Directions for After Care: Biopsy

Kami Westhoff

1. Sweat. The aftercare take-home document suggests avoiding any activity that provokes perspiration. Because this recommendation is impossible to achieve (it’s August and you’re perimenopausal), make the most out of the advised-against sweating by going hiking. The trail brags every shade of green—lupine lavenders the trailside with its skyward spires, painted cups smear the meadows in scarlet, rocks threaten the gristly ligaments of your ankles. Be struck by the mountains surrounding you, how they shoulder the sky’s stubborn blue, how for now they keep gutted their inevitable annihilation. When the trail ascends toward the peak that scraggles the sky, welcome the surge of endorphins, the burn of microscopic tears of muscle fibers, the pinpricks of moisture on your skin, tasking the air with the burden of cool. 
2. Stare. Your daughters don’t know the significance of the results you’re waiting for, or they don’t know they know. They catch you observing them doing the most banal activities: the snarled zip of the brush in tangled hair; eating the special-occasion cereal, tanking the bowl with marshmallows in the shape of miracles; the lip plumper applied in the visor’s mirror inciting a flush of bright. They ask, What, prepared for a critique of Too much, reprimand of Why didn’t you, request, Could you please? Assure them, Nothing, and when they’re wedging their feet into still-tied Nikes, notice the flexibility of the ankle, how it cricks and curves to meet the shoe’s rigidity. When they descend the deck’s stairs, marvel in their expert navigation of each dew-slick step, even while replying OMG, I can’t even, to their Insta friend’s latest post. 
3.  Suffer. Resist the urge to resist Google. Search: Stage 4, Invasive, Metastatic, Inoperable, Effects of Chemotherapy, Reconstruction, How to Prepare Children for Loss of Mother, Genetic Components, Experimental Treatment, Resources for Fathers of Teenage Daughters, Grief and Self-harm, Grief and Self-hate, Grief and Self-blame, Grief and Why Didn’t I. 
4. Sooth. Treat your daughters’ every complaint, no matter how miniscule, with empathy you’ve never been able to muster. Scour the junk drawer for the perfectly sized safety pin to cinch and stretch until the hoodie’s tie emerges from the fleecy tunnel. Slather hair in olive oil and work free the glob of gum with your fingertips. Buy pimple patches, extra-long, winged pads, Midol, fluff the pillow just right for hours of Modern Family and Dhar Mann, position the heating pad across the belly’s horizon, offer pizza rolls or Velveeta Mac & Cheese or instant potatoes drowned in gravy, or cookies with glistening peaks of chocolate chips. 
5. Salvage. Constant exposure to cortisol is hard on the body, so embrace those slashes in time when the terror subsides. Notice the glints of miracle that effervesce the world around you. A summer rainstorm scrubbing the air, petrichor permeating even the shallowest inhalation. Your daughters tiptoeing the sidewalk to avoid yellow globes of shell, their paths geometric evidence of a capacity of kindness you sometimes doubt. Because of the nature of miracles, you’ll want to look up. See a brown bat lacerate dusk, its disruption of air a hush on your skin. The sunset bruising the sky at every stage of healing. The minuscule body of an airplane veining the troposphere, its red and white strobing lights steady as a heartbeat.