Of course cancer is never what you expect it to be. You feel like you’re thrown into a situation with a loan shark where you are bargaining for body parts.

Please let me keep my hair, a little bit of estrogen, my boobs, damn what about my nips.

Yes, you’re grateful to be alive to have treatments that make you better even as they make you sick.

But, I have to draw a line. I’d like to keep my nips. I realize that I’m lucky to be able to have that option. It’s not as easy as you would think to find a surgeon willing to do a nipple sparing mastectomy. And, when you find one there are no guarantees that it will work out.

There’s so much sacrifice in dealing with cancer including the ignorant bliss that is my precancerous life. Having breast cancer already feels like reverse puberty, you lose your boobs, estrogen, and oftentimes fertility. It seems like such a small thing to want to keep your nips.

They won’t function as before and would be purely cosmetic. But they’re such small reminders of what life was like before having poisonous boobs.

Besides, if I get to keep them maybe once this is all over I’ll throw some pasties on them in celebration, even if I can’t feel a thing. At least they’re mine.

I’m lucky in that I have a lot of friends and family who are supportive and willing to come along to these appointments.  If those rooms weren’t so small, we’d be having a pachanga.

Instead every 3 weeks since December, the chemo team of me, Josh, and Vanessa assembles and makes our way to MGH. It is nerve-wracking knowing that essentially you’re being pumped up with a bunch of really nasty stuff that’s supposed to kill the cancer and cure you. But once you’ve checked in, it’s actually a rather mundane process.

The whole process of getting chemo is like a regular doctor’s appointment, a really long doctor’s appointment. It all starts with getting my blood drawn. After waiting for a little while, you see the doctor or nurse practitioner and talk about how things are going.

You get to go over what lovely side effects you’re having, they check your blood work and look to see if the tumor(s) are responding.

As innocuous as getting chemo can seem, the part that gets you is afterwards. I have to say the first two rounds of chemo were friggin awful. I felt like one of those mutant clone creations gone wrong begging someone to end it. It doesn’t help that the shot which is supposed to boost your immune system also gives you flu-like symptoms. Wow, cancer treatment is a ball. Right?

For those of you who are curious, I can summarize the side effects of chemo treatment as being ridiculously tired but sleeping doesn’t do shit. The first week, I find that I get winded and light-headed from getting up to go to the bathroom. The second week I start feeling like my old self but still tire very easily. It’s very odd to feel like you’ve worked out but you’ve only walked 5 minutes from the parking lot to work.

Among the many things that suck, the two things that I find hard to get used to is not having an appetite and food tasting weird or bad. We’re so ruled by our primal need to eat that suddenly the hours seem even longer when you’re not thinking about food. It also throws off the day when you’re not hungry for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Your memory of food can also really mess with your head. You’ll think you want something that it’ll be the one thing that tastes great. Of course, when you start to eat it, your memory and what you’re tasting couldn’t be further apart. It’s also difficult to force yourself to eat especially since eating food shouldn’t be a chore.

Honestly, I wish I had prepared for chemo like someone prepping for a food-eating contest. I would’ve housed all the italian cold subs, sushi and soft cheeses I can’t eat now. Ah, mortadella, salami, hots and provolone. How I miss thee?

Not to mention mustard, another food I haven’t been eating thanks to mouth sensitivities. All the stuff you take for granted when all of a sudden you have the palate of a 4-month-old.

Let’s see what else has been a great surprise. Oh, that’s right, the chemical menopause. Amazing how this illness attacks all the things you went through puberty for. The menopause gives me hot flashes but thankfully not as bad as I’ve heard other women go through. I don’t break out into a crazy sweat or try to douse my insides with liquid nitrogen. I also haven’t grown any facial hair…yet.

I’ve lost most of my hair. I’d say I have about 10 percent left. If you’re trying to picture what that is, imagine the Crypt Keeper wispy hair with a Rachel Maddow haircut. You can see a whole lot of scalp. Josh says I have nicely-shaped head. So, let’s put that in the win column.

Lately, another crappy side effect are my nails hurting. Yup, your nails can actually hurt and feel sore. It feels like the after effects of having a heavy book slammed on your fingertips. Yeah, it sucks. I know. It also makes every day tasks interesting but I guess I’m always up for a challenge.

As much as I’m bitching and moaning, I’m glad that I’m on the rebound from treatment number 5. I have one left to go and as much as I’d like to celebrate that, it brings me closer to major surgery. A part that I still haven’t been able to psych myself up for.

Oh well, take it one day at a time, right. And for right now, I am looking forward to ending chemo. It’s my path back to a healthy me.

The wall that separates healthy Michele from sick Michele must certainly be infinitesimal. It seems like only seconds ago, my wife and I were driving to the store complaining about our 1999 VW Jetta and lamenting about our financial woes.

She wore a chestnut colored stitched wool blazer and her hair spilled down the front of it like a frozen amber waterfall. There she was, squinting her eyes from the sun, determined to make a point while the day illuminated her porcelain finish seemingly from the inside out. All was fine that day, coffee was shared, laughter was had and feelings were hurt. She was healthy and by all the standards of marriage we were happy.

