JTB
“Nicholas Sparks is a monster!” I moan into the void that is my living room.
The second lockdown reintroduced me to the movie channel packages that I’ve had for years but was always too busy to indulge in.
The Notebook’s main characters are going through what will be their last hoorah. She remembers him, she doesn’t, he’s devastated, I’m devastated, he has an episode and I think this is it. He simply cannot take it anymore. My eyes are welling up. He sneaks into her room, is recognized, curls up at her side and both drift into the oblivion.
Showtime tells me that Titanic is next, and I know I cannot hyperventilate when Rose lets go of Jack’s hand. I simply cannot. Barbershop it is.
My life has become a series of what I can and cannot endure, stomach, or abide. I have this new outlook on life and the desperate almost lifeline response to not flaring up my cancer again, as though it were a match I ever had control over.
I’ve stopped using my microwave. I’ve looked up and incorporated alkaline living, tried three times and failed miserably to make some sort of cancer approved waffles made of oats and walnuts, only purchase Bob’s Mills and shun all Genetically and Bio-Engineered food products and above all, I keep nothing in.
No one can really tell me what caused this veganish’s breast cancer. I don’t smoke and I don’t drink and if it were second-hand smoke from years of humans being allowed to smoke indoors wouldn’t it be lung cancer?
What has happened is a genetic tracing to find two relatives on both parents’ side who had breast cancer. One died, here, 30 years ago. The other just finished her 5 years of estrogen blockers this January overseas.
Times have changed and I was assured that advances have even been made as little as 3 years ago. Eager students came to my room post-surgery to ask if I would be interested in entering their database. I said yes because all the women who entered trials ahead of me helped me before even, I knew I would need it.
Being diagnosed with breast cancer has been a journey I fully intend to write a book on but for now it means I get to catch up on movies while my body heals from my mastectomy. It means I can cry about love kept at bay by misguided parents and not dwell on whether I should get a prosthetic nipple or a reconstructed one. So far, the reconstructions deflate over time and really, who has the mental capacity to keep inflating their chest every few years?
This isn’t Botox. It’s a constant reminder that if I had listened to all the doctors’ reassurances that I was just fine despite my quarantine discovered bloody nipple discharge I would be dead. (That’s a total exaggeration unless its your health that is being ignored).
I’d rather rail at Nicholas Sparks movies.
