Love Looks Beyond

My appointment with the plastic surgeon yesterday went great. Stitches out (ouch!) and recovery proceeding nicely.

I do feel compelled to add, however, that as a fairly reserved pastor’s wife, it is just a teensy weensy bit outside my comfort zone to have long and involved discussions with a strange man about my, well, you know.

My main goal is just to hold on tightly to my sense of humor throughout those discussions and not take it all too seriously. Fortunately, my surgeon is quite comfortable and casual with the whole scenario and so he can chatter away rather blithely and breezily about my, well, you know.

Sigh. So many interesting experiences to accompany a person on her breast cancer journey.

While I’m on this subject, I want to mention how thankful I am that I was diagnosed with this disease in 2010 instead of in 1970 or even in 1990. Twenty or thirty years ago, women who had breast cancer had to keep it all hush hush and deal with a heartbreakingly heavy burden without getting much support from outside a very small circle. I’m sure that they were probably even reluctant to specify the kind of cancer they had, simply because it involved mentioning a private part of the body.

But now? Wow.

Now there is support, and assistance and publicity everywhere. In fact, I am part of an online discussion/informational/support group which is just amazing; I have learned more from the experiences of my fellow cancer sisters (in all different stage of the disease) than I could ever learn from a book or a doctor.

One sad thing that I’ve learned from my involvement with that group though, is that breast cancer can cause serious damage to a marriage. I have been shocked and disheartened to read some of the things husbands have said to their wives about their breast cancer. Absolutely. Unbelievable.

And the men don’t just say hurtful things, some of them actually leave their wives--just because they have breast cancer and just because they don’t look the same as when they were first married.

Am I writing this to bash men and husbands? No, not at all. I’m simply writing this because I’ve been so moved by the stories I’ve heard from women who have put a very human face on this statistic—my heart goes out to them as I think of them trying to deal with cancer treatment and a divorce, all at the same time.

I’m also writing this to say how thankful I am that I cannot relate to that study. Not at all. Steve has been incredibly compassionate, considerate and affirming throughout this whole journey. In fact, he just recently had a little extra personal money on hand, something which doesn’t happen very often. He went out shopping and ended up spending most of the money on a new outfit for me!

I’ve never spent even one tiny little moment worrying about whether or not Steve would leave me because I had a bilateral mastectomy. Do I look exactly the same as I did on our wedding night twenty-eight years ago? Nope.

Do any of us look exactly the same as we did on our wedding night? Probably not.

Age happens. Gravity does its thing. Sagging commences. Pounds appear. Inches creep in. Wrinkles show up. Knees creak. Joints crack. In fact, after a certain age, the Rice Krispies commercial about “snap, crackle and pop” starts to apply to your whole body as you get out of bed in the morning.

Bottom line?

Love looks beyond the sinking and the sagging. Love looks beyond the mastectomy scars. Love looks beyond the changes and challenges that the years bring to bear.

Love looks beyond. And sees only beauty.

And I, for one, am thankful.

__________________________

Thanks to everyone who has chimed in about recycling experiences. I'll be referencing some of those comments in a soon-to-come post.