Kris is a rockstar and a superhero
Hi all, Anna here. I just received word from Stephen earlier that Kris is out of surgery. She did it! Well, her surgeon did it, but Kris obviously played a very necessary role. News from Stephen is that the surgeon said it went very well, and both lymph nodes came back negative - YAY. Within the next hour, Kris should be out of recovery and safely tucked away in her hospital room. When I say safely, I mean surrounded by her snacks and hopefully completely free of barfing roommates (IYKYK). EDIT to say Kris is in her room and feeling good so far. She's in a double and has NO roommate thank the heavenly heavens. She's talking about doing cartwheels which I'm going to advise her against.
This morning, after stating some extremely justifiable feelings of overwhelm, she had the audacity to ask me how I was doing amidst all of this (the NERVE of that one, I swear). I told her that as her friend I wish I could just poof it all away, or at least get her to a place where she feels recovered, faster. This is a feeling I'm sure all of us share. We talked about normal pre-double mastectomy topics like aerial silks wraps, quality of the morning poo (this one is actually so important though. Think about the pressure you feel to poo before an early morning flight and multiply it by a thousand), and appropriate food items to ward off the true villain in all of this: nausea and the potential for vomiting.
Then came the final text after she had to leave: "fuck. time to go." I envisioned her unsheathing her sword and preparing for battle. She is both a superhero and a warrior, after all.
It feels like the last many weeks have all been leading up to this kind of final moment of surgery. In truth, there is still more to come with recovery and the question of radiation and chemo (NO CHEMO NO CHEMO NO CHEMO). Even so, I know that we all likely agree that there is a sense of relief that after all of the anticipation, this difficult part of the journey finally came and our girl can start the next phase towards being hopefully cancer-free and getting back to flying.
More updates to come as I have them.