IT HATH NOT SPREADTH
Biggest. Relief. EVERRRRRRR
JOY!! They DID NOT find any cancerous cells in my axillary lymph nodes or my right breast — it’s just the one left tiddie. HOOORAYY!!!!
This is incredible news for multiple reasons, the biggest of which being that this is the hormone-positive cancer, so if its isolated to the breast, chemotherapy is usually NOT recommended. THANK THE EFFIN LAWD. It still isn’t all rainbows and roses, of course, I’m still going to need surgery, and radiation, but knowing exactly what we’re dealing with is immensely immensely relieving. Not knowing was scary AF. If my perimenopausal / general rage wasn’t sneaking in a bit, I’d basically be singing and twirling around in a meadow today.
Here’s the thing that made me extra worried: I hate admitting this, but I fully procrastinated on going to get my first set of mammograms. I thought of it more as left-brain errand type chore; in absolutely no world did I actually think that they were going to come back positive. Word to my fellow busy-af-neuro-spicy-boob-havers: DO NOT PROCRASTINATE. GO. This was my first time. Repeat: my first time.
It feels like a MASSIVE slice of my bandwidth has been handed back to me after been held hostage for weeks, basically ever since the surgeon frowned when running her hands over my showgirl fire feather tattoos and said “…wait a minute, what’s that?” Then I remember a single tear escaping from my eyeball onto the paper bed lining and my (lovely) support friend shifting nervously across the room. It was not a great moment.
The constant presence of something like that in the back of your mind is wild. Waiting for these “palpable mass” lymph node biopsy results was like having an emotional UTI in a never-ending bathroom line-up, while my urgent to-do-list ran around screaming and breaking shit in the background like an unsupervised four-year old. Imagine having to pee SO BADLY but you can't, and you just have to try to carry on coping with life for days and days while squirming and hopping around on one leg. That's honestly the level of mental space it took up. Meanwhile I was having to coordinate projects and manage contracts and present arguments to city officials. Like COME ON. I need my WHOLE ASS brain for that.
The bright part was that I was massively spoiled on my birthday with all my favourite music, people, food, and well-wishes. And although I didn’t have the capacity to see it for myself, I also heard that the 20th anniversary of the Vancouver International Burlesque Festival went off really smoothly, and that I got some love over there (which is lovely). Crazy to think that professional burlesque was my world for such a very long time. Though it no longer feels like the right place for me, I’ll always be a wild-ass showgirl at heart. It makes my heart smile to know the festival is still going strong and bringing people together year after year.
I have ZERO doubt that all the good energy helped me get through the hardest mental and emotional part of this process. As a sensi / somewhat cerebral creature and and projector in design, I felt it all. Everything coming me this past weekend was received and so so appreciated, from subscriptions here, to cute b-day gifts, to texts and messages and comments and more. You built a bridge for me across some murky-ass swamp water.
I’m so so grateful.
More updates soon — I'll definitely be offering some workshops as well as dropping some costume / street wear items that are ready for new adventures.
OH - and if you want to hear about how things are going with the City and my business Fortress Creative, you can follow that ongoing saga here.
Love to you alll so so much
xoxo
CP