STOP THE MENOPAUSE ROLLERCOASTER!!!

I want off!!!!

Physically, I'm still feeling great - tons of energy, boobs haven't fallen, no bald spots, haven't developed a dowager hump....but the hormone swings are INSANE!  Since the surgery, they've mostly gone away, with just the odd mild flushing now and again.  But this week....holy crap!  Imagine your worst pms EVER: bloaty, cranky, eating everything in sight....now add near constant severe hot flashes.  Twenty four seven.  Plus my job requires that I be polite and professional.  My tongue biting skills have been put to the test this week! LOL!  Then today - poof, nearly normal again.  The human body will ALWAYS mystify me!

On a different note, as you all know, the whole sterile/infertile thing has been a pretty rough blow.  The full acceptance is coming, slowly but surely, and I've reached a point where I don't start crying after I see every baby or toddler.  Sometimes, though, it just hits me out of the blue.  Like yesterday on the bus was a little boy (maybe 18mo?), who I suspect has some kind of cancer, given the lack of hair and eyebrows.  The whole ride, I was able to just enjoy watching him wiggle around his mom's lap.  Then a girl (who's mixed like me) got on with a little girl (maybe 2 1/2?) and I gave her my seat (the super late bus was uber crowded).  I was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, and almost started crying.  But I will say that the emotional hit wasn't nearly has intense as it was just a few weeks ago.  I know time heals all wounds, and I'm thankful that this one isn't the festering open gash it was after my diagnosis.

I guess with this new knowledge of where my headspace is at, I should let you all know that I've decided to adopt a foster child.  For those of you that visited me in the hospital, I might have mentioned it in my lovely narcotic haze, but I'm sure none of you took it seriously.  But I guess subconsciously I knew it was my plan, but hadn't really let myself in on it yet.  This week I got in touch with DSHS and now have a mentor/contact to help me through the process.  Now don't go all getting your panties in a bunch, I'm not planning to get a child imminently, I'm just planning ahead, finding out what I need to do, and hopefully around the end of the year/beginning of next year I'll be in a place to bring a new little one home, and realize my dream of being a mommy.

So, other than that, it was just another week of work....

Giving the Grim Reaper a pimp slap

You know how they say time heals all wounds?  I haven't figured out yet whether this is true, and those wounds heal to become various scars, or if the fear, terror, relief and all the other emotions that have come with cancer are simply going to be a part of my life.

I had a close friend who's wife passed away about a year and a half ago.  One of the things I told him was that it's not a question of getting your old life back, but that it's finding a new normal.  Well, I'm having a bitch of a time finding my new normal.  Now, don't get me wrong, right now things in my life are going really well.  Physically I feel 10 years younger.  I wake up in the mornings, and not grumpy.  Not even a little.  I haven't had coffee since the surgery, I'm doing stairs at work, no more crazy intense cravings.  I'm genuinely feeling, dare I say it, happy!

The doctor officially says I'm in remission and based on the pathology report from the surgery, he's not recommending radiation followup therapy.  My consult with the geneticist let me know that I'm not at increased risk of colon cancer (the other cancer closely associated w/ uterine cancer), and I have only a slightly higher risk of breast cancer than the general population.  My incisions are healed, and even the hot flashes are decreasing in frequency and intensity.  The doc even said I was clear to resume all "activities" (bow chicka wow wow!)  I'm even starting to feel relaxed enough to start making plans for the future.

So why do I feel like the other shoe is gonna drop?

There's a big part of me right now grasping on to any happiness - a cute purse on shopgoodwill.com ( it's like crack for shopaholics!), the warmth of the spring sun, head butts and snuggles from Tony the Terrible Tom.  Simple time spent talking with my mom is suddenly the most precious thing in the world.  I tell myself, enjoy it now, because if the cancer comes back, you're shit outta luck.  I have to admit it.  I'm scared to death that the cancer will come back.  For the next 2 years, I get quarterly pap smears (and if you don't like the annual ones, try every three months!) .  Then I get to jump up to every 6 months for 3 years. I've got 5 years before I can relax and feel a little more like everyone else. 

