Breast Cancer blog | Breast cancer blog: the interesting things you learn

Just when you think your life is in order, and things have returned to normalcy. If only.

In between talks of cake designs, décor, make-up artists, and yes the registry, there is talk of, gulp, the future. Blame it on the wedding registry. Where will be the gifts be sent to, and where will they be stored? These are all concerns because right now because we are on two separate coasts.

But contemplating streamlining our lives someday leads to the more sensitive discussion of settling down and, gulp, kids. The fiancé shies away from it as he’s in his 50s, but for me there is no place to run and hide. It is there every time I log onto Facebook (I know I should stop it but I can’t). There is a litany of friends celebrating baby showers and their first, second, or even fourth babies. Will the torture ever end?

And the topic always surfaces at cancer gatherings amongst young breast cancer survivors. You can’t have kids if you are on chemo and radiation therapy and if you are taking the queen bee of breast cancer drugs Tamoxifen (which I’m not eligible for since my cancer was oestrogen-driven), you are supposed to be on it for five years, which means putting kids on hold.

At 38 (39 in Chinese years) both age and cancer history are strikes against me, so the fiancé and I broach the possibility of s-o-m-e-d-a-y adopting. In my fantasy, I’ve always considered adopting a girl from China. Somehow this would make up for the sucker punch of being beaten by the biological clock and disease, so I excitedly go online.

For a weekend I was a Google monkey and searched adoptions, only to discover some interesting factoids about adopting after the cancer journey.