Claudia 2.0

The time is here. Thursday is the designated day for my next surgery, the one that will bring you Claudia 2.0. The journey to this date has been a little stressful because I didn't realize I had to schedule the surgery way in advance in order to hit the dates I wanted. But, how would I know. It's not like I do this all the time. So, instead of getting new boobs towards the end of August I get them at the beginning of September, just on time for my birthday. The whole scheduling of the surgery wouldn't be a big deal except I had to change my mom's plane ticket twice, and she is really about to have a nervous melt down. She is so ready to go back home. Taking care of a sick person is harder than anyone can imagine. But I venture to say BEING the sick person is even harder than expected. You continue to feel crummy and tired and upset, whereas the rest of the world has moved on. You are old news, dude. The second half of my recovery has been somewhat more difficult than the first part because of this. The medicine makes my body act and feel in strange ways at random times. One day I am full of energy and the next I can barely move my bones ache so much. The weirdness is sometimes amusing, too, like when my chest went through a few days of random spastic shakes. Have you ever had your leg wake you up at night when it shakes out of the blue? Like that, except this is daytime at the office and it is your chest jumping out of your body, like a bolt of electricity hit them. It's both quite annoying and fascinating. Human bodies are such beautiful, complex machines. I remain amazed to the fact that I have two "dead" spots on my sides, where the lateral dorsi muscle was repositioned, that despite the fact I have very little sensation there, they ache and burn and hurt. How can something you don't feel, hurt? • Today I was listening on NPR's Fresh Air an interview with two young women who had cancer. One of them, Kairol Rosenthal, had a blog entry that really resonated with me. She asked if people (cancer people) liked to be called strong. She says: "I’ve surmounted these challenges not because I’m strong, but because the alternative means dying." She also quotes a woman she interviewed for her book, Everything Changes, who said: “The last thing I want is people cheering me on because I had a disease that I didn’t want, was miserable getting through, and wish I never had. That should not be my moment of fame.” In the last four months I've had many thoughts about this. You feel like you do what you have to do, just because it is the ONLY thing you can do. And when you compare your illness with other people you meet, you realize you are a wimp that barely went through anything worth mentioning. It's hard to feel like a superhero. Yet every day, every morning, every night, you battle the aches, the stiffness, the pain, the tiredness of being tired. The fact is your life changed and now you have to shift with it. There are no other options. I look at my breasts, shaped by two half-inflated bags inside me, watching how the skin has expanded to make room for such foreign objects. What was mine is not there anymore, but my skin did what it had to do: it gave me room for yet two other foreign objects that will replace my own. I am not strong, but I will move on.