Today we find ourselves in an earnest struggle but not against cancer, not AGAINST anything really. We try not to waste our energy on such things. The struggle is for normalcy. It’s for Michele’s appetite and strength to return, for her body to heal and for her mind to relax. We can pray for those things and we do. We can think good thoughts and we do that too.

Cancer didn’t come here to take my wife away or to frighten my family. Cancer doesn’t care how Michele and I feel, it just IS. It’s a weight on the family that is only made lighter when all of us lift together in unison. When one of us gets tired, the other one holds it up until we can resume again.  It’s really a thing of beauty to behold. As it turns out, we are almost exactly the same family we’ve always been with the only difference being that all that lifting seems to have made us stronger.

We have seen the challenge and begrudgingly accepted it because the only moment we have, is the one sitting right here in front of us. The line between today and yesterday, tomorrow and a hundred years from now is imperceptible. It’s the blink of an eye, a dazzling streak of lightning against a cobalt sky and then smoke. We are and always will be our moments, the good ones, the bad ones and everything in between, stitched together like Michele’s brown blazer.

I don’t want our stitches to be made of fear anger or regret, I don’t want to waste my time forecasting all the things that could happen or have happened all the while missing out on what IS happening. I am this moment now, scary and unpredictable but I don’t think it should change who I am or who my family and friends are. Michele could spend all of her days asking why she had to get cancer. She occasionally does ask the mirror or the television or her glass of ginger ale but when nobody answers back, she moves on, stitching her moments together because what else is there.

She is a superhero, more courageous than Christopher Columbus more dauntless than Evil Knievel. I have personally watched her brazenly go through procedures that would have made the Rock tap out. There have been tears too, plenty of them, there is uncertainty and endless questions that pile up like too many dirty dishes, but through it all we have each other, we always have.

We also have all of our amazing friends and extended family and their friends and even their families. We have generosity that flows to us from the mouths and hearts of  strangers in the form of comforting words, food, and insight. It’s amazing.

Before long, we will once again cross the threshold of this thin wall that separates us from our many yesterdays and life will return to normal. We will complain about our crappy Jetta, be aggravated over the price of gasoline, and Michele will be perfectly healthy.

Still we will have gained something, something precious, the ability to contrast the everyday inconveniences and aggravations against what this moment has shown us, a gift that is far greater than gold and a lesson so profound that it fills my heart with love as I write this.

There are terrible, scary things out there in the world, things that would make even the great and powerful Chuck Norris want to run and hide. Should this keep us from stealing a kiss from our beautiful wives or husbands? Should we not go to our kid’s graduation because there are questions that we can’t answer? Who knows how big our life’s blanket or blazer will be or how long we will be able to keep on stitching. I certainly don’t, but I intend to keep good company and enjoy it so long as I’m still holding crochet needles.

All the same, I tried to emotionally prepare myself to lose my hair. I also figured by doing that. It wouldn’t hit me so hard. After all, I’ve never been all that preoccupied with how I look. Sure, I’m like any Cuban-Brasilian, I do care. But…I don’t need to break out the Sunday finest to go to the grocery store.

My hair loss was insidious. It started shedding a week before my second treatment. It seemed a little more than normal but hey not too bad. A day before my second treatment, I started noticing some clearly defined thinning at my crown. But, it was still workable. Not too shabby. So why worry.

It was after the second treatment where it started falling out in droves. And it gets everywhere. As a woman, you think you shed like a Yeti as it is. But when you’re losing all your hair, it’s incredible how much hair there is. It probably would’ve made quite a number of squirrel nests. I wish I would’ve thought to hook up the squirrels in my neighborhood.

The good thing about my husband being a hairdresser is that he’s been able to cut and style my hair so that I could keep it as long as I could. But, the day finally came, over a month later where I couldn’t ignore it anymore. There was no amount of hair covering magic that was going to work.

So, we cut my hair Rachel Maddow short as Josh calls it. And, let my hair continue to fall. I couldn’t bring myself to shave it. The finality of it; it’s too much for me to deal with.

I still have more hair than Jason Voorhees had when he was a kid. Sooo, I guess that’s something. I also have two kick ass wigs. One is a half wig made from my hair and Vanessa’s.

I wish I could rock the bald look proud. But, I’m not there. Seeing myself with hair, helps me see myself as I was. It helps me feel closer to when I was healthy.

Sometimes, when I wake up or when I walk by a mirror, I’ve forgotten and am taken back by my Darth Vader after his mask gets taken off look. Then I remember, man, what a bummer.

As annoyed as I could get with my Cuban-fro, my bangs that never behaved, my hair’s love of frizz, I miss my hair.

After my experience at Dana-Farber, I started doing some research. I felt that the team at Dana-Farber was fantatstic. But, as a consummate researcher with journalistic training, I knew that I had to have a second opinion.

MGH was the second institution on my list. I work with a few breast cancer survivors at my job. I reached out to one of my co-workers knowing she had been treated at MGH and that she was also part of the program for women under 40 diagnosed with breast cancer.

