Afraid to be broken

On Friday I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. As far as cancers go, thyroid is a pretty easy one to treat. It will probably mean an outpatient surgery and a radiation pill. But it's not the treatment that scares me, it's the fear of being broken.

It's the fear of losing my foster kids and the chance to adopt this beautiful baby girl that has been my world for the last four months. There is no guarantee that I would keep them even if I were healthy, but to lose them over this would be devastating.

My second fear is that this is what my life will look like for as long as I live it. Every few years they will find cancer somewhere else. I'll have as many "ectomies" as Dr. Doofenshmirtz has "inators." (Phineas and Ferb reference for those who don't know.) I've already had a mastectomy. It looks like I'll need a thyroidectomy. And, a hysterectomy is likely. What else will they find? How many parts of my body will I be missing? How many medications will I have to take for the rest of my life?

The picture I posted is one of my baby girl playing with a necklace that I'm wearing. It was one I bought at a craft fair while in the midst of breast cancer, so it has special significance to me. If you look closely, you'll see that it's broken, (a casualty of having kids in the house.) I kind of feel like that necklace: broken, but not destroyed. In fact, the brokenness is now part of its beauty, because it means my dream of raising kids has at least in some part come true.

I may lose the kids. I may be forever broken. But I will never give up.