State of the Schafer: in which there is more cancer (but also more mountains)

 If you follow me on Facebook or BlueSky, you might've seen that I've been posting pics from recent adventures in California's Sierra Nevada. The Sierra, of course, are the mountains that inspired the Whitefires in my Shattered Sigil trilogy, and oh gosh, how lovely it was to walk in them again. I do adore NZ's majestic Southern Alps, but the Sierra remain the mountains of my heart. There's just something about their jagged white granite silhouetted against indigo sky and reflected in turquoise lakes that never fails to exalt me and leave me in awe.

Our group rounding Royce Lake, high in the Sierra

And boy did I need some exaltation. Earlier this year, I got some unwelcome news from yet another biopsy. I've got more very early stage breast cancer lurking in the same breast that had the lumpectomy 2 years ago. Like last time, it's contained in the duct and therefore not considered invasive (yet), but as this is the 2nd time around, the doctors want to be more aggressive. All at once, I was looking at a mastectomy, and trying to decide between a plethora of options. Single? Double? Reconstruction or not?

I'd always assumed that if more cancer was found, I'd just tell the doctors to chop both breasts off. I've never felt that breasts define me as a woman. Nor do I care how feminine I look, or how I fill out clothes. (I pretty much live in t-shirts and hiking pants.) Yet I do care about functionality of my body, and that brought a stumbling block I hadn't previously considered. Mastectomy means losing most sensation from the area due to severed nerves, even if you have reconstruction - unless you go to one of a very few surgeons that offer "resensation" nerve grafting, which is still rather experimental and has a relatively low success rate. 

I found that sensation was actually important to me, and so I decided to do only a single mastectomy and keep the "healthy" breast, given that genetic testing found no evidence that I have any mutations relating to increased risk of cancer. That doesn't mean I don't have a bad gene lurking, since there's still plenty left for scientists to discover, but it makes it less likely. I'd learned that cancer-related decisions are all about weighing likelihoods and probabilities. There's no crystal ball, no way to obtain certainty about the future. As one doctor said to me, you just have to make the best decision you can with the information you have at the time. 

So. Given that I decided to keep the healthy breast, I found symmetry was also important to me - not because of looks, but due to function. I didn't want to worry about muscle imbalances. Yet I also didn't want implants - I've known too many women who've had a lot of trouble with them, everything from painful capsular contracture to autoimmune issues. That led me to considering DIEP flap reconstruction. This is where a skilled microsurgeon takes a big ol' chunk of your abdominal fat & skin, reshapes it, and essentially transplants it up to the breast area. When it works, it works really well. The fat is still you, meaning real living tissue; it's pretty much the same as the fat that used to make up the breast. The downside is that the transplanting turns the mastectomy into seriously major surgery, with correspondingly higher risks. It means ten hours or more under anaesthesia, and a long, tough recovery thanks to a hip-to-hip abdominal incision. 

The surgeons say I'm a good candidate. I'm "young" (in cancer terms, at least - I figure this is the last time in my life when I'll be told by multiple people how young I am!), and fit, and healthy apart from the abnormal cells lurking in my breast ducts. I've decided to go for DIEP, as it offers the chance of the best outcome. If I can slog my way up challenging passes in the Sierra, I can endure a tough recovery. (I hope!) 

Climbing sandy slippery terrain toward an unnamed pass we nicknamed "Mordor Pass"

Tomorrow is the big day. Single mastectomy plus immediate DIEP reconstruction is the plan. I'll be off work for two months to recover. Since I won't be able to do much exercise while healing, I figure it's a good opportunity to catch up on books, movies, and TV shows I haven't had time to enjoy. I've been asking friends for recommendations, and accumulated quite a list already, but I'm always open to more. If you have recs to share from the last few years, please do leave a comment or get in touch! 

And cross your fingers for me. If I'm honest, I'm pretty scared they'll find the cancer has turned invasive when they do the pathology. But that's part of the future I can't control. All I can do is take one step at a time, and hope I will one day enjoy more moments like this:

Loving life on top of Feather Pass

Kickstarter day 4 (25 days left) Mountain Pic & Book Rec

The Labyrinth of Flame's Kickstarter has funded!!!  I am so happy and grateful, I can't even find the words to tell you.  All I want to do is give everyone who's backed the book a huge hug (and likely sob all over your shoulders in a combo of delight and relief, so perhaps it's just as well we have a computer screen between us!).  It's so wonderful to know I can do this book just the way I hoped: with every bit of professional editing and design that went into the first two.  Plus a map!  Maybe even two maps, if the Kickstarter keeps going well.  I'd thought it could be cool to have one larger-scale map of the various countries, and another more detailed map of the areas Dev and Kiran travel in this third book...but we'll see.  Right now I'm just over the moon that the book will be a reality.

