Butterflies…they go through several stages to get to become the beautiful butterfly. Some of those stages aren’t so pretty. Some are kind of funny. They start as an egg that becomes a caterpillar that spends it’s time looking for food, almost oblivious to everything else. Automatic pilot, find food. Perhaps I was like the caterpillar before my diagnosis. I am not saying that I spent my days searching and eating everything in my path, although most people know that I can certainly chow down like a frat boy. I was not oblivious to the world around me either but I was oblivious to my own mortality…until breast cancer slapped me upside the boob.
The pupa stage isn’t the prettiest to behold but so many things are going on to catapult the caterpillar into something more. The transformations are hidden under a safe shell and we wait for them to show us their beauty. That’s what cancer does to those of us diagnosed. We lose a part of ourselves and undergo hard treatments, while hiding under our shells, waiting for our transformations. Are we meant to be more than just the caterpillars in life?
I guess I am at the beginning stage of being a pupa or chrysalis. Long gone is the caterpillar in me. That was gone on my cancerversary. I’ve started transforming since then with the double mastectomy and early stages of reconstruction. This stage is anything but pretty. It’s hard work, exhausting, frustrating and it hurts. There’s more to come. There’s more reconstruction down the road, there’s 12 months of IV targeted therapies and possibly chemo mixed in, which would bring about more changes. Like the caterpillar and pupa, I need to have patience, trust the process along with my wonderful team of specialists and wait… There’s more of me to come…I will be the butterfly in spring…
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