Boobs and Books

I know I am fortunate to have had the privilege and opportunity to make this decision that could help save my life. I am lucky that, when the pathology reports returned from the lab, the news was that my doctors had gotten to me before the cancer had. That said, this shit — testing positive for the gene, facing the decisions it forces, this surgery, recuperation, and whatever comes next — has been difficult. I choose those words — “difficult” and “shit” — carefully: Difficult is all this is. All the time, worse things happen, things that can’t, eventually and with effort, be scraped off the sole of the boot.

Nell Boeschenstein’s fantastic essay in The Morning News about her prophylactic double mastectomy and the books she — a Brooklyn “literary type” — pushed aside to “chug YouTube” and watch Party Down (and Parks and Rec, and The Killing, and Parks and Rec again) while recovering is … fantastic. Go read it!