I think part of why I'm feeling so on edge tonight is that I had a conversation tonight with someone who is battling cervical cancer.  As we talked, she said that she chose radiation because she still wanted to have kids.  It felt like a kick in the stomach.  Every day I'm reminded that I'm not a normal woman.  34 year olds are not supposed to be concerned about bone density and hot flashes.  Honestly, I don't even really have wrinkles yet (although I'm secretly convinced my boobs are shrinking.)  Even though she and I are having different treatments (she's doing chemo & radiation), she still has hope of a pregnancy.  No matter how much sexy time I make, turkey baster donations from friends, or even if I hold up a sperm bank, there's no physically possible way for me to conceive.

So here I am, physically and mostly mentally feeling the top of my game.  Financially I'm doing well, and I'm surrounded by friends and family who love me.  But the one thing I'll never forgive cancer for is for taking away my belief in hope  (oh yeah, and for turning my world upside down.)

So to death, whom I've soundly given a bitch-wheres-my-money pimp slap to, you can't have me for a few more years.  And to cancer - I'm warming up my other pimp hand for February 28th, 2016.

Ok, so maybe I'm just over tired and should really just go to bed...

Ahhh...the warm afterglow of recovery...

It's hard to believe that a month ago I was dying, and today I'm back to work, and physically almost completely recovered (except for this last, and biggest, pesky little incision that sits right where ALL of my pants sit and rub it.)

In reality though, even while my deep desire to get my life back is coming true, the emotional wounds aren't healing quite as quickly and easily as the surgery incisions are.  I wouldn't say it's depression, because honestly, I haven't felt this good in a long time.  In some ways, it's a bit like riding a roller coaster, one moment I'm flying high feeling wonderfully content with where things are, and then in an instant I'm completely overwhelmed by the littlest thing.  Last week, at a family breakfast, everything was going great.  Then a couple was seated next to us who had a little one (maybe 5-6mo old?).  It took everything in me to avoid watching them.  When the baby started to get fussy and cry, my sister (who was sitting across from me) and I couldn't help but look over.  We made eye contact with each other, and while her face read "Omg, HOW CUTE!", I crumpled and started crying.  In the middle of a busy restaurant, with everyone there.  My sis came over and wrapped me in a warm hug until I was able to pull it together, but I realized that the emotional trauma of this was finally catching up to me. (On a side note, it's amazing how we unconsciously and naturally repress emotions until we're ready to cope with them.)

Afterwards, I was completely confused and had no idea why just seeing a random baby would turn me in to a puddle of despair. There's no rational reason why just thinking about babies is making my otherwise mostly sunny world and turning it into a hot flash ridden shadowland. Mom and I talked about it, and she simply said, "Honey, you're grieving."  By her saying that, the puzzle pieces clicked into place and I realized that what I thought was completely nutty, is actually totally normal. Who wouldn't grieve having to give up something and primal and fundamental as the ability to reproduce?  Yeah, yeah, yeah, adoption, surrogates, blah blah blah. And yes, I'm most definitely going to do it in the next year or two, but there's a big difference between choosing to adopt and having to.  Even though the physical scars are healing, I know that I still have a LONG road ahead of me before I'm recovered.

Since that talk with mom, I've tried my best to acknowledge these feelings when they come up.  I think the thing that scares me the most is that I completely see how a woman could do something crazy, like kidnap a baby.  Now don't go getting all freaked out and clutch your children, you all KNOW I haven't totally cracked, but I can see now, more than ever before, how the despair and grief could make someone snap.  I haven't been around any of my friends kids yet, and I haven't held a baby at all since the diagnosis.  I'm pretty sure the first time will be hard, and I'll probably start crying, but you know, deep down inside, I feel strong.  I've had to give myself permission to feel all the things that are going to come up (even if they don't make sense)  Honestly, it's the only way I can see to ever grow past it.

Insurance Bureaucracy and Narcotic Hoops

For the most part, I have to say that I'm very satisfied with how smoothly everything has gone with my health insurance in terms of my care for the cancer.  Group Health has done all the approval paperwork,  referrals, etc. and I haven't had to do anything.  The only quirky thing that's come up is with my medications.  

