alive and happy

A few years ago, our older brother Lee fell and broke both arms. Let me put this in a different way~ a few years ago our poor sister-in-law's husband fell and broke both arms! How horrible! She had to do everything for him. Imagine! One of his arms was broken worse than the other and while I don't remember all the details now, they pretty much had to build him a bionic elbow and then for some reason it didn't work and they had to take the bionic arm part out and now he has what we refer to as Barbie Arm. Actually, we refer to him as Barbie Arm. It's our job as sisters to  make fun of him at all times. Except for the slightly always bent arm with the giant scar, he's back to normal. It was an awful experience. During the years of his recovery, I do not remember anyone taking me a side and whispering to me Is he going to get an arm job?

Back in November when my husband had some surgeries on his shoulder for that nasty melanoma (or as we like to call it, cancer shoulder), it was the grossest thing ever. It looked like someone had taken a giant ice cream scooper and scooped out his shoulder. During healing, the stitches broke and there was blood and I tried not to faint. It was just disgusting. I couldn't even pretend it wasn't. My husband is a work-out freak and has really good shoulders, so a scooped out shoulder was kind of a big deal. Well, that and deadly cancer is bad, bad, bad. As you can see from this photo taken yesterday, his shoulder has healed fine! There is a scar but certainly it's not gross! During  his recovery, I do not remember anyone taking me a side and whispering to me Is he going to get a shoulder job?

Over the last few months while Karen has been going through her radiation treatment and being all breast cancery, there is one thing I remember. Everyone took me aside and started whispering: Is she going to get a boob job? Will she get a wig?
Certainly arms and shoulders are way more important to a body working than a BREAST is, yet everyone was all distracted by that one little word. Why is the appearance of perfect breasts more important than a healthy body? Cancer just happened to show up in the breast. How sad that the first thing that occurs to people is BOOBS!BOOBS!BOOBS!! like a bad episode of Family Guy*. It's about life and death, not cleavage. You can be alive and happy and not have perfect 36 Cs.

Today, Karen and I met at the hospital to visit our mom who has lung cancer that has spread to her liver. Oddly enough, she has had a boob job (decades ago). Nobody has whispered in my ear  wondering if she'll be getting a lung job.
While we were at the hospital, I snapped this photo of Karen who dyed her hair a new shade of brown last night. Look how happy and healthy she looks! So you see, she does indeed have all her hair and looks BEAUTIFUL. The rest of her is perfect, too.

*Most episodes of Family Guy are very funny.