Most of this post is an email I wrote to Alex, my sister, tonight: the night before I get my test results. It’s just a test, I think… then I remember it’s a huge test, a $3000 test, the one that will dictate the outcome of the rest of my life. That life… it all starts tomorrow. I wonder what it will look like.

 here is the email:

well, tomorrow is D-Day. Or T-Day. or BRCA-Day. It’s such a weird day, too – February 29^th. This day doesn’t even exist most years, damnit - there won’t even be an anniversary for this moment! I keep having to remind myself to call in and make sure they have my result before I go in for the appointment so I’m not going for nothing. But it’s rather weird to think they may already have it and only I don’t know yet.

And I was fine all week till about 7 pm tonight. Sigh… eventually I suppose you have to pull your head out of the sand and peek at what’s coming… and in a few more hours, there will be no place to hide anymore.

I don’t know whether to try to prepare mentally or not. Do I try to visualize what it would be like to hear that I’m positive? Tried that once a minute ago – pretty scary, had to stuff my head back in the sand quickly (funny, it worked just fine a few days ago). Mostly I think about the options I’d have in either case. And the fact that you’re next, and how scary that is, because no matter what happens in my case, you’re not off the hook. So in any way we look at it, this is just a beginning; we just don’t know of what, yet.

I get so angry whenever I think about those options, too. They always say that I can just opt for surveillance. What the hell is that??!!! You’re just waiting for the day they find the cancer?! The one you have an 85% chance of getting?? no no, you’re actually LOOKING for it. Oh, much better. That changes… absolutely nothing. Nothing proposed to help prevent it (aside from option #2 of course – just nothing that could bolster the ’surveillance’ idea with a little proactive action. Here, eat some vegetables and flax oil while you wait. Does that seem futile? It’s ok – just wait, and watch. Look closely. It will give you more time to think about how stupid that decision was, when you finally do find it). It’s like saying well, you’re on the train tracks and the train is coming, but we think it might help if you turned around so you could see it coming. That way you’ll know a little earlier.

What??!!! What is that??!! Get the FUCK off the tracks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But then, you think about that some more. Ok, yeah, get out of harm’s way, duh - at what price? We’ll just take your breasts, your ovaries, everything that makes you a woman and gives you self-esteem, sensuality, wholeness, self. You’ll never be able to have children of your own; you’ll be thrown into premature menopause, dry up and lose your libido. You may as well lose it because sex will hurt from now on. Your relationship may run aground over it all. You’ll still have a chance of getting cancer because we won’t get all the tissue out. You’ll be physically disfigured – even if nobody can see it from the outside, you’ll feel it – and perhaps never recover the full motion or feeling in your arms; they may always be slightly numb. You’ll go into major surgery and be in physical and emotional recovery for two years or so, in the midst of the prime of your young life. You’re 34 years old – you didn’t have any other plans right now, did you?

Well ok then. Maybe I’ll just sit back down on these tracks here. The view is nice, and I rather like it, at least until the train comes.

I can only hope, hope hope all night tonight and all day tomorrow that this will not have to be my choice. Because honestly, right now, I have no idea how I’ll make it. I’ll need weeks, maybe months to figure it out. I think it’s pointless at this point to try to rationalize the two possible outcomes (or 3 actually, there’s always “indeterminate mutation” – a fun one). I can’t be rational right now, so I’ll just hope all out, regardless of whether or not that is hopelessly optimistic, blind, or otherwise futile or stupid. And anyway, it’s my last chance to have this hope. Trying to “feel” how it will feel to know is not working and is probably not going to soften the blow tomorrow, if it comes. The anvil will fall just as hard whether I go to sleep right now or try to calm myself with logical thoughts and plans. And it may not fall at all. A 50/50 chance says, I’m fine and hey, my cancer risk is only (woohoo ONLY!!!) 31.3% for life. I can be a happily converted vegetarian, start running again, walk my Avon Walk and live my life.

Well, that helped a bit I suppose. I’m going to go turn up the music and do some cleaning. I’ll let you know. call me tomorrow evening. I should be home anytime after 4.

love, celia