Working up a sweat

In about six weeks, I hope to be running a half marathon.
It’s very easy to write that as I sit here on the couch, having not run for more than a week.
The surgeon said I could run again 10 days after surgery. I will see him on Wednesday so he can check the wound where he removed the portacath (see Listen to your body ... yeah right).

He will also check my new nipple. “New nipple” I hear you ask? Yes, at the risk of attracting people in search of porn to this blog, I’m talking about nipples.
Well a nipple. The surgery where I had the portacath removed was also to have a new nipple erm...I’m not sure of the verb I should use here. I want to say reconstructed but that makes my chest sound a bit like a building site.
Eighteen months ago, as I prepared for a mastectomy (with immediate reconstruction), it was news to me that depending on the type of cancer you have you can lose your nipple when you have a mastectomy. I lost mine (that makes it sound a bit like I misplaced it...”now where was I when I last had it...”), so for the past 18 months or so I’ve looked a bit like a Barbie doll on my left side.
My surgeon used existing skin to recreate a nipple. “It’s is a bit like doing origami,” he said.  (He’s great my surgeon. When explaining about how he would use tissue (ie fat) from my stomach to rebuild my breast when I had my mastectomy, he told me one patient had observed it was a bit like stuffing a cushion. Technical surgical terms baffle me. Metaphors, I get.)
Anyway, I haven’t seen the new nipple properly yet because it’s all taped up but my surgeon let me have a quick look before it was taped and it looked...well like a nipple I guess, which is a good start. And also quite incredible. The surgeon suggested I celebrate with a bottle of Olssens Pinot Noir Nipple Hill (yes that is a real wine and I plan to buy a bottle).
In a few weeks’ time I get the nipple tattooed, along with an areola, so it matches the other side. This is meant to be painless because the reconstructed breast should be numb but mine isn’t. Despite all my experience with needles over the past couple of years I’m a little nervous about the pain. A sports massage therapist once told me I had the lowest tolerance to pain of anyone he’d ever worked on. As I writhed while he worked on my calves he claimed:. “But I’m not even working up a sweat here!"