Cricket Conant

Welcome to my CaringBridge website! It's a way to keep family and friends updated in one place. I appreciate your support and words of encouragement. If you have experience, strength, and hope to share, please leave a message for me here. 

My surgery date is December 13, 2018 at the UCI Medical Pavilion in Orange. Once I'm out of surgery I'll be in the ICU for 6-10 days, to keep everything clean and make sure I'm healing well (insert immense gratitude for quality healthcare here). My room number and visiting information will be available on this site once I'm visitable... come play checkers with me! Smuggle in milkshakes!

I should be home no later than the 23rd (which is, incidentally, my wedding aniversary with John). Then I'll be on very restricted duty for about two months, with weekly visits to the plastic surgeon, who will monitor my healing and sign off on incremental increases in my physical abilities. 

I'm having a double mastectomy.  I was recently diagnosed with DCIS, which is a form of breast cancer. It stands for "Ductile Carcinoma in Situ", meaning that the cancerous cells are presently confined within my milk-ducts. In my case it's throughout about a third of my right breast.  It appears to not (yet!) have invaded any surrounding tissue. 

THIS IS WHY WE HAVE MAMMOGRAMS! Please have them regularly if you have boobs! Please encourage the boob-bearing humans in your life to have them! I would NEVER have been aware of it this soon otherwise. 

Why am I having a double mastectomy? It is the right choice for me. It might not be, for someone else.  I'll go into this in more detail in a journal entry below. 

I'll definitely need some help! Becky N. from my Quaker Meeting (Orange County Friends) is very kindly putting together a sign-up sheet of predictable needs: food, visits, light cleaning, catbox tending, and gardening.  Please post here if you're available to help with any of that?

I'll also post here as other needs arise. 

Giant thanks are due to:

...our friend Peggy, who will be walking the ladies (Busy and Pearl, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the fact that we call our dogs "the ladies") during the weekdays when John is at work.

... our friend Kate, who will be nurturing my garden while I can't. 

Even more giant thanks are due to my incredibly patient and hardworking husband, whose support and comfort are invaluable to me at all times, but especially when it's time to say ta-ta to the ta-tas.