It’s nine days after surgery and I have my first post-op with my plastic surgeon. The goal is simple: see if we can remove my surgical drains. This is where things should start to get better.

“Sorry in advance if you see me on the evening news,” I text a new friend of mine who’s living (thriving) with Stage Four breast cancer. “Because if she doesn’t take them all out I might murder her.”

The day of the appointment is the first time I take more than one step out of my house since the day of the surgery. I am so weak. I’ve had a terrible morning. I tried to wash my hair for the first time post-surgery. It hurt. It took forever. I put on clothes—button-up shirts only because I can hardly move my left arm.

As my mom, who’s been on caretaker duty, drives me to my plastic surgeon’s office the dark thoughts start to creep in: how am I going to date with a body like this? What menopausal symptoms am I going to have as a result of the meds they’re going to give me? Will I ever have sex again? How long am I going to be this tired? I am too young for this. This is so unfair.

I quietly cry most of the way to the office. I’m exhausted. I’m scared. I see a house and think, I’m never going to be able to afford to buy a house. I see another house and think, a family lives there and I don’t have a family of my own. I see a house and think, who is going to love me with this much backstory? I see a couple walk down the street and think, I am so alone.

I remember these thoughts from Beforetimes—how unsurmountable restarting my life felt then. And now I see a woman walk down the street and think, she has two boobs. I think, how am I ever going to feel ok enough to let someone touch me, to see me now? I am so alone. I am going to be so alone.

When we arrive, somehow I make it out of the car and across the parking deck and into the elevator and up to the second floor and down the hall and into the waiting room and into the treatment room where I collapse into a chair and sit in silence with my mom seated to my right. I cry again and reach for a tissue. Fifteen minutes of silence pass before I tell her I haven’t heard from someone in days. Someone who promised they’d be with me on this side of surgery and they are not. They seem to have disappeared again. But this doesn’t hurt me as much as thinking about what this person brings up for me: I don’t have a family, I don’t have a partner, I don’t have kids, I don’t have a job, I don’t have a house, I don’t have a purpose, and if it was going to be that hard to get those things Before, how hard is it going to be now?

My plastic surgeon, Dr, H. walks into the room and I wipe my eyes and choke out a hello.

She tells me to hop into the treatment chair and asks how the surgical drains have been. Has the output gone down? I hand her my tracking sheet. She says two of the three can come out today. I think, ok maybe I won’t kill her exactly but this is still not good enough. Please just take it all away.

She asks me to describe my pain.

Pain or panic, I can’t tell. I am not ok.

“This is a major surgery,” she tells me. I look up at her and she looks into my eyes. “Major,” she says.

I look at my mom. She nods. She’s already told me this but I still don’t understand.

“She’s never had a surgery before,” my mom tells her. “Never even had stitches? Is that right, Alli?” 

I had stitches when I got my wisdom teeth out. So, four? And now I have…. hundreds. Easy.

Dr. H looks at me. “So you like to go big, huh?”

I do. I manage a small smile. 

She read me like a book the first time we met, back then, telling me “people like you, type-A people who live alone think they can do this recovery alone. You can’t. You’re going to have to ask for help.”

“How did you know that about me? That I’m Type-A?” I asked.

“I see a lot of people,” she responded. “I just know.”

That first meeting, it was in this room. She kept me waiting for over an hour and I was already planning not to hire her because of that. So unprofessional! When she finally came in, she apologized and told me I had her full attention. I told her that was fine, but now I was hungry and at risk of getting hangry. She left and came back with snacks. Maybe I would hire her.

We sat together for hours over multiple appointments as my diagnosis kept changing—one area of DCIS, then two, then DCIS plus IDC—walking through every possible surgical option as they slowly disappeared. Lumpectomy. Bigger lumpectomy. Single mastectomy. Double mastectomy.

By the final meeting, lumpectomies were off the table entirely and there were no good choices left. I would have to have a single mastectomy—the only option I had ever taken off the table because I wanted to be symmetrical. But I don’t have time to heal from a double mastectomy before we need to start treatment for the other cancer. 

The other cancer, stage three.

The best we could do at this point is a single mastectomy and a lift on the other. “But you have really bad luck,” she said, and I rolled my eyes because she was right. (Also, surgeons aren’t exactly known for bedside manner.) “Doing the other side would increase your risk of infection and you don’t have time for complications.”

Because of the other cancer, stage three. 

This is what happens when you manage two cancers at once. 

I’m down to just two choices: risk infection and delay chemo for the higher stage cancer or spend the next many, many months (and maybe the rest of my life) not liking one more thing about my body as it goes through hell.

“I’m recently divorced,” I remember telling her in that first session. “And I just started to love my body again,” I choked. “I just remembered that I’m pretty hot and I really want to stay this way. I don’t want anything to change.”

“You are hot,” she said, “but your body is going to have to change.”

I hate everything about this.

“But you’ll be hot after this too,” she continues. Besides, men don’t really care about all of this,” she said as she gestured at her breasts. “All of this is just a way for them to get to this,” she continued as she gestured towards her vagina. I laughed.

Ma’am, you are hired.

But on drain removal day I am close to murdering her.

I hadn’t slept. I was in pain. I had been crying on and off for close to an hour.

I sat in her surgical chair as she put on gloves and got what she needed to get the damn drains out. 

“It was a major surgery,” she repeated. And then she stopped what she was doing and said quietly, “And you didn’t even want it. You didn’t want this, but you had no choice.”

I looked her in the eyes. “Thank you,” I said. Thank you for seeing me. 

I don’t remember what we talked about as she ripped two of the three drains out. I just cared that they were gone. Give me one less thing that hurts. I don’t care what it takes.

She told me to continue to avoid repetitive movement with my left arm but that I could now do “spider walks” up the wall.

Eleven days ago was push day at the gym and now I can’t lift my elbow higher than my shoulder.

“Crawl your fingers up the wall and stop when you feel a little stretch.” She said. “Hold for ten seconds. Don’t push it. Llisten to your body.”

How many times had I said that to my students? Don’t push it, I’d say the stubborn veterans and service members I taught. You’ve got to listen to your body.

I looked at Dr. H. I flinched as I walked my fingers up the wall. She gave me the look. I backed out and held for ten seconds. Just ten seconds. Ten seconds at a time.

When the appointment was over I could hardly walk back to the car. I felt so weak. I climbed in and took half an Oxy. When I got home I curled up on the couch, not in my bed. I turned on the TV and watched a recap of women’s figure skating from the Olympics. That night, I slept for five uninterrupted hours. A huge win.

I got up the next morning. My body wanted one thing. It wanted to move. I listened. I changed out of my pyjamas. I put on some clothes. I told my mom I wanted to go for a walk. I stepped outside and took my first real post-surgery walk – short, just around the block, supervised, a little less drained.