Does it hurt?

Last evening, my brother-in-law asked me if I have any symptoms from the cancer. A completely legitimate question, but I had to reply that, except soreness from the two biopsies this month, there are no symptoms. In fact, I really won't have any physical symptoms of cancer until treatment begins. I've spoken to other women with breast cancer about this and they have had the same experience. It is the cure where the discomfort begins. A friend who has been spending her summer with chemo and radiation simply said to me, "Welcome to the sorority, the initiation is a bitch".

On Friday morning, I spent time interviewing a woman who is a year ahead of me in this process. I asked her how she dealt with telling her children, then 7 and 9, about her illness. She said initially she explained it much the same I way I already have to my girls, that mommy has a boo-boo in her breast and that the doctors are going to make mommy better by taking off the boo-boo and then making sure all the bad stuff is out of my body. It was during the chemo that she said the explanation started to falter. She'd summon up all her energy to tell her children that she was going to the doctor to get more of the good medicine to make her better, then she'd come home and get more weak and more tired, and bald and sick. Her oldest thought she should check to be sure the doctor knew what he was doing. She gave me the titles of two books that I'm going to find to try to help the girls through this, "The Year My Mother was Bald", by Ann Speltz and "Mom and the Polka-dot Boo Boo", by Eileen Sutherland.

I'll be meeting with my oncologist soon (just as an aside, before July, I barely ever saw a doctor, now I have a radiologist, surgeon and an oncologist?!). My hope is first, that she'll be able to help me deal definitively with the chemo question. And, if I do have to have it, then when would be most effective, before or after surgery. And second, I'd like to be able to come to some decision about reconstruction (add plastic surgeon to the list).