
They don’t.
Mel feels unsure about the direction of the traffic and we argue a bit - but anyone who knows me knows that I have a truly shit sense of direction so I back down from that pretty fast. We (Mel) decide to go across the street to the other bus station to catch the flow of traffic going the other way.
San Francisco, and maybe the USA in general, has an amazingly vivid tapestry of people - particularly the homeless or hard luck cases. As I stand here and cuddle Mel from behind (my way of apologising for being a tool-burger) I’m listening to a shortish caucasian woman with hippie half-moon glasses talking articulately to another woman of african american decent about all the locations in the city that they hand out food and on what days.
She relates her experiences about being respectful and getting to know the food-handlers on a first name basis because they will then be ‘kinder and more generous’ in the portions they give out to her. She shares her process on getting to the front of the queue more successfully so as to get a better variety with her food stamps, and also how she uses the internet in the public library to scope out lists of places that give away organic fruits etc as seconds before they go to market. She’s healthy and well nourished with no immediately apparent traces of addiction.
There’s a real science to it and part of me wonders if this woman has fallen from corporate grace at some stage in her history - she’s smart, proactively savvy and streetwise. She’d be an asset to any logistics team and I’m reminded again how bad America’s economy really must be.
The woman she is trying to knowledge share with is missing most of her teeth, although in her mid thirties and a deep nut brown. She is dressed in gangsta-rap apparel and has a jittery air about her as she speaks in turn about the dangers of receiving her food and being mugged for it on occasion by those in the line bigger and stronger than her.
There is a third woman who, hunched, wisened and chinese, is sitting on the bench to the side who must be at least in her 80’s who is considerably less well dressed. They are all waiting for the bus, and all three of them were in the same line for food.
The correct bus arrives and pulls up just short of the station. Mel and I move down to get into the bustling jostle that has formed, only to be denied entry along with the gangsta-rap woman as the bus becomes to over-stuffed with passengers. The doors slam shut and it pulls away as I look down at my watch.
1:31pm.
My appointment is at 2:00pm with a projected 28 minute travel time thanks to the now rapidly dwindling bus and google maps. Fuck. This is less than ideal.
Mel suggests taking a taxi but a quick scan of the area reveals no obvious ranks and I don’t like my chances of flagging one down with the way the street is set up. We decide to wait for the next bus which according to the sign should be around 3 minutes away.
Which it is and pulls up with *considerably* less people wedged into it. We pile on, take a seat and I stare vacantly out of the window, my foot tapping nervously along to the musical continuing to take place between my ears.
One day to a new beginning
Raise the flag of freedom high!
Every man will be a king..
About 20 minutes into the ride Mel shares with me that she’s not sure that we’re actually going in the right direction, which calms me no end. After some cross referencing of our mudmap and my hazy memory it’s determined that we’re okay shortly before arriving at our required stop, piling off with a few other passengers at the top of a hill.
In the distance the skyline of San Francisco ‘actual’ stretches our like a picturesque postcard shot. Mel starts off down road cheerfully with me trailing behind - I absolutely have no idea how she always knows which way to go but it’s inhuman - and we arrive at 1001 Mariposa Street at exactly 2:00pm.
It’s nothing like I expected.. in my head, aside from errant musicals about french suffering, glass skyscrapers and a marbled lobby had swum, snooty faced receptionists and crazy stuff like that. In reality the building blends in with San Fran suburbia landscape innociously and looks for all the world just like another residential apartment.
I locate the entry buzzer and after stabbing at it repeatedly manage to get a connection to Suite 101 which is Dr Brownstein’s office. The door swings open and we walk inside to a darkish hallway with signs on the walls leading to ‘garage’ and ‘lifts’. Several wooden doors offer up brass number plates and 101 is the closest to the entry so easily found.
An attractive mid twenties woman with sandy hair and huge smile greets us at the doorway and welcomes us inside with an bouncy introduction of ‘Hi, I’m Katrina! Nga.. how do you say it?”
I chuckle and automatically correct her to the phonetic of ‘NighRee’ which she repeats with a nod, then introduces herself to Mel before beckoning us down a small 3 step set of stairs.
I’m mesmerised. If I thought the outside looked nothing like I’d built it up to be in my mind, the interior of office has hit a literal home run on my unreality meter. Directly in front of me is a life-sized tin-woodsman metal statue which *gigantic* breasts sticking out at a comical 90 degree angle.
The whole office has been decorated by someone with an incredibly eclectic sense of style. It’s warm, close, and decked out in predominately of rich brown woody colours. There’s not a hint of clinical hidden anywhere in here and we’re lead down to the main floor to a desk that is covered in glass under which are post-it notes with quite good sketches of a dachshund doodled over time.
