Rather serious announcement, but punctuated by funny dog metaphors.

Hi everyone! I have breast cancer.

My prognosis is great. I'm feeling quite chipper about it and dealing with it right away, as in, this week. If that's as much as you want to know, congratulations! You're done.

Edited to add: If this is a nasty surprise and we are friends, it is probably because I do not have your current email address! I tried to make private announcements last week. Please write to gement@hotmail.com or otherwise communicate current contact information to me. Connection is good.

( More details in non-technical terms. Imagine it is a Basset hound. )

( Treatment plan, dull. Dull is good. )

( The technical version with test results and clinical language )

So about emotional reactions to cancer...

A quick emotional summary of my reactions, which are only mine and not a judgment on anyone else's:

I didn't have any particularly existential reaction. I found myself entirely unworried about probability curves that haven't collapsed into data yet. This is, again, not a judgment on people whose fear jumps to the deadly end of the curve. I was as surprised as anyone. Fear about that just... wasn't a thing. Not because I couldn't die, but because that was a non-calculable probability yet.

Instead, I had mostly blunt, short-term reactions like "I haven't opened my mail in six months or figured out how to use my HSA debit card, this is about to become a serious problem," and eventually, "Shit, I didn't actually want top surgery, what can I design that will leave me relatively happy with my chest shape?"

( A guided tour of specific reactions... )

Some people treat cancer as a wake-up call that life is short, so maybe it's time to learn to play ukulele, dabble in foreign languages, shave your head for fun, go caving, or book an international trip. It turns out I have actually been doing well at that sort of list! (I did resolve to get laid more often, however.)

I've cried really violently three or four times in the last few weeks. One of those times was worrying about acquiring chest dysphoria. The rest were about coping with managing email communication, trying to make lists of people to actually talk to and talk to them.

Could be displacement. Really doesn't feel like it. This is not a metaphor. This is my deep, deep difficulties with mail logistics, social management, housecleaning, and paperwork. It's been the intractable bugbear of my therapy work for well over a decade, and if it takes cancer to kick its ass and let me get a new set of problems, hell yes, I'll take it.