Wilderness medicine, knots, and cancer

 When wilderness medicine and surgical oncology meet - drains, knots, and carabiners. Normally knots and carabiners make me think fondly of climbing ice, rock, and mountains. Now they tether my drains to my lanyard so I can shower. 

Post-op day eleven and my drains remain, still putting out too much fluid to remove. The scars are otherwise healing well, and I’m up to almost two hours a day of walking. 

The next step on this journey is more surgery: I can’t have an estrogen-producing organ and an estrogen-receptor positive cancer, so to lower the chances of this cancer coming back, I have to get rid of my ovaries. 

I could get rid of them chemically, suppressing their function with drugs that would induce menopause, along with a bunch of other side effects, or I could get rid of them surgically. I choose the latter. Apparently this reduces my risk of recurrence further than drugs would, and my oncologist seemed relieved at the ease with which I was willing to part with more of my body parts. 

So in a span of less than four months I’ll have lost 2 breasts, 2 ovaries, my fertility and my hormones, and be put into immediate menopause. What I have gained is hopefully years of disease free survival, a cancer free body, and a whole new perspective on what it means to be a woman, and to be alive.