D-Day

1. Military. The day, usually unspecified, set for the beginning of a planned attack.

2. June 6, 1944, the day of the invasion of western Europe by Allied forces in World War II.

3. Informal. Any day of special significance, as one marking an important event or goal.

Okay, so Definition 2 doesn’t make a lot of sense in this context, but definitions 1 and 3 certainly apply. In my case, however, the day is not unspecified – my surgery is this coming Wednesday, April 25. I do love the image of the “planned attack,” as I am ready to destroy this tumor and restake my claim to my body. And there is no question that this day marks an important event or goal. Although perhaps, given that I get to choose the size I will be, maybe we should call it C-Day. Ahem.

In the end, I have chosen to go with a plastic surgeon who specializes in immediate, or “one-step,” reconstruction using implants. Dr. Salzberg pioneered this procedure, which allows women to skip the step of expansion, which can be painful and requires an additional surgery to exchange the temporary expanders for permanent implants. It also means that when I wake up on Wednesday, my new breasts will be in place, albeit under bandages and slightly swollen and bruised.

Switching doctors does mean that I have to go to the hospital with which he is affiliated, which is a small (50 bed!) community hospital in Dobbs Ferry, NY, about a 30 minute drive from our place in Manhattan. It feels slightly ridiculous that, despite living within 2 miles of 4 of the nation’s top research hospitals, I am having surgery at a place that is probably 1/20th the size of Methodist Hospital in Des Moines, Iowa. I just keep reassuring myself that this is the procedure in which they specialize. As long as Mom and Michael remember that the café’s opening hours are only from 9 a.m.-2 p.m. and bring provisions to make up for that, we should be okay.

The doctors predict that I will only need to be in the hospital for one night. Since I should be home by Thursday, we are asking that people not come to visit at the hospital. Michael will run visiting hours at our apartment over the weekend, so please give him a call or drop him a note if you want to stop by, in order to make sure that I am not asleep or insane from the pain meds (one woman I spoke with ordered multiple pizzas in the 72 hours following her surgery, but recalls none of them). I will be recuperating for several weeks, and am planning to be off work until May 21.

Thanks to everyone for your supportive calls, notes and comments. As I have told many of you, I am not scared about the surgery – I am ready. I look at this as the next big step toward my healthy future. Although I will have a few additional things to take care of in the coming months (I never thought I would type the words “nipple tattoos,” but here we are…), I am done with chemo, I don’t require radiation, and I will need no other major surgeries related to this cancer. When I wake up after surgery on Wednesday, I will officially be cancer-free. And that sounds like victory to me.