As everyone knows, I’ve been writing this blog now for over 15 years. I started writing it when I first got my diagnosis because I needed a place to go and needed to be able to get thoughts out of my head and onto paper so to speak so it didn’t swallow me up.

Breast cancer doesn’t end when your surgery and treatment ends and maybe you’re not taking your cancer meds anymore. It is literally a gift that keeps on giving.

I have definitely tried to be as positive as humanly possible but I think I’ve reached a point at 62 where I’m just frustrated.

It is hard to have positive self body images when you look into the mirror and one breast just hangs and the other one is like a shrunken donut peach that more resembles a dehydrated apple slice these days.

I opted not to have breast reconstruction and that was still the best decision for me. I had just had enough at that point and I don’t think I could’ve handled expanders and other things.

But over the past few years, I have been dealing with lymphedema. And it definitely fucks with your head. There is no other way to put it.

First, it was in my lower left leg and it’s still crops up there once in a while, but it’s pretty easy to massage and get everything flowing because you can use both hands.

Where lymphedema is more frustrating is in my left arm. It is my upper arm. It starts from just about my elbow and goes all the way up. I had been doing physical therapy for this, but they cut me loose because I was doing really well. But after a particularly hot and humid summer, it’s mid August and I am struggling a bit.

The lymphedema makes my upper arms swell to the point that clothes fit oddly. Things will fit well with my right shoulder and right arm and everything looks tight on my left arm that in turn just accentuates the fact that I have a lopsided chest. Also, what is at present added to it is it actually hurts right now. It’s not like five or above, it’s a niggling nagging pain somewhere in the 2 to 3 range out of 10.

When you’re going through a bout of lymphedema, you can massage. It does help, so does stretching. but it’s frustrating because when it’s active, you feel like that’s all you’re doing and because it’s happening in one arm, you can only massage with one hand. It also makes my shoulder tight. It’s really weird.

So in the midst of all this, I have people in my family and elsewhere that love to talk about my weight. Let me talk about it for them.

Before breast cancer, I was kind of average. There were different times at different points of my life where my thyroid was acting in the opposite direction to now and I was like somewhere between 6 and 8 as far as women’s sizes go. I was in my 20s. My mother thought it was wonderful because she’s image and weight obsessed, even at 91.

I look back at photos from those years and not only don’t I look particularly happy. I don’t look particularly healthy. I was too thin.

But I grew up in a house where you could never be thin enough. And I was always the one that wasn’t the perfect size whatever. Image was everything.

So I had that body self image I have lived with my entire life. And as much as I love my mother, she definitely put that there in my head. And some people will say oh you should just let it go. It’s not so easy. I try and sometimes I fail.

Post breast cancer, I had a decade of Tamoxifen. With Tamoxifen I literally gained 10 pounds every year. I might’ve been heavyish at different points in my life, but I was never fat. Now I’m fat. And I know I am fat. I don’t need people to tell me that all the time. I also experienced many of the truly obnoxious side effects. For 10 years.

There are some people in my life that when I express concerns about things they are doing, they like to tell me I’m fat. And I know this is done deliberately so I won’t ask questions or express concerns about things they do, and it is very extraordinarily hurtful.

Sometimes I don’t talk to my mother as often as I should because she will talk about women who let themselves go and get fat and slovenly literally every conversation. She’s not going to change at her age, and yes, I love her very much, but I’ve reached a point where I can’t necessarily handle that form of conversation anymore. I just have to give myself some grace.

And then there are other people who want to wax poetic about GLP1s. I am not a candidate for Ozempic face.

GLP1s are not the panaceas for all wrongs and what ails you. I have a partially fried thyroid thanks to radiation. For that and the osteopenia radiation left me with, I am not a candidate for a drug that can cause thyroid cancer and bone and muscle loss.

So yes I am in a mood.

My arm hurts and is swollen. Not as bad as it has been, but still a nagging pain. It’s like a weather barometer too and we are expecting rain.

I’m 62 and my perky 25 year old ass is a thing of the past. And maybe I am fat with lopsided boobs, the occasionally broken thermostat, and lymphedema in my left arm. But other than that I’m not completely unhealthy. My blood pressure and cholesterol etc are actually all within normal range.

Breast cancer is not an easy fix. First you have to survive the disease and then you have to live and learn a new reality.

I’m also through apologizing for the fact that I have a very hard time attending funerals of those who died of cancer and funerals in general.

So here I am and at least for today Sister Mary Sunshine has left the building.

It’s ok to be real. It doesn’t mean that I am going to break or anything other than I owe it to myself to be very real and raw sometimes.