Pumpkin Carving

Monday, October 17, 2011 8:59 PM, EDT

Pumpkin Carving

I loved pumpkin carving as a child. It was truly one of my favorite pastimes. I have fond memories of Halloween altogether...as a child, I wore a lot of ballet costumes from prior recitals for Halloween. That was generally easiest...I was a Spanish ballerina, a blue ballerina, a dancer from the "Under the Sea" dance in the Little Mermaid recital. But my favorite costumes were non-ballet costumes. Vanna White sticks out like a sore thumb in my mind when I think of Halloween. I wore a fabulous black jersey '80's jumpsuit that Mama probably wore to some fun cocktail party. She decked me out in jewels and teased my hair to death before she put it into the perfect french twist (somehow it took Halloween and a canister of Dippity-Do to make my hair do anything)! And my make up was flawless. I sent that picture to NBC with an email when I was 23. The email said that Vanna started when she was 23, so she must be getting ready to retire. When she was ready to retire, I was asking them to consider me as the next great letter flipper for Wheel of Fortune. All I got back was a return email saying that I sent the email to the wrong place. I was crushed to learn that I was not destined to be the next great letter flipper on Wheel of Fortune.

That Halloween, as Vanna White, we went Trick-or-Treating with the Wilson cousins and the McCabes (who may as well have been cousins). There was a hay ride in the neighborhood. We had to look through our candy for razor blades when we got home. Apparently there was something terrible on the news about someone placing razor blades in candy. As an FYI, that really ruined Halloween for a lot of kids.  

I am bound and determined to make Halloween a national holiday in my family. I want my kids to meticulously choose their identities for the night, choose their sugar intake wisely, and make pumpkin carving an outright competition. Pumpkin carving was always a competition to me, not that anyone else was playing, but I was downright serious about it. And don't judge me based on the picture here - remember I was operating on about 3 hours of sleep in 3 days! I would carve a pumpkin for hours. You know those Martha Stewart pumpkins that have a layer of skin cut off and then a thin layer of meat underneath with the light shining through?...yeah, I can do that. I cut a hole in the top of the pumpkin that is a particular shape - it is like a puzzle piece that only fits one way so that I always know how to place the top so that it fits. And I love to sit out in the sun and the Fall breeze and scoop the guts out of the pumpkin. Have you ever carved a pumpkin, only to find another sprout inside of it? So cool. It always makes me giggle because I call Logan my little Bean Sprout. Gutting a pumpkin is meticulous work. If you don't scrape it thin enough, the light of the candle doesn't shine through enough. It is dim. Have you ever seen a dim pumpkin? Useless.

Logan was born (don't worry, I'm not going to tell the labor story again) after 26 long hours of labor. :-)  He was supposed to be born on October 29, but no...he needed his own birthday. He was born at 3:36am on Thursday, October 30. We came home on Halloween. While other new mothers would take this opportunity to recover, snuggle their new born, nest, I chose to carve a pumpkin. I was determined to make an Anne Geddes type picture with my baby in a pumpkin. Turns out, Anne Geddes uses plump little 3-6 month old (sleeping) babies. Mine was still all squished looking. And yet, it was perfect. Logan's name was carved in a font that was on a bib that cousins Sam and Lyndsey gave Logan. I loved the font, and it was fun to carve. And Logan's date of birth was below his name. And I vowed that day that every year, I would carved Logan a pumpkin and take his picture in it. For the last 2 years, I have kept my word, and I carved his name and the relevant year below it. I picture carving holes in the bottom when he is a teenager and making him hold it up around his waist. Mark my words - this will happen.

I visited with my Breast Surgeon Allie Hatmaker the other day. Dr. Hatmaker can't be any older than I am. She doesn't sugar coat anything, but she doesn't have a bad bedside manner either. She is exactly what I needed in a surgeon. She trained at Vanderbilt in breast surgery, and she specializes in breast surgery. That's all she does - and that's what I wanted. And I believe that she is sweet as pie in "real life." But this is not real life. This is telling people day after day that they can trust you - that you are going to help them live longer...that you are going to cut out the thing that wants to kill them. There's no sugar coating that.

