June 2008 - Janelle's Blog

The police were at our office doorstep within minutes of the alarm that indicated we had a break-in at our NBCF headquarters. This was not the first time, more like half a dozen times a false alarm was set off due to our phone system.

This was the last day before we installed our new phones. One more time office staff had dialed 9-1-area code, but not fast enough to keep it from reading 911. The officer, dressed in full blue uniform stood over 6' tall in the hallway. At 5:30 p.m. we were closing up for the day. I was scrambling down the hall to see what all of the concern was with a gathering group of employees.

"Not the phones again," I said. We jokingly said we would sacrifice the person who set off the alarm. "You can take her off to jail," I said. "She can go in our place."

The officer was understanding of the repeated calls. We all stood looking miffed at how a phone system could mess us up so many times.

Cuffed

I spotted the shiny silver handcuffs dangling from the officer's belt. "I've never had handcuffs on before," I said. "Here, cuff me," I said, as I quickly darted my arm upward toward the officer.

The words were in full throttle on the way from my mouth to his ears when he said, "OK," and snapped the cuff on my wrist within a couple of seconds.

He looked at me as surprised as I was, then paused and blank-faced said, "I don't have a key."

"What?" I said, "You've got to get me out of these cuffs."

"We don't carry the key on us. We don't want the criminal to get away," he said.

"Where is the key?"

"I should have one down in my truck."

"Look, if you don't get me out of these cuffs, you are going to go get a facial with me."

My Loss Was So Great

I caught a glimpse of my marred body in the mirror. One week out of surgery from breast cancer had left me emotionally devastated over the loss of my breast. How could this happen to me? I thought. I was not at high risk as a young woman. Yet, at age 34, I had breast cancer. At that time one woman in eleven faced breast cancer in her lifetime. Now it is one in eight. Early detection saved my life 28 years ago and saves women's lives today.

I avoided looking in the mirror for several days after surgery because I didn't want to face the fact that I had lost the loveliest part of my body. Having breast cancer to me was like losing a dear friend. My breast was a part of my body and the pain of its loss left me sad and hurt. Since I could not look at my own body without crying, how could I expect any other person to accept my disfigurement? What I was left with was not only a broken body, but also a broken heart.

Ladies, let's face it. We are in a society surrounded with breasts...breasts to the left of us, breasts to the right of us.

A few years ago I moved away from Dallas for a couple of years and returned to find that home-grown Dallas women had upped the ante with non home-grown cantaloupe-sized breasts. I knew the women in Dallas were known for their beauty, but I sure didn't remember this.

Love at First Blush

When I found myself in the hospital immediately following my mastectomy, my husband was trying to help me get out of the hospital bed to walk across the room to the bathroom. I was weak from the surgery, but with his help, I was able to slowly creep across the room. In the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of my ashen white face, a reflection of the aftermath of assault on my body from having a mastectomy a few hours before.

"I look terrible," I said out loud. No makeup on a pale pallet of a face added to my sudden low package of self-esteem.

"No, dear, you are beautiful," he said.

I turned toward him with a serious look and said, "Not tonight, honey, I've got a headache." We both burst out laughing. Sometimes life is so serious that you have to laugh. Here I was, a 34 year-old woman with no history of breast cancer in my family, didn't drink or smoke, exercised, yet I got breast cancer. Women today face the same dilemma. No one asks for breast cancer, but there it is staring you in the face.

A couple of years ago a movie came out called The Upside of Anger, starring Kevin Costner and Joan Allen. It wasn't a particularly good movie, but it had an interesting premise at the core of the plot. A woman's husband mysteriously disappeared without a trace of explanation. Coincidentally, his beautiful, young secretary left the company and moved to Europe at the exact same time. The natural assumption of the woman was that he ran off with his secretary.

The Core of Anger

Here's where the core of the plot came out. The woman was so angry at her husband that she screamed and stormed around, making her grown daughters and everyone in sight miserable. Her anger overtook her to the point that it controlled her, leaving her life in shambles.