3.2.1….Happy New Year! It’s a time to start fresh and get to write page 1 of your 365 page book. After my family left today, my New year started with feeling overwhelmed and anxious. I was feeling lonely because everyone left, and also just plain worried. Most people would think I would be feeling bad or anxious because I have had a large area of my body removed and replaced, and that I would be having body image issues or feeling a sense of loss. That’s not it at all. I don’t feel any loss other than the loss of the weight of breast cancer hanging over my head, I don’t have body image issues, I think the plastic surgeon is doing a excellent job, and I do not feel like less of a woman, in fact if anything I feel empowered that I took control of something that could hurt me and beat it into the ground. So why am I feeling overwhelmed? I have 5 weeks left of my FMLA and I am still being expanded and have to have an implant exchange as well. That is a short amount of time to get all of that done. I don’t know what the plastic surgeons time frames or expectations are, but I have an appointment Monday so we will have to find out. It just hit me today and I started to become very anxious. FMLA protects my job, and if I am not cleared (I can’t return on light duty) what will happen to my job? Will I lose it? Will they get rid of it? When I go back to work I will have used up all of my FMLA allotted for this rolling year, will have no IPA (medical time off) or PTO (paid time off) left. Don’t get me wrong here, I am not complaining, it’s just added to my anxiety. And all of these thoughts, piled ontop of feeling lonely, feeling like I am going a bit backwards because of my seroma, and the fact that tomorrow will be my first day alone all day made me go into a slight panic mode. (How lucky am I that the first seven weeks of my recovery were spent being taken care of by my husband and family!). I am worried and just overwhelmed. Unknowns are tough. I just need to keep focusing on God and know that he has his plan for me and that’s what will happen. So I am gonna pray and pray hard because right now my stomach is in my throat. I told you all I would try to be honest in this blog, and unfortunately you have days like this where it all just feels like it’s piling on top of you. So if you get a second and feeling like shooting a few words up to THE BIG GUY, please do. I would really appreciate it. Hope you all started your New Year off a little better than me. This too shall pass…