Trip Planning, Distraction, and a Little More Reality

This past week, I've been planning.

Planning for my trip to Wakefield, Nebraska.

For the past four or five years, we've made the trip to Wakefield for their annual town celebration. We participate in the event by putting up a booth and selling our items, so there is always plenty to do before we leave. Inventory needs to be made, packed, checked, packed again, and somehow packed one more time because I always seem to think of something I forgot.

But the reality is, we go to Nebraska for something much more important than selling products.

We go because we need a break.

A much-needed break from the Minnesota reality that has become our life.

The family is the same. The same cousins. The same people we've known for years. But somehow, it's different there. It's on their turf. Their town. Their routines. And for whatever reason, the concerns seem different too.

Maybe it's because I'm not sitting at home surrounded by all the reminders of everything that has happened.

Maybe it's because, for a few days, I can just be me.

Not Faith with breast cancer.

Not Faith waiting for surgery.

Not Faith trying to figure out reconstruction.

Just Faith.

Over the last couple of weeks, I've spent a lot of time preparing inventory for the event. I've had some special requests come in, including tallow butter with a fire-roasted marshmallow scent. I've also had a customer let me know that my last batch of lotion got a little too stiff and doesn't pump through the bottle pump very well.

And honestly?

I've welcomed it.

There is something wonderfully normal about worrying about whether lotion is too thick.

I'll take a customer asking me about a lotion pump over worrying about pathology reports any day.

Making products, filling orders, preparing inventory, and thinking about what we're going to take to Nebraska have given my brain something else to concentrate on.

It has been a nice distraction from my day-to-day worries.

And then there was my second appointment with my reconstruction surgeon.

This appointment was much nicer than the first one.

For starters, I wasn't crying.

That alone felt like an accomplishment.

I had actually done my homework this time. Well...sort of.

I had typed out a whole list of questions for my surgeon, because apparently that's what responsible adults do when they're facing major surgery. I walked out of my house and left the typed list sitting on my computer desk.

Of course I did.

Thankfully, I had the list saved in my Google Docs, so I wasn't completely unprepared.

And she answered every single question.

She did it with a smile and with the same tone of honesty I've come to appreciate from each of my providers. There wasn't any sugarcoating things, but there also wasn't any reason to be afraid of the answers.

One of the things we talked about was my weight.

She explained that because I am heavy—or obese, which is the clinical term—there are additional considerations when it comes to reconstruction. Hearing that isn't exactly fun. Nobody wants to sit in a doctor's office and have their body size become part of the surgical conversation.

But I appreciated that she was honest with me.

And maybe that's one of the things I'm learning through all of this.

I don't necessarily need someone to tell me what I want to hear.

I need someone to tell me the truth and then help me figure out what comes next.

That's what this appointment felt like.

The first appointment had been emotional. I was overwhelmed, scared, and crying so much that I'm not sure I absorbed everything that was said.

This time, I was able to sit there, ask questions, listen to the answers, and actually process what she was telling me.

And then, when the appointment was over, I went back to planning my trip.

Back to tallow butter.

Back to lotion.

Back to inventory.

Back to thinking about Wakefield, Nebraska.

Maybe that sounds like a strange combination—reconstruction surgery and preparing products for a small-town celebration.

But that's what life looks like right now.

One minute I'm talking about what my body will look like after cancer surgery.

The next I'm wondering if I made enough inventory.

One minute I'm thinking about reconstruction.

The next I'm thinking about whether I have enough bottles, labels, and displays for the booth.

Cancer hasn't stopped life from happening.

And maybe that's the point.

I am still planning things.

I'm still making things.

I'm still working.

I'm still going to Nebraska.

I'm still looking forward to seeing my family.

I'm still finding little pieces of normal in the middle of something that is anything but normal.

And right now, that trip feels like more than just a town celebration.

It feels like a few days where I get to breathe.

A few days where the worries might look a little different.

A few days where I can step away from the Minnesota reality that has become my everyday life and remember that there is still a whole lot of life happening outside of cancer.

And I think I need that.

Maybe more than I realized.

Until next time... keep finding joy in the ordinary, hope in the hard days, and strength you didn't know you had. 

Thanks for walking this journey with me.