Medium Rare, a steak and fries bistro in Cleveland Park, brought pure joy to my life Wednesday evening. Fresh bread, a crisp salad, and two servings of steak, cooked medium rare, went into my belly. Oh, I can’t forget the secret sauce they use, which I suspect contains liverwurst, and the french fries. FRENCH FRIES. My absolute favorite guilty pleasure.

I was accompanied by a friend of mine, who was kind enough to drive us there. When we got back to his car, I stepped on glass. I then realized that someone had busted his window. He had a backpack in the car that had been sifted through, but he determined that nothing was taken. There was a broken window but nothing was missing from his car.

I am his car: temporarily broken, pieces all present, and reparable.

Today, Friday, I received a call from my providers stating that they had an arrival time for my procedure this coming Monday.

“Pardon me?”

“This is Ms. Whatsherbucket, right?”

“Uh, no. I think you’ve got the wrong patient. You had my hopes up though. I thought you managed to get me on the schedule for my revision surgery.”

“Let me transfer you over to the surgery scheduler.”

Rrrrrrring, rrrrrring, rrrrrring

“Hi, ma’am, yes. I am looking at the schedule right now and both of our surgeons are booked through July. You will have to wait.”

“Really? My surgery was done incorrectly for the umpteenth time and I have to wait almost half a year for you guys to fix it?”

“Yes ma’am, I’m sorry. You’ll have to wait. Is there anything else I can do for you.”

“Clearly you can’t do anything right for me in the first place, so no thank you.” Click.

Yes, those angry words came out of my mouth and I was shocked. It is not her fault, but at the end of the day it felt good to get a bit of that sassy angst off of my chest, that very chest that Dr. Party has put through hell and back.

Hearing the scheduler’s words hurt, but I refuse to step backwards when I have come this far. My pieces are still here and I will be okay.

The other day I wrote about defeating the Red Tide and conquering yoga class. That was a milestone for me. For almost two years now I haven’t had as much control over my life as I would prefer. I have had several surgeries and I am danger prone/clutzy. The list of things that I cannot do is finally growing smaller, and the list of things I have control over is expanding.

Today, again, I added to the list of things that I can do. Wheel pose, or Chakrasana, had been my enemy in 2012. It took several sessions before I could do the full backbend with my feet flat on my mat. With my surgery in January and the hole I had in my incision last week, I have been avoiding that pose by holding bridge pose, or Setu Bandhasana, for as long as I could manage. After class today, I decided to quit being a sissy and approached the instructor. I gave her a quick rundown of my story and she agreed to help me get the lift I needed.

We went to my mat and we started with an assisted wheel. I grabbed her ankles, lifted my hips, and then managed to push my chest up and straighten my arms. She helped me move my hands to the mat and I pushed onto my toes to get my pelvis even higher. As I pushed higher, I started bawling. My breath was shaking and my tears poured down my forehead. I felt incredible. 

I lowered myself to the mat for a break before pushing up into wheel on my own.

(I’ll work on getting more height with my feet flat on the mat later)

After I settled back onto the mat, the instructor stood over me and got in my face.

“F*** cancer! You made it your b****! Don’t let anything stop you.”

She pulled me up into a hug and I thanked her.

She’s right.

Nothing will stop me, but if something does, I promise I will have fought with everything I had.

I am here.