Groovy mammogram machine at Battlefield Imaging. It goes through cycles of colors – green, purple, pink, etc.

Why am I still in a funk?

I got the results from my mammogram and ultrasound on Monday, and my surgeon evaluated them yesterday.

There is no evidence of cancer.

That’s good news, right??  You’d think I’d be all happy and celebrating.  Even the “mostly” part isn’t that much of a glitch.  That part is that my seroma hasn’t gotten any smaller, and my surgeon is thinking it will be best to do surgery to remove it.  He says it’s an easy surgery with a three- or four-day recovery, and that I’d probably need a drain for a month (since it’s obvious that my body struggles with getting rid of fluid).  I’m probably going to wait three or four months to decide if that’s the path I need to take.

But I don’t think it’s the “mostly” part that has me still in the funk.  I think it’s that I’m grieving a new level from my cancer journey.

I’m in a new place, about to emerge into a new part of my life, and I have to acknowledge, to honor, all that I lost when I went through cancer and its treatments.

So I’m trying to be present to what I’m feeling.  I can’t put my finger on it.  I can’t identify what the feeling actually is.  But that’s okay.  It’s a wound that hasn’t healed yet (kind of like that seroma).  I need to be easy with it, not push, but also not ignore.   I need to be kind to myself.  To know that new is coming.  And realize that even with resurrection, there are sill scars from the wounds.  As Richard Rohr points out in Immortal Diamond, Jesus didn’t come back to life in a perfect body,  He still had the scars from crucifixion.  Just as we all still have our scars when we experience our resurrections.  We might be new people, but we have the scars of our old selves. They help us remember who were were, what we went through, and how were are all wounded.

I’m feeling this funk as I’m about to hit the road on a trip out West.  If you know me, you know how I love to travel and how I love the American West.  Big horizons, big mountains, low humidity, clear, clear skies.  I feel this trip will be a part of my transition into my new life.  I’ve made it through the most precarious period for cancer’s coming back – that first two years after diagnosis.  This literal journey will help me see feel and understand more of my figurative cancer journey, how it has brought me a new way of seeing, of being, of trusting.

I hope to be sharing at least some of the trip during the time I’m on the road.  So be looking for posts.  Some may be photos with few words.  It depends on my energy level and how much down time I have.  But I know I’ll want to share as I go.

I’m excited about this trip and about making it cancer-free to the Year Two marker and about the new possibilities on my horizon.  But I need to attend to my wounds in the midst of this newness, too.  Because I’ve been through a lot.  And I’ve come out the other side.  But all of it – the good and the bad, the pain and the gratitude – has helped me to grow, to become a new, a resurrected person.

Not a perfect person.  One with wounds.

One who is still healing.

Trip destination