First Dr. Hatmaker smiled. She had a relieved look on her face as she told me that my tumor was showing response to chemo (shrinking). She did a quick ultrasound that coordinated with the MRI measurements. And then we talked surgery. I had to stop her.
"Okay, you don't read my blog, so you're probably not going to understand what I mean by this, but you're going to have to explain a 'skin-sparing mastectomy' to me. Are you going to essentially cut off my nipple and carve me like a pumpkin?" Her eyes became big and round like pie plates - there's the sweetness!

"Well, I like to think it's a little more elegant than that!" She giggled...then proceeded to explain the meticulous details of the first 3 hours of my 8 hour surgery. She will perform the first portion, a sentinel lymph node biopsy. The sentinel node, as I understand it, is generally the first place that something like 85% of breast cancers spread. So they inject a radioactive isotope (or dye) that "highlights" my sentinel node if there are cancer cells. And other lymph nodes...if there are cancer cells. If there are cancer cells there, she removes all of my lymph nodes and my journey doesn't end with surgery and reconstruction. We pray for no cancer in the lymph nodes. The second part of the surgery is the goodbye party for Bess and Gretchen...the pumpkin carving, as I like to call it. I will lose all but about 3 % of my breast tissue (which I think they have to tell me just in case anything ever comes back). Then Dr. Hatmaker removes my port while the Pathologist reviews slide for clear margins. "Clear margins" implies that the entire tumor and a specified range of normal cells have been removed from my body. The last part of my 8 hours surgery is the tissue expander placement, which Dr. Quintero will do. 

I am expected to spend only one night in the hospital and be discharged the next day, which still blows my mind. And then the hard part - recovery. I will be off work for 3-6 weeks, depending on complications (of which I plan to have none) and range of motion, or ability to continue with normal job duties as expected. I am not expecting to be able to lift my children for 3 months. This will be the part of my recovery that I will find most difficult - despite the pain, emotional stress, grief.

Throughout this journey, I have laughed, and I have cried. From time to time, I have a good, healthy break down, but our house is a "safe place." Nathan and I have agreed to try to keep the negative energy away from the kids, and away from our safe place. So it happens in random places - the bathroom, therapy, a water park, my car. Pretty much any time I spend more than about 15 minutes with my own thoughts.

So I went to a movie the other night with Kerrie, Rebecca, Divine and Amanda. It was a great time, and a funny movie. But the ride home was about 5 minutes too long, and I was (you guessed it) by myself. I called Tiff to get my mind off of the surgery, but the minute she started talking, I lost it. I almost had to pull over, and all I could think was, "Damn cancer, this is embarrassing!" And though my blubbering, I heard Tiff say to me, "Did you download that song I sent you this morning?" I had, but it didn't sync to my iPod. Damn cancer. She said, "It's by this band Addison Road, and it's kind of like 'This Little Light of Mine' that we sang growing up...but with a twist. I always loved that song." Damn cancer. "Tina, I just wanted to tell you that through all of this darkness, I am so proud of you for continuing to let your light shine...and now look at you! You're falling apart!" Me, bawling, still considering pulling over, but almost home. "So...suck it up, Bean! And let your light shine!" Burst of laughter. Only your sister, or your soulmate, can tell you something like this and make you laugh in your darkest moment. And if you are lucky enough, your sister and a soulmate are one in the same.

So I'm not scared of surgery. I am grateful that I get to celebrate Logan's 3rd birthday on October 30 with him, and that I don't have to carve his pumpkin a week in advance. I am fortunate that I get to celebrate Parker's first Halloween, and see Logan dressed as Spiderman while he Trick or Treats for the first time. I am thankful that we have the technology and the surgical expertise in Louisville, Kentucky to carve this cancer out of me. May what's left behind be "elegant" and precise, and may it be so that my light does not shine dimly through. I'm ready to suck it up and let my light shine...and it needs to be bright!