Birthday Tumor: One Year Later

One year ago on my birthday I was told the lump sticking out of my thigh that I had been ignoring, was a tumor. I was assured that because it came about in a matter of weeks that there was hardly any chance it could be cancer, that the cells don’t produce that fast, and at worst I’d have an incision made to remove the growth. Needless to say, this was not the case. I was just lucky it was caught before the asshole tumor arms that were wandering around my leg had infected my bones; one of the buggers was 2 millimeters short of my knee joint. I had no idea at the time how much this thing was going to alter my life. The fact that, really, it is a never ending process, because I have to keep going back for scans and tests every 3 or 4 months.

Now I turn 33 — my “Jesus year” everyone says — and my surgeon is amazed at how well I’ve done and the range of motion my leg has considering the epic mess that was this past year, and given that I had no real physical therapy to speak of until very recently. Obviously my birthday has a different feel about it now. It is kind of a bummer for me, actually. I’m always going to count how many years it has been since my leg got butchered, or how many years it’s been that the cancer hasn’t come back. Birthdays are depressing enough without those kind of reminders. Besides, from the looks of things my face, hands, and feet have all aged drastically from the stress and treatments to the point where I feel much older.

I wish that nurse had looked at my date-of-birth on my chart before she called my damn cell to tell me the news. At least then, I’d be able to ignore my birthday from here on out, like I had planned to. Oh well.

On the plus side, my husband gifted me with one of the Sid Vicious-looking padlocks from Tiffany & Co. that I had been wanting. Mostly because it kind of looks like the necklaces I give some of my portrait characters. So that was nice! Because Tiffany’s trumps everything — even cancerous tumors.