For My 40th Birthday, I Want...Breast Cancer?

4 Months Post Bilateral Mastectomy
Photo by Eric Von Bargen

I don't care what anyone says, forty is an impossible age for women. I think that it's because after all the time we have spent snagging the man of our dreams, creating a career of a lifetime and giving birth to the most adorable children in the world, we realize, in short, that we have failed to make any time to care for ourselves. Not only is our youth fading, but our looks and health are too and that is depressing and quite frankly...sucks.

 

So when I entered my 39th year, I thought I had it in the bag. I was after all, in great shape. I had been eating right for years and had just recently at the age of thirty-seven gone from running sparsely and pathetically to running 4 marathons a year. I was cocky, competitive, healthy and pleased on what I termed "the downhill slope" to forty.

 

Enter Breast Cancer...

 

Let me start by saying, you can do all the preventative work prescribed by countless doctors, shamans, yoginis or even the homeless guy on Hollywood Blvd. but in the end, you just can't beat crappy genetics. That's how I got here seven months shy of my fortieth birthday with a bilateral mastectomy, no nipples and some pretty circus-freaky tissue expanders.

 

Welcome to my world. Pull up a chair and sit a spell. We can laugh together, cry together and full on rage at the world together. Whether you're going through cancer yourself or love someone who is, you are welcome. So Bye, Bye Booby.....Bye, Bye.....