Now, one would think that if I had surgery at an authorized facility outside GH, it would be ok to get related medications at said facility, right?  Yeah, apparently not.  To give a little background, no one told me an exact discharge time from the hospital, and frankly, I was happily addicted to the little red nurse call button, so I hadn't really arranged a set time to be picked up by my sister.  Around 6pm or so, one of the nurses came in, went over my discharge papers and gave me the all clear to head home.  Oh yeah, and I wouldn't have any nursing care after 7pm.  BUMMER! It was at this time that I was told that I'd have to pick up my pain medication at a Group Health pharmacy, rather than get it from the in-house pharmacy at Virginia Mason.  I knew both the downtown and northgate clinics closed at 5, so the only way to get it would be at the main pharmacy.  After making a phone call, it was discovered that it closed at 7:30.  Under normal circumstances, it's maybe a 10 min drive from VM to GH, so I wasn't too worried about it.  Until....

I called my sister's place, and they were JUST getting dinner settled (with 3 kids, this is no small feat!) and she said she'd eat quickly and then come get me.  As I watched the clock tick closer and closer to 7:00, I started to get a little itchy.  I talked w/ the nurses who faxed my rx over to GH, and gave me the paper copy, in the hopes the pharmacy could have it ready to go when I presented the hard copy.  They had already called for the hospital transport to bring me downstairs, and by ten after seven, my sister had been waiting downstairs for almost 15 minutes, and I was still 3rd on the list to get a wheelchair escort.  Of course by this time, I was pretty mobile, packed and ready to go (although I was still stoned out of my mind and slow as molasses in January.)  Because of the absolute NECESSITY for me to have my pain meds (duh!), finally one of the nurses said screw it, and took me down herself.  She grabbed my bag and off we went to the elevator bay.  The most convenient patient pick up spot was closed for construction (ironically the same day as my surgery), so I can imagine how funny it looked for a nurse with a mission and a gym bag being following by a grinning, near drooling patient shuffling along in pink scottie dog jammie pants and flip flops, winding through the halls of the hospital.  We finally made it to one of the lesser known/daytime use only entrances and it was like walking onto 520 during rush hour.  Apparently I wasn't the only patient being released, and there was a whole host of cars waiting.  This explained why I had been waiting for over 45 minutes for someone to bring me down.

I got into my sister's car and off we went to GH as quickly as possible.  We arrived with just 5 minutes to spare, and I shuffled to the pharmacy in my flip flops and jammie pants, armed with the hard copy of my script.  After a few minutes, I was called to the window, slid my script under the glass, and expected to be handed my vicodin so I could go home to recover.  Now, keep in mind I was still less than 48 hours post-op, had just been released from the hospital, and here I am, standing at the pharmacy window, stoned out of my gourd.  The initial guy was cool, took my script and he acknowledged that the pills were waiting.  YAY!  Then he said that before they could give me the pills, a pharmacist would have to speak with me. Not yay. 

Now, you'd think on a Tuesday night, now 10 minutes past closing, I wouldn't have to wait.  But oh, dear friends, how wrong you would be!  There was one guy ahead of me, and another woman who came in just a minute before the pharmacy closed.  Oddly enough, both of them were helped and on their way out before me. After waiting several minutes, I began to lose my ability to stand upright, and thankfully the pharmacy window had a nice strong ledge for me to lean on.  Just imagine the sight: strange woman in jammie pants and flip flops, clearly stoned, with all kinds of recent needle marks up and down both arms (from IV's, people - I'm SO not a junkie! ), inpatient bracelets, barely able to stand, wanting to pick up narcotic pain medications.  Add to this, my doctor had written two different directions for the meds.  Yeah, that didn't set off any kind of warning bells! 

The pharmacist came to my window and, perplexed about the prescription's directions, began to quiz me about how I was told to take it.  By now, I'd been standing for nearly 20 minutes, and was getting dangerously close to just curling up on the floor for a nap.   She then wanted to give me a run down of how to take the pills, side effects, things to watch out for, don't drive while taking the pills, blah blah blah blah.  FINALLY she handed over the bottle, and I flip flopped my way back to the car, where I was whisked home, and got myself settled in for a few weeks of recovery.

The longest walk EVER

Before you read the rest of this story, you must click this link (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dQ5c5SIYnc ) and allow it to be your background music as you go with me on my journey!  And feel free to hit repeat so you can truly revel in the awesomeness of this song!

