Hit the Wall Today

Today was the first day I did not feel better than the day before.  I was ill and tired all day.  Perhaps this is because I had to give up the codeine today!  I actually didn't have to, but I decided that I could live without the pills during the daytime, so I just stopped.  Have you ever seen Trainspotting?  Excellent movie, but really gross in the drug addiction department.  I have vivid memories of the guy going off heroin:

Mark "Rent-boy" Renton: "I don't feel the sickness yet, but it's in the post. That's for sure. I'm in the junkie limbo at the moment. Too ill to sleep. Too tired to stay awake, but the sickness is on its way. Sweat, chills, nausea. Pain and craving. A need like nothing else I've ever known will soon take hold of me. It's on its way."

I read that and it's a little bit like it in that guy as my body seems to be dying without the codeine.  It certainly is not happy I took it away.  Either that or I have a severe infection and I'll be dead by morning, so let's hope it's the codeine withdrawal. 

Other People's Food

Thanks to my wonderful circle of friends, my family is eating food that they have prepared for us to help us get through the busy days of appointments and surgeries and the recovery time.  Today a new friend brought by stroganoff, which I have never had or made before.  My son is slightly picky, so I thought for sure he would take one look and refuse it, causing issues I didn't want to deal with.  BUT, I opened the pan, and Guy got all excited and said, "It's just like Hamburger Helper!!!" and then he proceeded to chow down on 2 servings!!!  This was very exciting for me because Guy was eating and deemed Stacey's Stroganoff equal to his expectations of Hambuger Helper-Quality food.  It was also very sad for me because I let him buy Hambuger Helper ONCE in the store several years ago, and the darn kid STILL remembers that junk food!!!! 

I also discovered that I like Stroganoff a lot!!!!  But I do NOT like Hamburger Helper!!!

Posture

I guess I should have mentioned that I look like Lurch, Jr. when I walk around.  My neck is bent down and I can't lift my head, and my armpits and chest hurts a lot so I am hunched forward as well.  I am a Lurch Dwarf, or maybe a Lurch Munchkin, since my voice is all wobbly and strange.  Definitely a Lurch in some form, though.

OWWWW!

I hate thinking of titles for these things.  It's not fair to need a title for a paragraph! 

So, hospital yesterday morning, (don't read the next sentence if you are grossed out easily) and they injected nuclear dye into my nipples.  It did not hurt nearly as much as I thought it would, but it really hurts now.  Then they made me walk up and down the hall to get my body to push it out into my lymph nodes, and then I went and lied in pre op for 4 hours, eventually getting a little impatient.  I finally went in around 2 for surgery, and they took out the sentinel lymph nodes under my arms to see if the cancer has spread.  They also removed half of my thyroid, which had a tumor the size of Utah (6 centimeters long!!) and I am really happy about that being gone.  The doctor doesn't think that will be cancerous, but they did find irregular cells in one lymph node and we will find out more about that next week.

Shared my room with a woman who is 41 and had a bilateral mastectomy, and between the two of us, the nurses were coming in the room all night and wondering why we weren't sleeping.  I finally figured out in my stupor how to turn off the light and turn down the TV volume around 2am.  I got out of jail and slept much of today at home, and am in pain but it's nothing compared to the next operation's recovery.  That one's going to suck big time. 

So, I am home, my voice is weak, and I can't lift anything over 5 pounds for a week, over 15 pounds for a month, and I can't vacuum or do any motion like that for about 6 weeks.  YAY!  There's always a silver lining. 

Time for bed!

It's already begun...

Kristi is invading my brain with inappropriate things right before I am to be put on the goofy drugs before they put me to sleep. That's when I say stupid things. Kristi just called me to let me know her husband discovered that hospitals do provide alcoholic beverages when prescribed by the doctor. Now, it's bad enough that I say stupid things before a surgeon sticks a knife in me, but to ask for a Mai Tai is going to be humiliating. Of course, this led to my telling Kristi what I told the doctor when I got an endoscopy and colonoscopy years ago. All drugged up, the doctor tells me she is going to do the endoscopy (you are not quite asleep and not quite awake) and I told the doctor in no uncertain terms "I don't want it in my mouth, stick it in my butt first", to which the doctor replied, "No, we always do the endoscopy first" and I once again insisted I wanted it in the butt first. Thankfully I fell asleep at that point (as far as I know) and woke up saying loudly (I am always loud when on these drugs) "Hey, did you stick it in my butt yet? I don't feel it in there" and my MOM sharply said "Mary! SHUT UP! It's all done!" Then I came to my senses, as always when mom is hugely embarassed, and asked for some food.

Now that all this alcohol and Mai Tai's and tubes in the butt are in my head, I will sleep on it and go in to the hospital tomorrow and make a complete idiot of myself. Unfortunately, I cannot move across the country again as I did after the endoscopy and colonoscopy. So my surgeon will have a hard time looking me in the eye after tomorrow. I pity her.

Operation Daze

Finally, something inspiring enough to make me come back to my old blog that hasn't been touched in ages. It was the thought that my friend Kristi wanted me to sign up for CaringBridge.org to keep my friends and family updated on my health due to my body's seemingly amazing ability to sneak cancer cells into everything my surgeon touches.

Caring Bridge is a very nice site, I checked it out and nearly signed up. They had cupcakes for a page design, and I thought that would be fun since my day camp name is Cupcake. I first took the name Cupcake in High School when Mr. Umstader told us to write down our names and what we would like him to call us on the seating chart. He choked on his coffee when he came to my name, and every once in a while, usually when I was being difficult, he would call me Cupcake and make me laugh. He was my Chemistry teacher, so I was probably difficult a lot in that class.

So, finally I rejected Caring Bridge for two reasons. One is that I have this site and why sign up for another one? The other, more sinister reason is that Caring Bridge offers a book option, so you can buy your postings in book form. I am thinking, why the Hell do I want a book about me getting biopsies and operations and Lord knows what else? Is this supposed to be some wonderful memory for me? I am hoping life gets back to normal after this summer!! I may laugh my way through this, but I am not going to look back on it fondly one day if I can help it.

So, update on my body: Mammogram, biopsy, mammogram, lumpectomy, mammogram, MRI, sonogram, MRI biopsy, and now a scheduled thyroidectomy, sentinal lymph node removal under both arms, and soon a bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction. I probably missed a few mammograms in there, and I forgot to mention the metal chunk they left in me after the first biopsy that they attached a metal wire to before the lumpectomy, and I got to sit around with a metal wire sticking out of my chest until I got called in for surgery. I felt like a Transformer or the Terminator until the painkiller wore off. Then it was just annoying.

So, if you really, really want to know what's going on, feel free to follow me on this blog site, I will update it frequently, maybe even every day. Evidently some of you care about me since Kristi has a ton of volunteers making meals for the BIG operation of removal and rebuilding. I feel like a Bob the Builder project.

Thanks for caring, maybe you'll get over that by the time you actually get to know me!! ;^)

Love Mary