I’m getting rid of my boobs before they get rid of me

March 3rd. A week from today.

That’s the day that my currently healthy boobs will take leave of my body. I’m still in disbelief that I’m about to do this, and I have the urge every day to cancel the upcoming surgery. But I know that logically I’m doing the smartest thing, hard as it is emotionally, and as hard as the surgery will be physically.

I was born with the BRCA2 gene mutation (which I blogged about last year, after I found out about it). Instead of a 3-ish% lifetime chance of getting breast cancer, I was born with about an 80-ish% chance of developing breast cancer in my lifetime. (Think Angelina Jolie, who was also born with a BRCA gene mutation and had a prophylactic mastectomy.)

(Thanks, rosalarian.tumblr.com.)

So far, my mammograms and recent breast MRIs have been clear, but it’s likely just a matter of time before I’d be faced with a breast cancer diagnosis. And if that were the case, I’d have to go through this surgery AND chemo/radiation. No thanks!

I’m 64. That means a few things in regard to my mastectomy situation.

One, I’ve already worked through a big chunk of that 80+% chance of getting breast cancer, so my chance at this point is about 35%. I go back and forth, from thinking that 35% is perfectly tolerable and I should just take the risk, to ‘no way; that’s still a huge chance of breast cancer,’ and back again. Round and round and round. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting!

Two, I’ll be starting Medicare on November 1st of this year, the month in which I’ll turn 65. I was hoping that Medicare would be optional, but for me, it’s not. On the day that I’m eligible for Medicare, my other coverage is hugely affected. Long story short, I will be starting Medicare on November 1st of this year and MEDICARE WON’T COVER PREVENTATIVE SURGERIES. Nope, they want to wait until you actually get cancer, and only THEN would a mastectomy be covered! Yes, this is insane, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

So my hands (or rather, my boobs) have been forced. If I’m gonna do this, I need to do it now. The reconstruction process involves numerous surgeries, so I need to allow time for all this to happen before I begin Medicare.

There are three basic options after a mastectomy – “going flat,” flap reconstruction (which is harvesting fat from other locations on the body and transferring it to the breast… a very long and complicated microsurgery with a long, complex recovery), and implants. Because of my abdominoplasty thirty years ago to repair damage from my twin pregnancy, I’m not a candidate for the most common (DIEP) flap reconstruction and, although I’ve considered it, I’ve decided not to “go flat.” That leaves “gummy bear” silicone implants. This is the one I explored during my appointment with the plastic surgeon. I kinda like the shape, and the smaller size!

It’ll be months, though, before the gummy will be in my body. Expanders will be placed next week during the mastectomy surgery, and then those will be filled a bit at a time over the next couple of weeks, until I’m at my desired size (smaller). At that point, I’ll undergo an additional (“exchange”) surgery to replace the expanders (which I hear are awful) with the final gummy implants. Fun. (Not.)

Kat’s wedding will take place on May the fourth (of course, Star Wars fans that she and Ian are!) and will be off the grid at Danny’s prospecting claims, where they got engaged (including a very bumpy dirt road – gah!) in California, so we’ll need to work that into the scheduling.

Am I ready? NO. But I don’t know how I ever can really be ready to basically amputate a body part that’s integral to who I am. I’ve chosen to look at it this way: my boobs have nourished four healthy children and have served me well. Now they are trying to (or will likely try to) kill me and they need to go. That’s my logical approach, anyway.

My not-so-logical approach consists of feelings of sadness, loss, and fear.

I’ll let you know how it goes…

Ashes to Ashes

Mom died in 2004. Dad died in 2017. Only today, in the wilderness above Lake Tahoe that they both so loved, were their ashes given back to the earth. 

For many years during our youth, we spent a week each summer at the City of Berkeley Family Camp on Echo Lake, in the mountains high above Lake Tahoe. This, we thought, would be a good place to scatter Mom and Dad’s ashes. 

What we didn’t expect was the first snowstorm of the season  - in September! How apropos! Mom and Dad loved to ski and spent years on the Ski Patrol at Heavenly Valley and Shaw Valley ski resorts. In fact, Mom and her dear friend Toni were the first two women ski patrol members at Squaw in the early 60s, breaking the glass ceiling for all the women who followed them. Of course it would snow today, as we bequeathed them back to the land they loved so much! 

By the time we got back to Meeks Bay, where we’re gathered for our second annual sibling weekend (unfortunately without Stephan, who had to bow out at the last minute), the sun was out again and Lake Tahoe was shining in all her glory. 

Mom and Dad fell in love with the Sierras, and especially Lake Tahoe and the mountain lakes around it, because it reminded them of the Alps in their home country of Germany, from where the emigrated in 1953. 

