Sing this song with me: “You can’t always get what you want… you can’t always get what you want… you can’t always get what you want… but if you try sometimes, you might just find, you get what you need.”
My husband tells me it’s by The Rolling Stones. I’ll have to take his word for it. I’m too tired to look it up.
I went in for my pre-operation appointment yesterday with the plastic surgeon who will do the reconstruction. To put it mildly, I basically begged him to do a double mastectomy instead of just the single.
He was good with me, really good. He asked appropriate questions, like, “Why?” and then did his best to juggle doctors’ schedules and operating rooms. In the end though, he came up short. Unless God intervenes sometime before Tuesday, I’ll have to settle for a single.
I’ve been struggling with the idea of taking both breasts for a while. Even though the right breast is healthy, it is very prone to lumps. So think through this with me… what happens six months or a year from now when I go in for a mammogram and they tell me I have a lump in my “healthy” breast that needs to be checked out? How am I supposed to hold it together? How I am supposed to go home and tell my husband, and expect him to hold it together? How am I supposed to expect three children to deal with the emotional rollercoaster and the what ifs?
Once is enough. I want them both gone.
So, that’s my perspective standing here on Earth. But you can’t always get what you want. So now I do the only thing I know how to do. I turn to God and beg Him to give me His perspective. And I trust, that I may not get what I want, but thanks to His loving care and protection, I will always get what I need.
