"We acquire the strength we have overcome" (--Ralph Waldo Emerson)

I'm happy to say that my sister Claudia is out of surgery and home again.  (Isn't it incredible that after a major surgery you can head home overnight?)  

The bluebirds of happiness are ecstatic at our place today. 

I thank everyone for being so kind, and for letting me vent about Claudia's  mastectomy.  It's an enormous relief to be able to say that this surgery is at least behind her now.    She can cross off lumpectomy, chemo, and now mastectomy from the big list of difficult things.  

She said she feels like she was hit by a Mack truck, but she said if it doesn't get worse, she can deal with it.   

I know a lot still lies ahead: she has opted to have reconstructive surgery, and so she's not out of the woods yet, but she's one step closer towards achieving "the new normal" for her. 

It never ceases to amaze me how the human body is at once fragile and yet fiercely

resilient.   

Thanks for all the kind words of support for her, all you wonderful people in the blogosphere! 

"If there is no struggle, there can be no progress."  (--Frederick Douglass)

(I'm thinking Claudia should feel a lot of progress, then!)