I hope that, in some way, they are back home today. 

Ch-ch-ch-anges!

I’ve been feeling a bit lost lately.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that I’m now an orphan. Even at 61, “orphan” is how it feels. I just plain miss my mommy and daddy.

Maybe it’s the realization that my career is, for all intents and purposes, over. At some point that resume that used to reflect deep, broad experience became a resume that just says “old has-been fart.”

Maybe it’s a delayed response from being an empty nester, combined with a yearning to be a grandparent. Kids have always been central to my existence – wanting them, having them, watching them grow, and letting them go – and this peace and quiet (that I remember begging for at times!) is sometimes just deafening.

Maybe it’s unhealthy blood pressure and weight readings and a constant pain in my legs and groin, all of which make me feel like a slug. I’m taking action – again. Can I stick to it this time?

Maybe it’s Trump. DUH.

Maybe it’s because we’re looking for the place that we’ll next call “home.”

“WAIT!” you say. “Wait!” How can we be looking for the next place we’ll call home when we bought property in Suncadia two years ago and had begun to design our dream house? You’re astute to notice.

The truth is, we’ve pretty much decided not to move to Suncadia full-time, much as we love it there. Two primary factors played into our decision: 1.) There is no top-quality emergency healthcare nearby. Granted, the Urgent Care in Cle Elum is open from 9 to 5 on weekdays and for a few hours on weekends, but if we chose some other time to collapse onto the floor gasping for breath, unconscious - or worse - on a Sunday night, we’re screwed. 2.) Beautiful as the Cascade Mountains are, winters can be brutal and never-ending. Interstate 90, pretty much the only way to get from Seattle to Suncadia, shuts down due to snow and ice a bit too often for our liking – especially because I promised to babysit for future grandchildren in Seattle on a weekly basis.

We’ve been looking at Gig Harbor  and other communities “on the other side of the water” instead. Unlike times when we’ve moved in the past, there are few constraints this time. We don’t have to look in any specific school district, we don’t need to live close to any job, and we’re less financially constrained than we were earlier in our lives. Total freedom! How nice – and how crazy-making! We’ll know when we find the right place, but who knows when that will be? Next week? Next month? Next year? Watch this space.

Until then, I have a book to write.

My father wrote this to his kids the day after Trump was elected. I had no idea…

“Hi, all of you. parents and descendants ---

NOW where are you going to emigrate to??
In 1938, ("Krystal Night", November 8) my (Jewish) father told us to keep the lights off, and windows closed, so nobody would bother us in the apparently empty  house.   The burning of the synagogue across the street, was officially the work of "Germans tired of the Jews.” It was done by "people disgusted with the Jews.”
The next day, a guy at school bragged that the night before, his big brother, an SS or SA man, was one of the people setting the synagogue on fire.  The burning of the synagogue was (to remain politically correct) “by the people people against the Jews.”  My dad told me to never ever tell anybody about what I had heard.
He wouldn't believe things could get worse. He knew he had done no wrong. He did not want to take us out of school or compromise promising careers in our future.  He would not leave his house or his language.
My entire life would have been different if he had made different decisions. 
But, of course, it IS a BIG decision, and my impression of our current situation might be totally different from how you or your kids feel.
I strongly hope I am wrong in my defensive attitude.  But I believe, now more than ever, that 2016 is now quite a bit like 1938 in Europe, when my Jewish uncles left their businesses in Berlin to go to America.
I personally could not survive moving any more – I’m getting very old now.  But I would feel bad if I failed to tell you about my own experiences and fears.  I MUST tell you, especially those of you who may have a Mexican-sounding name in their ancestry.

Now I'll shut up.
Love --   Dad”
Dad died less than four months after Trump was elected. Thank god he doesn’t have to see this. It would kill him.

