[norkdo]

Tracy
I am a negative, pessimistic, anti-depressant-popping writer and former English teacher, current (not working cos of the treatment) dog walker/trainer.
I have different advice for you, therefore, than all the well-adjusted folk above!!!
Here is my advice:
Go into the dark side.
More.
Stop apologizing for your behaviour if you are doing that.

Even Jesus had his screaming fit in the temple. God knows how long it lasted. Could have been months or years right?

Tell strangers who do casual brutalities to you (nurses, hospital employees etc) EXACTLY what they are doing to you, and describe to them the consequences of their actions on you emotionally.

Cancer is your moment. It has been mine.

Finally, the pollyannas who tell you to get therapy (what, with some twenty-five year old psych grad right out of Privilege School who has no wisdom, but treats you as per some model in a psych book written by some self aggrandizing egomaniac?) are well meaning but not necessarily right.

No. I still take a base dose (should increase it, eh? lol) of antidepressants.

But now when the "rain" starts to fall, I burst out in angry tears and to hell with people who don't like it.

(because some airhead idiot screwed up a message from my oncologist and added hours of my phoning the hospital to only get lost in a never-ending phone-tree maze, trying to find out if I should just show up or do I need to get an appointment again, or whatever),

or when the "couldn't give a crap I have a great salary and a union" chemo nurse forgets to phone the pharmacy to deliver my drugs, thereby adding two hours to my five hour herceptin/taxotere infusion last friday.....

I really tell people exactly what I think of them.

I let the world wait.

I let the embarrassment factor go to hell.

I tell people whose idiocy, incompetence, smugness, and ridiculousness have cost me time, patience, or any other negative emotion.

I no longer protect the weak from my temper.

I no longer give a crap about "reforming" my incalcitrant temper.

I am no longer in the business of keeping the crap part of the world free of knowing its effect on me and others.
I have cancer. You have cancer.

Nothing about cancer gets better. Until you finish treatment, reconstruction, etc. and a year has gone by and no disease has spread further, the news is always somehow getting worse. But HER2 means you add a whole year to that schedule for herceptin. Ugly is years long.

I recognized myself in your description of yourself early on when you got the news as "whatever". I too had that feeling.

Let your rage shine, girl.

Don't try to stifle it.

Don't try to stuff it up, medicate it, fix it, therapize it with some young idiot telling you stuff you already know, and then asking you for $150 for that pap. (as i did.)

Shout it from the rooftops, honey: I have the worst frickin thing a woman could have: the heart of my beauty, the intimate part of my sex life, the most delicate relationship I ever had was with my breasts. Now they are butchered. My chest is a war zone of port installation, ugly lumps around my incision, I will never have back the beauty and intimacy that I had because of my breasts. I was a beautiful girl! I had gorgeous, sensitive boobs, and huge, huge hair! I am now an ugly, fattish, bald crone out of Macbeth!
All is lost.
All is crap.
Nobody cares because they have all found answers for themselves. They think their answers are mine. They are nice to offer that advice cos they think it will help.
Maybe one day it will.
But I am looking to install a punching bag on the curb outside my house so I can draw police attention to the one- breasted, bald, screaming, shouting, angry 51 year old woman punching away at the unfairness of it all.
That is how I feel.
Let the cops come about the noise you create.
Let people try to shut you up.
But don't stop screaming, girl.
Do not stop.
If you decide to, that is your business.
But you don't have to. Just shout. Just cry. Just spill those angry tears til you no longer need to. And then get up next day and start over, hon.
You deserve it.