Merry Little Christmas.
If you don't know what that is, you're obviously not of Norwegian/Scandinavian descent. Ha!
In my family, we've always celebrated "little Christmas". In Norway, people open gifts on Christmas Eve. We still open our presents on Christmas morning, but the elves fill our stockings on LITTLE Christmas Eve, so we open them on Christmas Eve morning. Takes a little bit of the Christmas anticipation edge off, and makes you the envy of all the other kids when you get something from Santa before anyone else!
Christmas Eve is also the last visit from Heart. Our busy little elf will be going back home to the North Pole tomorrow night - Christmas Eve - until next year. As you can see, she had to get all dressed up for her final performance this Christmas season.
Today is also a special day for another reason: it marks the final step in the reconstruction process for me. This afternoon I had an appointment at my plastic surgery clinic with the tattoo artist. Guess what? Almost two years exactly from the day I had my breasts removed, I have complete breasts again. They were constructed from fat from other parts of my body, they are scarred, they have little to no feeling and the nipples are fake. But they look like breasts. Finally.
I have to wear bandages on them for five days and may need a touch-up session in a few months (because scar areas don't absorb the ink the same way as regular skin so it might look uneven), but over the next month or so, I should be able to look down and see something I haven't seen since January 3, 2014.
God willing, this will be the last in the long line of tests, procedures, treatments and surgeries I've endured over the last 27 months. I hope to stay on this end of the cancer battle, only seeing my doctors every six months for them to tell me "everything looks good". If the worst things I have to complain about are my achy joints, restless legs and extra ten (or thirty) pounds, I'm calling it good.
Merry Little Christmas Eve.
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