Adversity: Learning to Make Lemonade

When Life Hands You Lemons, Make Pocketed Underwear.

What am I doing on this sunny winter morning? I am sewing a pocket on my bra. 

What?  You heard me right.

Uhm.

This is what you end up doing when you become one of “those” people at Walmart by bending to tie your toddler’s errant shoe laces.  If you are a breast cancer survivor bending to tie a shoe is apparently fraught with danger.  You might find yourself on the receiving end of a shocked stare as your prosthesis falls out of your shirt and onto the floor. 

In an aisle.

I can just imagine the conversation between spouses at night over dinner, “Honey, I saw one of those people at Walmart today, you know the really weird ones.  Her boob just fell out of her shirt.  Her boob fell out!  Onto the floor.  And did you know she had the gall to just pick it up and pop it back in right there.  Some people!”

Because what else are you going to do?  Leave your foob (that’s fake boob to the uninitiated) on the floor and walk away?  Scandalize everyone by picking up said foob and putting it in your purse for later covert retrieval and replacement?  Then walk uni-boobed through Walmart so you can have an incident with every. single. customer?

When life hands you lemons, (aka breast cancer with the commiserate yearly medical bills totaling more than the worth of your car and you can’t afford the nicer mastectomy bras) you find yourself making your own pocket underwear.

And grateful actually.

I found a great bra sale at a local department store over the holidays.  Thank you, God.

Thank you, God, that I put a worn out pair of summer weight khakis in a tub in the garage last fall instead of the trash.  Worn out knees is why they were retired, but the rest of the fabric is extra soft from all the washing.  I’m grateful to have soft material to make a pocket for my prosthesis since it will lay over skin with extensive scarring and thin from radiation burns.

I’m grateful this morning to have a needle and thread in the right color.

I’m grateful for the skills to figure out how to cobble together something that works to hold my prosthesis in place so it doesn’t fall out when I bend over.

My bra may not look like the sexiest in the world after my hack job.  But neither do I after cancer.  You can see my ribs through the scars and skin on my left side.  Gratitude is a choice I’m making today.

Can you see the little gifts after life has handed you lemons?