I can’t say enough how helpful it is to talk with someone who has had the same experience. It didn’t hurt that she was able to reach out to the team she worked with.

As it so happened, rather quickly, I was able to meet with the breast surgeon Dr. Michelle Specht first. She’s amazing. She answered all my questions and has extensive experience with nipple sparing mastectomies. The type of surgery I will end up having is highly dependent on how my cancer responds to tumor. So, if having a mastectomy is on the table. I’d like to keep as much of boobs as possible. In the grand scheme of things, stuff like keeping your nipples doesn’t seem as big a deal as being alive. But, hey I’m attached to those suckers. Sooo, it’d be nice to keep them if it’s possible.

After my experience with Dr. Specht, I figured I’d be switching to MGH no matter what. The deal was totally sealed after meeting Dr. Steven Isakoff, my medical oncologist. I could tell he was tired and had had a long day. Despite this, he spent over an hour talking to Josh and I about my tumor, my prognosis, the types of treatment available. He didn’t sugarcoat anything and was able to give me a clear picture of what I was looking at. I was sold.

It doesn’t hurt that commuting to MGH is way easier for me. And the views of Beacon Hill from the Yawkey Building are incredible.

So there you have it. I picked MGH and I picked a recently approved regimen called TCHP. TCHP stands for Taxotere, Carboplatin, Herceptin and Pertuzumab. Depending on how I respond to treatment will determine my surgery. I’m hoping for a lumpectomy, a lot.

But, I have to wrap my head around the concept of mastectomy especially if it reduces my risk for a recurrence later down the line. Eh, I’ll think about that sucker later.

For now, I’m going to revel in the fact that I found my team. It’s flippin awesome.

As if having breast cancer wasn’t a kick in the boob to start with, you’re forced to examine your life choices all at once. When you’re first diagnosed, you start struggling with that old chestnut which is mortality.

Then as a 34-year-old woman who hasn’t had kids yet. You have to deal with the fact that your fertility will be compromised by the treatments that are supposed to save your life.

In my situation, I always thought I had more time. For the last ten years, Josh and I have been helping raise his daughter Lily. She’s twelve now. We figured maybe in the next couple of years we could give her a brother or sister. We just needed to get our finances under control. We’re also of the mindset that helping raise one kid is hard enough. The older she is the easier it would be to not be overstretched and give her the attention she’s needed during the really important phases of her life. Our choices aren’t for everyone, but it felt right for us.

Now this whole cancer diagnosis, it made me feel like maybe I fucked up. Now, my choices are limited. So, in the middle of dealing with having cancer, we started the merry-go-round that is an IVF cycle before chemo.

To be honest, it felt weird like I was an imposter. Here I am starting an IVF cycle because I have cancer. Some of these couples in this waiting room have been struggling with infertility and dealt with the ups and downs of what that means. I felt like I was thrown into a process without having a clue of what I was getting myself into. And it was true. I had no idea; I was just preserving my ability to have a choice.

So, we started the 2x daily injections. I didn’t turn into a hormonal psycho so that was good for both me and Josh. I was given medication to make sure that my estrogen levels stayed low throughout the process. Since my tumor is estrogen and progesterone positive.

We both sucked it up and drove to the hospital at the butt crack of dawn for the vaginal ultrasounds and blood work. Not the type of fun I would expect so early in the morning. It was exhausting, but I guess not as bad considering we were hoping to do this once. I didn’t produce as many follicles as the doctor was expected. But, it wasn’t too bad. I had 8 follicles to work with.

After 11 days, it was finally go time. I was having my egg retrieval. That procedure involved twilight sedation. Being wheeled into the day surgery room, I’m not sure why but I was totally unprepared for the heavy-duty yellow and black stirrups. It looked like something out of Aliens or Prometheus. Stupid on my part, right. How else are they going to take these eggs out?

The procedure went well. The pain wasn’t that bad. I did have some issues with my blood pressure being low so that sucked. It meant spending a longer time recovering. But all in all, not that bad especially considering what a wimp I am. I don’t like needles or surgeries or any of that. I wasn’t meant to be a nurse or doctor and I’m OK with that.

While I was recovering from the sedation, we got the news that the doctors highly recommended doing a procedure called ICSI where the inject the sperm directly into the egg. They said it was the best course of action and considering my cancer diagnosis, the $2,000 procedure would more than likely be covered by insurance. Sounded reasonable, sure I was pretty drugged up at the time.

The next day, I woke up with tonsillitis. Lucky me, right. You can’t make this shit up. While at the MGH Urgent Care clinic, I learned that of only 5 eggs were retrieved. Of the 5 retrieved, only 3 were mature enough to be fertilized. Of those 3, only one egg was fertilized.

Considering all the work and everything we had gone through, it was a big letdown. One embryo. Just one. Damn!

So, it just goes to show you. Life never goes as planned. Not that I’m constantly expecting sunshine and lollipops, but I just figured dealing with cancer was hard enough. Then I’m thrown into the whole fertility circuit; it seemed like it should have gone a little better.

Josh, the absolute funny guy that he is and positive person. He’s decided that the nickname for this embryo is Neo. Because, despite all this shit, this embryo is the one.