Melons and Eggplant

Thank God it looks worse than it feels.  My left breast is the color of an eggplant and the size of a cantaloupe.  This is progress.  Over the weekend, it was resembling a honeydew melon.   My two incisions feel like clothes pins are pinching them.  The painkillers work, but I don't like taking them during the day.   Dr. A.J. said that I need to keep ice on it and wear a sports bra to keep it bound tight and restrict movement.   A sports bra????!!!  Ok.  I'm a big breasted woman who has never jogged in my life.  Therefore, I've never needed a sports bra.  Wait. That's a lie.  I jogged one time. 

 It was 1984 and I was 19 years old.  I had mailed applications and resumes to many different airlines in hopes of a career of flying the friendly skies.  Jeff and I had just met a few months before the letter came in the mail.  Eastern Airlines was flying me to Atlanta for an interview for a flight attendant position.  Back then, it was standard procedure to weigh all applicants during the interviewing process. Gulp.  I knew that the very top of the accepted weight range for a 5'8" female flight attendant  was 140 lbs.  I stepped on my mom and dad's bathroom scale: 150 pounds.  My interview was nine days away.  I jogged at least a mile every day and ate nothing except one tangerine a day....for nine days.  My new boyfriend (and current husband) Jeff tried to appear supportive when I told him about the interview and the reason I couldn't eat out for a week.  Without Jillian Michaels screaming in my face, I managed to lose 11 pounds that week!  Eastern Airlines flew me first class to that interview, while I declined free danishes and donuts during that morning flight.   My "interview" was actually a group "screening" process with over 150 applicants and two positions to fill, where we each stood up for a few minutes to talk about ourselves.  I was crushed.   At 19, I thought this was my only opportunity to travel the world.  

  

I guess the point I was initially trying to make was...do they even make sports bras the size of honeydew melons?  I decided to save myself the humiliation of shopping for one and had Jeff wrap my chest with an ACE bandage. Thank God for one size fits all ACE bandages. 

Lauren sent me a text last night wondering about my "birthday plans".  I turn 49 on August 19. I've never been one to lie about my age (once I hit 21, that is), or "forget" my birthdays but this one is hitting me hard. It has nothing at all to do with the looming half a century/golden/AARP big "five oh" around the corner.  It's the devastating sadness which seems to be happening to me every ten years.  When I was 29, my dad died. When I was 39, my mom died, and now.....49 is only days away.  I just feel…sad.