Another glorious part of my doctor's post-op schedule/regimen is to walk as much as I'm able (willing?).  Even in a medicated state, laying in bed for hours on end is boring. Even with facebook and cable.  However, it is rather tricky to just get up and walk when you're hooked up to about 463 different machines by an additional 572 wires, hoses and cables.  After 20 minutes (or what seemed like anyways), I was unburdened from all my technology, including my beloved leg warmers.  Now the real work began! I never knew how challenging it could be to sit up on my own, and swing my legs around to the edge of the bed.  Oh yeah, did I mention that anesthesia, morphine and vicodin combined make any kind of ambulation that much more fun with dizziness.  And being laid out on your back for the better part of a day is gonna do screwy things to your blood pressure if you get up too fast.  For several minutes I hung on grimly and determined to the bed rail, with my entire focus being standing on my own two feet (clothed in fashionable yellow foot socks with safety tread).  Once I felt my feet touch the floor, I knew that one way or another I was going to stand and walk come hell or high water.  With a granite grip on my IV pole, and a herculean effort, I finally stood, wobbled, scared the hell out of the nurse & tech waiting to catch me, and finally stabilized in a near upright position.  It was glorious!  Choirs of angels came down from the heavens, and cherubim peaked out from the fluorescent light fixtures playing harps.  Or perhaps the uber drug combo combined with the reflection of the city skyline from the window for a seriously awesome hallucination?  Naw...let's stick with reality. ;)

I'm sure most of you dear readers have never had a hysterectomy, or major lower abdominal surgery, but I can tell you it's a crazy bizarre feeling to have all your organs, especially your intestines, shift around in new ways.  My belly felt like it was hanging with tension.  I guess if you wanted to really understand, imagine a half filled water balloon being dangled in mid air by it's top.  Even though I wasn't feeling any pain, I was afraid to stand fully up to my proper 5'6" height.  All in all a very curious feeling.

My first walk was low/no pressure, and the nurse said it was up to me to decide how far I wanted to go. Once I'd made it to the door of my room, I scanned either end of the hall and realized there weren't any real halfway points since the nurses station was one door down from me.  I set my goal on the emergency exit door at the shorter end of the hall.  For those few minutes, the entire scope of my world was oriented on two things: placing my palm on that door, and making sure I didn't trip over the catheter hanging down my leg. I know, TMI and Ewwww!  Step by painfully slow step, I did the old lady hag shuffle down the hall, with the nurse ready to grab my free arm in case I started to go down.  With the passing of each room, I glanced in to see what other patients were experiencing, and  for the most part they were either empty or had people sleeping.  As touching the emergency exit door became more and more of a reality, it suddenly occurred to me that although my end goal was in sight, I was going to have to make the return trip back to my room.  Damn, why didn't I think of that ahead of time!  DOH!  *forehead smack*

Finally, I reached the end of the hall, slapped my palm on the door (secretly hoping to set off some secret alarm!), shuffled around a 180, and looked down a hallway that had easily grown exponentially longer than when I first started my journey.  On a side note, the song running through my head through all this was The Greatest Adventure (of which you are currently listening to if you followed my instructions at the beginning of this entry.  If you haven't, then you're a poopstick and need to click it now, and start reading again from the beginning.)  The walk back to my room was surprisingly uneventful - no face plants or tripping over the catheter.  The worst part of the whole walk was at the end when, weak, exhausted and only wanting to crawl back into bed (even with my legwarmers),  I had to feebly hang on to my sweet blessed IV pole while the nurse straightened up my bed.  Finally she was finished and with the same herculean effort it took to stand up, I slowly eased my way back into a blissful prone position.  Another 20 minutes to hook me back up to all my equipment, and I was able to get back to my woodstock-like drug haze.