Speaking of the Kickstarter, I've heard from some people that they'd like to support it and get copies of The Labyrinth of Flame, but they don't have credit cards (which Kickstarter apparently requires now).  If that's true for you, please contact me at courtney (at) courtneyschafer (dot) com, and we'll work out a way for you to contribute and receive a KS-style reward without having to go through KS itself. 

Anyway! To celebrate such a big milestone, I'm going hog-wild with pictures of some of my favorite places in the Sierra Nevada (my favorite mountains!):

On top of Alpine Col

Deadman Canyon, deep in the Sierra - a great basecamp location for exploring unnamed cirques and scrambling up peaks

Pic from my very first trip to the Sierra, with friends Jason Hollinger and Ken Manatt. This is near the Mosquito Flat trailhead, which at 10,255 ft is the highest major trailhead in the Sierra

Third Recess Lake - the "recesses" (canyons) near Mono Pass are among my favorite spots to camp in the Sierra

My husband Robert on our way up Mt Whitney (visible at top right), tallest peak in the contiguous US

 

For today's book rec, I'll go with another favorite that hasn't gotten nearly as much recognition as I think it should: Martha Wells's City of Bones.  I love books that mix elements of SF and fantasy, and Wells writes a wonderful setting here: a post-apocalyptic stone desert populated by a bioengineered race, and a richly described and dangerous city whose laws are enforced by mages.  The part I love best, though, are Wells's characters.  Protagonist Khat (one of the bioengineered krismen) is smart, dryly sarcastic, and has a fascinating backstory (one I wish Wells would someday return to in a short story, perhaps!).  Co-protagonist Elen (one of the city's Warders) is equally engaging; she's smart, determined, and forthright in a way that plays very nicely off the more reserved Khat.  The story is standalone (though as I said, I sure wish there was more), and a great read, combining archaeological mystery with exciting action and magic.  It was originally published by Tor but has been republished in ebook form by Martha herself; if you like adventure SF/fantasy, you definitely should read it.

Thursday Adventure: Third Recess, Sierra Nevada

Two words: norovirus sucks. I'm writing this post at 3am in between praying to the porcelain goddess (oh please don't let my husband and son get this too!).  But since looking at pretty pictures of mountains helps me feel better, here are a few of one of my favorite spots in the Sierra Nevada: Third Recess, a canyon in the Mono Lakes area.  Last year I did a Thursday Adventure post about Fourth Recess Lake, in the next canyon over, and Fourth Recess is lovely too - but Third Recess is my favorite, because it doesn't have a trail and therefore sees very few visitors.  Wish I was there right now, without any norovirus.

Third Recess Canyon.  You can scramble up that slope behind the lake to a higher cirque and then make a few 3rd and 4th class ascents of various peaks.  

The lake is gorgeous - a deep blue-green and perfectly clear.  For some reason you never get the same shade of blue in Colorado lakes.

My husband Robert, enjoying the view.  We were the only people in the canyon.

Ruby Lake and a variety of peaks, seen from the trail over 12,000 foot Mono Pass

View from near the Mosquito Flat trailhead, after hiking out.  This is the highest trailhead in the Sierra, at  10.300 feet.

Thursday Adventure: Mt. Whitney via the Mountaineers Route (Sierra Nevada, CA)

I've made no secret of the fact that the Whitefire Mountains in the Shattered Sigil books are based on California's Sierra Nevada. The eastern Sierra are the mountains of my heart: rugged, starkly beautiful, challenging for the climber yet blessed with inordinately good weather during the summer months. Today I'll share pictures from one of my favorite trips in the Sierra: an ascent I did of Mt. Whitney via the Mountaineer's Route with my husband-to-be, way back in 1999.

Mt. Whitney from the Owens Valley (picture courtesy of owensvalleyhistory.com)

At 14,505 ft. Mt. Whitney is the highest peak in the contiguous US, looming high over the sagebrush desert of the 3,000-ft Owens Valley.  The standard route climbs a steep, long, but carefully maintained trail that's so popular the Forest Service allots permits for both dayhikers and backpackers by lottery.  (50 backpacking permits per day, 150 dayhiking permits per day.)  But for the more adventurous hiker, there's a different, better way to reach the summit: the Mountaineers Route.  This ascends a different, more direct canyon to a basin just beneath Whitney's sheer east face.  From there, you scramble up a class 2 couloir to a notch on Whitney's north ridge (see picture below), then either climb class 3 rock straight up to the summit or traverse across alternating snowfields and talus on Whitney's west slope to reach the broad summit plateau.

