Since the last entry, I’ve been working hard to find a house to buy. The weekends have been filled with open houses, drive bys, and going to see other houses with my real estate agent. I’ve been looking in three counties up to within minutes of the VT border to minutes within the CT border. So far, nothing I can afford.

I’ve started knitting socks again because I needed something to do that was fairly mindless when I have a spare fifteen minutes before bed.

Sock #1 finished. Stripey goodness.

In the meantime, my health has come to the forefront in a very abrupt and startling way. On April 15th, I got an MRI guided breast biopsy – my second in the last year – which was painful and scary. A week later, I got the results: I have breast cancer.

For those of you who have known me for years, you know this is one of my very worst fears. I am trying to be brave. It was caught very early, the prognosis is very good, but I am scared. There are a couple of options for treatment, and I have chosen to get a bilateral mastectomy. This cancer is very much genetic – my mother and her mother both had cancer. My mother died. I want to live. And I don’t want this fucking cancer to have any possible foothold to come back.

Everything starts in about a month. House hunting has been put on hold, I will move to a friend’s house so that I am not alone, where I do not have to worry about house things, and where there’s internet access so I can still work remotely. I am scrambling now to get everything set up: fix my car, get new glasses, find boxes, pack up all my belongings (hopefully donating some), getting things at work ready for me to be out of commission for a while, etc. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it is. I hate moving. I hate that I don’t really have a choice about the best course of action.

So this blog will probably not be updated regularly. Or maybe it will? Perhaps I will have enough energy the first month to knit a pair of socks, or draw a picture, or embroider a thing. Something that won’t require a lot of energy. I don’t know. I will gather a small amount of things I think I might be able to work with during recovery and put them aside just in case.

I am scared. I am grieving the coming loss of part of my body. I am so angry that this is happening – I spent the last 30 years trying to avoid cancer by eating right, exercising, getting enough sleep, not drinking, not smoking, etc etc. Turns out, even if you do all the right things, you can still get cancer.