The desk is overpowered by a huge, 1.5 metre high wing-backed bright yellow chair with purple stripes that is almost throne like in its presence. I make a quip to Katrina that I like her chair to which she chuckles and quickly identifies it as Brownstein’s.
The man has style, I’ll give him that.
Katrina sits with us and has me fill in some forms that I forgot to bring with me. (“It’s okay, that happens all the time!”) Mel asks a few small questions and we’re given some documentation to read at a later time on post operative care.
Frank makes an appearance and snuffles his way slowly over to us. Frank is Dr Brownstein’s 15 year old dachshund dog who I’d read on his website frequents the office and anyone who brings their dog to their office has instant respect from me. After a prolonged scratch session and inspection of Mel I’m graced with Frank’s attention and feel a little more relaxed once he’s done with me.
Katrina has gone and I stand up to shake Dr Brownstein’s hand as he enters the room. His grip is firm and he is dry man, but there is humour behind his eyes that I suspect is only reserved for people close to him. He takes a seat in his wingback and we resume the post op appointment.
He reviews my patient file and asks me where we come from in Australia, recounting how he has sailed up the east coast and is quite font of our continent, and then starts to talk about how tomorrow is going to go.
My surgery commences at 7:30am but I am asked to be at the surgery centre at 6:30am to commence further preop procedures. It will be during this time I have my chest drawn on and all the druggy goodness pumped into me.
He estimates 2 to 3 hours of surgery time and assures Mel that she will be able to see me about 15 minutes after he’s done. He also assures me that he will come and see her directly once the operation is completed and give her a rundown. She seems relieved by this.
He then pulls out a drain device and demonstrates how it will work, and gives examples of how the fluid coming out of them will change over the next week. He explains that if we see particularly large amounts of deep red fluids coming out that we are to call immediately and to remain vigilant in checking the differences.
I’m told that I will be fitted with special stockings that will keep my legs circulated during the operation and that I should continue wearing these for the next couple of nights - however if they itch or cause me discomfit I am to discontinue use and NOT call him.. particularly not at 2am in the morning as another patient did once.
I chuckle and assure him that I’ll be making no such call. He nods and then asks me to come over to behind a partition and remove my shirt. I do so, then remove my bra plus supporting sports bra that I use as additional support and sit bare chested on a clinic table while a conversation continues between Mel and the Dr.
It’s a weird feeling to sit here exposed with the air flowing around me essentially in public. I’m looking forward to this becoming more natural.
Dr Brownstein returns his attention to me and examines my breast tissue. He seems quite pleased with what he sees and assures me that we’ll see a good result, which sets me at ease considering that size was a key concern of mine. I ask questions about my stretch marks (I have extreme sets of them thanks to my size) and he responds by saying that my concern about these will not be as big as I think once I see my chest revealed.
I actually believe him and am relieved.
He finishes his examination and asks me to dress once again, we close the conversation and exit the office, walking back up the street again to the bus stop. I breathe deeply, once, twice and then a third time.
P-Day done.
O-Day tomorrow. Early tomorrow.
And I suspect no sleep tonight.
Tomorrow we'll be far away,
Tomorrow is the judgement day.
Tomorrow we'll discover,
What our God in Heaven has in store.
One more dawn,
One more day,
One day more..
Path to Preop
View Larger Map
635 14th St
San Francisco, CA 94114
$2.00 (vs. $1.28 driving)
Travel time: about 23 mins
Showing Trip 1
Walk to Church St & Market St
About 2 mins
Bus - 22 - FILLMORE - Direction: 3rd St. & 20th St.
Service run by San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
1:10pm Depart Church St & Market St
19 mins (18 stops)
1:28pm Arrive 18th St & Pennsylvania Ave
Walk to 1001 Mariposa St, San Francisco, CA 94107
About 2 mins
1001 Mariposa St
San Francisco, CA 94107
Thoughts from the flight.
A splash of sunset is bleeding sandshell pink through the cabin windows and is staining the rear of the wing outside my window an unearthly shade of pale crimson. The massive jet engine has a perfect circle of copper burn ringing it’s inner edge and I idly wonder if that is the true colour of the metal underneath the plane’s knight-livery of logoed blue and white.
We’ve been in the air for around 2 hours now and power has become the most precious commodity onboard. Cruising at an altitude of 33 thousand feet, the monitors bolted to the ceiling of this behemoth 747 advise me that we have roughly just over 10 hours to travel before we reach San Francisco airport.
A fact I am less than enthused about.
It is taking all of my strength to keep my eyes open. They are lidded with gritty wedges of sandpaper and unpleasantly warm each time I blink. In an effort to leave my job behind for the 4 weeks of leave I am taking and just live I worked 10 hours straight last night, finishing at 4am in the morning with an empty inbox and a splitting headache.