This is the post about my father’s death…

…the one I have started so many times since he collapsed at 3:15 AM on the morning of February 21st, almost six months ago. The one I just can’t seem to ever finish.
For most of my life, the mere thought of my father dying would prompt my throat to close up and tears to well in my eyes. The world needed my father, I reasoned (unreasonably); he simply couldn’t leave us – ever.
That’s about as far as I got every time I began this post because at this point I simply become overwhelmed at the enormity of the story I have to tell - the story of my father’s childhood as a Mischling (half-Jew) in Nazi Germany, the story of his mother’s role as unwitting protectorate of her family, and of her sudden death in January, 1944 which cast my father, his siblings, and their Jewish father into chaos. It’s the story of my Jewish grandfather whose passion was his highly regarded collection of German Romanticist art – a separate, but related story that continues to this day as we await word regarding restitution of some works from his collection which found their way to various museums in Austria and Germany.
Every time I begin to write about my father’s death, I feel obligated to speak to the enormity of his entire life.
But today I decided that it’s just too much to ask of myself, so I’ve given myself permission to write only about one small event -  the last time I saw my father.
This much, I can do.
Ironically, I don’t have a single photo of Dad and me together during that visit, which took place from January 26th through January 30th of this year, less than a month before his death. But I do have lots of pictures of Elisabeth with her Opa. (Elisabeth, who was on hiatus between graduation from CRNA school in California and the beginning of her job as a Nurse Anesthetist at University of Washington Medical Center, came with me to visit Dad and Lou in Ashland.)
Baby steps. I can finish this post.
I can post photos from that visit by just going through my photos in the folder at Pictures/Events and Excursions/2017/January – Ashland.
These first photos actually sum up Dad perfectly. He is in his perfectly organized workshop. Always the practical engineer, Dad decided that his walker needed some storage space, so he shuffled into his garage workshop, my index finger in his belt loop to steady him. And there, Dad proceeded to improve his walker using spare parts that he’d saved from some other random project. (Because he was German, and organized, and frugal, and inventive.)

Dad was quite unstable on his feet, so Elisabeth stayed close by, ready to catch him, should he begin to fall.

How ironic, I thought, that I’m concerned about him falling as he works on his walker – with power tools, no less!
One of our main goals on this trip was to fill Dad and Lou’s freezer with lots of healthy homemade meals. Caring for Dad had become a full-time job for Lou, and she was exhausted. Surely we could help by cooking a few simple meals!
When Elisabeth and I are on a mission, we are a force to be reckoned with! Or not to be reckoned with, depending on perspective. Of one mind, we knew our mission: plan, shop, cook, freeze.
On it.



The day after our cooking extravaganza, Elisabeth asked Opa about “the suitcase.” This suitcase, which has always contained works from my grandfather’s art collection and has lived under my parents’ bed for well over 60 years, deserves a blog post (or book chapter) of its own, but suffice it to say that it’s all my father had to his name in April, 1953 as he arrived in America.

I loved watching Dad and Elisabeth exploring the contents of the suitcase together – and I was amazed that my dad was able to kneel, crouch, and be the least bit comfortable on the floor! Maybe he wasn’t at all comfortable; maybe he powered through, understanding the important connections being made – even, in a way, between generations that would never meet.
 
The suitcase is now empty. Much of the art will being going back to two European museums, lovingly bequeathed by my father, in honor of his father.
The next day, having watched the toll my father’s deteriorating physical (and mental) condition was having on Lou, and concerned that some action would need to be taken soon, Elisabeth and I (with Lou’s approval) visited an assisted care facility.

It was a heartbreaking but necessary next step. We didn’t tell Dad.
That evening, we did what we’ve done after dinner since Elisabeth was a baby – we played a game.

I have no idea who won. It didn’t matter.
A few weeks later, just days before my father died, his sister, Ulli, visited from Berkeley. Oh, what these two have been through together!

It seems only fitting that the last photos taken of Dad are with his beloved little sister. The sweetness of this last goodbye almost has me wondering…

For those who came to Dad’s memorial and saw the botched version of the slide show that Tom and I had so carefully timed to the tenth of a second (that somehow played with NO timing at all), here is something a bit closer to what you should have seen -- though the music and transitions are still botched. (Would Dad appreciate the perfectionist in me that is still so frustrated at not being able to show this slideshow to you exactly as it was created?!)
And for those who weren’t at the memorial, here’s a glimpse of my father’s life.

I’ve stared at this all day…

…and this is how far I’ve gotten every time I’ve opened LiveWriter during the past few months.

I love blogging. I love to write. I miss writing.  I’m not sure why this is happening.

April 11th–the happy and the sad of it

This is the happy: quite coincidentally, both Quinn and Shasta have birthdays today.  Quinn, the ever-mischievous puppy, turns one and Shasta, the ol’ Dame, turns seven. 

It’s been quite a ride with these two!  I still often wonder what possessed me last summer when we decided to get a second Golden.  I’m sure Shasta quite often wonders what possessed me as well! But all in all it’s been worth it because crazy and feisty as she is, Quinn is a sweet and smart dog who will, someday, calm down.  I hope.

And the sad of April 11th is that eight years ago today, my mother died.  I still miss her.

I’m convinced that I dream about Mom all the time, but I wake up with only her presence in my heart and nothing more.  If that’s all I can have of her, I’ll take it.