Annoted picture courtesy of whitneyzone.com.  The Mountaineers Route travels the canyon visible at the picture's far right, up past the Ebersbacher ledges to Upper Boy Scout Lake.  The Notch at the top of the Mountaineer's Route couloir is marked on the right side of the peak.

For extra fun, Robert and I ascended the route and then spent a night camped right on Whitney's summit, so we could stargaze and enjoy the incredible sights of sunset and sunrise from such a high elevation.  (It truly is spectacular.  The shadow of the mountain extends for what appears to be a hundred miles; and the rainbow of colors in the sky, from deepest crimson to indigo, is breathtaking.  Not to mention the stars after sunset - they really do look close enough to touch, and you've never seen so many.)

Years ago I wrote an extremely detailed trip report (non-climbers will find it too much so, no doubt!), so I won't repeat that here.  The trip was also in my pre-digital-camera days, so my pictures don't do it justice...but here are the few that turned out reasonably well.

Thursday Adventure: Fourth Recess Lake (Sierra Nevada, CA)

You may have noticed that I'm better about posting these Thursday adventures than I am the Monday book recs.  Part of that relates to my day job work schedule (I work a full day on Monday and this year seems like Mondays are always kind of frantic).  But really it's because when given a choice between sighing fondly over pictures of mountains vs. doing...well, just about anything else other than actually hiking in them!...I choose the mountains every time.

Today's picture is of a place particularly special to me, because I visited it on my very first backpacking trip to the Sierra Nevada.  I was a student at Caltech, working at JPL that summer, and one of the engineers there invited me and my boyfriend of the time on a weekend backpack from the Mosquito Flat trailhead into the Recess Canyons.  I've talked elsewhere about the life-changing moment when I first saw the jagged pinnacles of the Sierra looming above the Owens Valley.  The beauty of the Recess Canyons only sealed the deal.  Gorgeous blue-green lakes, so clear you can see every pebble on the bottom, under shining white cliffs...oh man.   (Sadly, pic was taken with teensy little point-and-shoot camera, so doesn't do the area any kind of justice!)  Colorado lakes are pretty, but I tell you, it's just not the same.  Lakewater here tends to be much murkier and not nearly so blue, and the mountains are far less rugged.

Lake in Fourth Recess Canyon, Sierra Nevada

The pic is actually from a much later trip to the same area, this time with my husband-to-be. I wanted his first experience of the Sierra to be as beautiful as mine, so we backpacked into those same canyons, scrambling up trailless cirques and lazing by the lakes.  (Afterward, we climbed Mt. Whitney via the mountaineer's route and spent the night stargazing on the summit, but that's a topic for a different adventure post.)

The picture's also serving as motivation for me right now: it's inspired the setting for a scene very late in The Tainted City.  Can't wait to get to that point in the book, and see if I can evoke for readers some of the same beauty that I experienced while camping in the Recesses.

     

Thursday Adventure: LeConte Canyon, Sierra Nevada

Anyone who knows me won't be surprised if I start off my "Thursday Adventure" series with a pic from my very favorite mountain range: the Sierra Nevada of California.  The Sierra are beautiful, rugged, blessed with extremely mild summer weather, and contain a nearly 200-mile swath of wilderness without a single road (dirt or otherwise).  If you're willing to venture off the big popular trails and do a little trail-less scrambling, it's easy to spend an entire week wandering forbidding cirques and sparkling lakes without seeing another soul.

The geology and topography of the Whitefire Mountains in my novel The Whitefire Crossing are loosely based on the Sierra Nevada (I made them a bit higher and even more rugged, just for fun).  Sometimes I even worked off my memories of specific locations in the Sierra.  For instance, the canyon that my two protagonists struggle to reach when they abandon their trade convoy (Garnet Canyon, in the book), is based on LeConte Canyon, a deep, beautiful canyon in the middle of the Sierra.  My husband and I visited LeConte while on our Sierra High Route trip back in 2003:

Standing at the edge of LeConte Canyon

I still remember standing at LeConte's edge going, "Oh jeez, we have to scramble all the way down there and lose all our hard-won elevation?"  But the aching thigh muscles were worth it: the canyon bottom was a lovely paradise of pine forest and stream-laced meadows under towering cliffs.  We actually didn't climb straight out the other side, as Dev and Kiran do in The Whitefire Crossing - we cheated and used a trail to access Muir Pass to the north.  But one day I want to go back and do a little more off-trail exploring in the area!)

View on the descent into LeConte