Just live. I haven’t done that in more than a while. Part of me wonders how long it will take before my brain is able to shut off from the list making, resource management and organisation that is so much of a lynchpin in my day to day.
I give it until they wheel me into the operating room.
We’ve outpaced the sun and night sucks away the colour in a few short seconds. None of it is really real to me yet. I have no concept of what lies behind the hours between when we land and when we next take off. I know that there will be friends to meet in person after many years, adventures to be had and above all ‘THE OPERATION’ - but it all seems so very far away. Well over the edge of the clouds that carpet the skies beneath the belly of the iron beast I currently reside in.
8 years I’ve been staring on and off at Dr Brownstein’s website. 8 years of looking at results, wanting, wishing.. but not 8 years of ever thinking this would be something I’d ever actually achieve. It's all almost came as a surprise to me, engineered and made possible by a single man curious enough to ask questions and then fight for a pathway in which I could secure the funding necessary to make this life changing trip.
A distant part of me, again very far away, is terrified. Terrified of the needle, the scalpel, the pre-op sampling, the process it’s all be shoved aside into the same place I go when public speaking is demanded. I’m floating somewhere between the edges of my body and the core of my mind, and the numbness is a welcome wrap against the rising panic.
Logically my brain knows there is nothing physically wrong with my chest. It knows there is no cancer, no disease, no malfunction with the flesh that should cause me to have these breasts removed. Logically it’s the part of me going ‘What the fuck are you mutilating yourself for you idiot?! This is how you’re reconnecting with your body??’
The rest of me just wants to get to the other side of ‘THE OPERATION’. Wants to know what it’s like to have a chest that doesn’t feel like it was bought at a coin operated sideshow alley. Doesn’t feel like it hangs off me, foreign, painful, deceitful and a lie.
It’s a confusing mix of emotion that whips me back and forth like a flag on a blustery day.
Over the loudspeakers we’re advised of turbulence in the near future. I smile wryly at that one - I’m already experiencing it.
Buckle up kiddo, this ride is just beginning.
We’ve been in the air for around 2 hours now and power has become the most precious commodity onboard. Cruising at an altitude of 33 thousand feet, the monitors bolted to the ceiling of this behemoth 747 advise me that we have roughly just over 10 hours to travel before we reach San Francisco airport.
A fact I am less than enthused about.
It is taking all of my strength to keep my eyes open. They are lidded with gritty wedges of sandpaper and unpleasantly warm each time I blink. In an effort to leave my job behind for the 4 weeks of leave I am taking and just live I worked 10 hours straight last night, finishing at 4am in the morning with an empty inbox and a splitting headache.
Just live. I haven’t done that in more than a while. Part of me wonders how long it will take before my brain is able to shut off from the list making, resource management and organisation that is so much of a lynchpin in my day to day.
I give it until they wheel me into the operating room.
We’ve outpaced the sun and night sucks away the colour in a few short seconds. None of it is really real to me yet. I have no concept of what lies behind the hours between when we land and when we next take off. I know that there will be friends to meet in person after many years, adventures to be had and above all ‘THE OPERATION’ - but it all seems so very far away. Well over the edge of the clouds that carpet the skies beneath the belly of the iron beast I currently reside in.
8 years I’ve been staring on and off at Dr Brownstein’s website. 8 years of looking at results, wanting, wishing.. but not 8 years of ever thinking this would be something I’d ever actually achieve. It's all almost came as a surprise to me, engineered and made possible by a single man curious enough to ask questions and then fight for a pathway in which I could secure the funding necessary to make this life changing trip.
A distant part of me, again very far away, is terrified. Terrified of the needle, the scalpel, the pre-op sampling, the process it’s all be shoved aside into the same place I go when public speaking is demanded. I’m floating somewhere between the edges of my body and the core of my mind, and the numbness is a welcome wrap against the rising panic.
Logically my brain knows there is nothing physically wrong with my chest. It knows there is no cancer, no disease, no malfunction with the flesh that should cause me to have these breasts removed. Logically it’s the part of me going ‘What the fuck are you mutilating yourself for you idiot?! This is how you’re reconnecting with your body??’
The rest of me just wants to get to the other side of ‘THE OPERATION’. Wants to know what it’s like to have a chest that doesn’t feel like it was bought at a coin operated sideshow alley. Doesn’t feel like it hangs off me, foreign, painful, deceitful and a lie.
It’s a confusing mix of emotion that whips me back and forth like a flag on a blustery day.
Over the loudspeakers we’re advised of turbulence in the near future. I smile wryly at that one - I’m already experiencing it.
Buckle up kiddo, this ride is just beginning.
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