Ash

With the revision, I’m just shooting for a little less weird, that’s all. I am aware that by choosing textured implants, I increased my very small risk of contracting anaplastic large cell lymphoma (ALCL), a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (cancer of the immune system) that has been linked specifically to breast implants with textured surfaces. In the revision, I’m considering switching to smooth round implants to solve the rotation (round is round, no matter which direction the implant moves) and slash that risk of ALCL. It’s weird to shop for body parts like I’m looking for the perfect gift on Amazon.

Born to alcoholic, disinterested parents, Lockey and her sister share a room in a cockroach-infested apartment, learn to grocery shop on their own, and lose sleep on school nights caring for their mother who comes home blacked out drunk, hurling insults and fists their way. She is a self-admitted “asshole” when she starts the practice, interested only in post-mastectomy shoulder mobility, but she later finds that “healing my trauma was an unexpected and life-transforming benefit of yoga. But Lockey reflects that the yoga mat is a place to practice coping tactics: “We learn this skill on our mat, in a safe environment, so that when life goes sideways, we have the tools to bring ourselves back to the present moment. We learn this skill on our mat, in a safe environment, so that when life goes sideways, we have the tools to bring ourselves back to the present moment.

And as Tamoxifen side effects gradually transformed my body into a menopausal inferno, my partner spent more and more nights perched on the opposite edge of the bed, trying to build a buffer between him and his pizza oven of a girlfriend. If you’re missing out on sleep, your body is missing out on a lot of good stuff, from immunity to metabolism. My favorite place to sleep is snuggled into my boyfriend’s armpit, so our opposite-edges sleeping arrangement was far from ideal. So if you’re a hot flashing, night sweating, man repelling tropical storm of a menopausal insomniac like yours truly, you should seriously think about slipping between some SHEEX tonight.

This birthday marks the first full year I’ve traveled around the sun since I completed my breast cancer treatment. But for many women with breast cancer, that is not the case. This year, to celebrate my birthday, I’m raising money to support the groundbreaking breast cancer research that is currently underway at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. My dream is that one day soon, we find ourselves living in a world where every breast cancer diagnosis is curable.