On Catheters and the Morning After

What do hospitals and the military have in common?  Both have strict schedules.  VERY strict schedules.  Especially for post-op patients.  And my doctor, being a military man is VERY particular about his patients and their post-op care, even more so than other doctors (according to the RN gossip mill!) Overall, things post-op were going very well, I has happily drugged out of my gourd on anesthesia, morphine, and vicodin.  Then, as time went by, things took a dark and ugly turn.  With every shift change, the new staff would come in and introduce themselves.  With the nightshift, I knew would come a challenge:  My own personal Nurse Ratchett*.  Now, don't get me wrong, I think she's an amazing nurse, and actually, towards the end of her shift, we were joking around.  However, it was her charge to make sure my vitals were taken every 2 hours by the tech.  Oh yeah, and one of the post-op tools is to use this funky breathing machine where you inhale slowly, and have to get the little blue doo-hickey between the blue arrows and the other blue thingamabob up to a certain measured level (the purpose of this is to help patients use their lower lungs to keep pneumonia from setting in.)  As with the vitals, I had to do 10 reps of this every 2 hours. All night long.  And Nurse R wasn't about to let me just sleep in my drug haze either!  Now, for the most part, I was in/out on Facebook and Frontierville, so these 2 hour checks weren't too bad.  Until 6am.

I don't remember the 4am check, but I knew when Nurse R woke me up at 6am, I had been sleeping for a good stretch of time.  Oh yeah, and I f'uckin' HATE mornings.  Ask anyone!  My mom will testify with her hand on a bible, torah, quran, *insert sacred text here*, that at no point in my life have I EVER done well with mornings.  To the point where she should pour water on my face to get me up, and ice cubes down my jammies because I refused to get out of bed.  With that in mind, I'm sure you can imagine how much I loved being woken up at 6am after everything that had happened the day before.  Add to this - Nurse R informed me it was time to take out my catheter, per MD orders (damn him and his post-op schedule!).

Let me first say, that having a catheter in when you're stoned out of your gourd in bed is AWESOME!  Never get the urge to go, and you can just lay there and enjoy the buzz without the hassles or inconvenience of going to the bathroom. The downside of catheters (and maybe this is just a woman thing), is that walking w/ a catheter is just weird!  I don't know how you guys do it - stuff dangling between your legs. Can you say, AWKWARD!  Maybe it's because I was a first-timer, but seriously guys, WTH!??!  It's just cumbersome and bizarre!!

Ok, enough of a tangent.  So Nurse R comes in at 6am, with her happy cheery its-the-end-of-my-shift-so-don't-give-me-any-shit way, and announces that it's time to take out the catheter.  Honestly, the process itself isn't a big deal and didn't hurt at all (yay for short urethras!)  Having it done at 6am when I'm at my peak grumpiness = not a good situation.  Of course I announced my displeasure and in very mom-like fashion, was promptly told to stop whining.  It was epic awesomeness.  Seriously, Nurse N even gave me the mommy glare. And yes, I totally deserved it, because in my completely stoned and narcotic addled brain, the only way I could articulate my displeasure was to whine.  Like a 3 year old being dragged away from her bowl of ice cream at the circus as she's about to get an elephant ride.  After being told to, in essence, shut my pie hole, the grown up in me woke up and took hold and realized that I hate whiners above all, and here I was on the verge of an epic toddler meltdown.  After that, things went smoothly, it only took a few minutes and I was allowed to go back to sleep to the gentle whirring of my leg warmer's motor gently squeezing my right calf....


*Just to clarify, I think she's an awesome nurse - extremely capable, professional, efficient, and clearly knows what she's doing (which, to me inspires a lot of trust and confidence).  But she's also very strong willed (like me) and  has a take-charge authoritative presence, which as mom will testify on a pile of sacred texts is not always the best mix with my personality.  Add to this a shit-ton of narcotics, and I think my perception of her is probably a little skewed. Like I said, we actually ended up joking around a bit - I'm sure she'd be a kick to shoot back a few whiskeys with! LOL!

A GoLytely Addendum

As I'm sure you can imagine, I made sure to comment to my doctor the horrors and sadistic awfulness of a colon cleanse.  In his wonderful way of straight faced humor, he told me that GoLytely was named and invented by a famous intestinal neurosurgeon named Dr. Crapper.  Yes.  Dr. Crapper from Great Britain.  I swear I'm not making this up!  He's some british lord and descended from the inventor of the modern toilet.  Hence, why we call it the Crapper.  Oh the things you learn in pre op!