Hold Tight and Pretend It's a Plan

Before I get into the meaty part of this, I just want to say that two nights and two days in the hospital had a disproportionate effect on my brain -- when I wake up in the night, before I open my eyes, I always think I am in the hospital and Jon is next to the bed on his hard little bench cot.  I think that this might be that I have never been in my own bed in a post-surgical state so that my sleepy brain associates those feelings with the hospital bed. I have been home for seven nights by now so pretty soon I should start to get re-oriented. I have not taken any Tramadol since Tuesday night and I seem to be fine so we can check that one off too. I wasn't sure how that was supposed to work, easing off the most powerful drug, but it did work. I am still taking a steady dose of alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen and we are decreasing those doses too.  Not sure when I am supposed to ease off the gabapentin because my instructions are conflicting with themselves, but I will ask....

It has been a huge improvement not to listen to the news on the radio much.  Up until this disruption in normal activities, I listened to NPR all the time.  Now I read the headlines but not much more, for a while.  The best recipe for healing is to never hear the voice that makes me say, reflexively, "he is such an ass." I know that it is our civic duty to stay on top of the news and to be informed and active. But if you want to heal as fast as you can, inside and out, then make sure you never ever hear that voice. Even if blood pressure is no issue, your blood pressure will improve. Instead, I have been having a lot of engaging conversations with interesting people who are busy doing good stuff. In some ways I have never been more in touch.  I am not a full-on extrovert but these days have shown me a lot about how much I do want to know people, and hear what they are thinking about. I would not be lonely if I were alone all day but I might get pretty antsy. If my ...

Now that I have been indoors for seven days, I have relearned what it is like for time to go slowly.  This hasn't been a reality for me since I worked as a temp 30 years ago.  Those days crept by. And of course in school time can practically stop. Oh, yes, and when I was responsible for all my children for a whole afternoon or something, especially on snow days. Time crawled. But in my normal life, time goes so fast I can barely keep up. Part of this is I have so many locations to get to/be in and I have so many people to keep track of/care about that there are not enough minutes. We have caromed to the other extreme, with my world down to the inside of the house. So many people have this life, and it is eye-opening to be living it. The solution, of course, is to keep the visitors' couch open and ready.  In the last few days, there has been a slow parade of guests who come and take their places on the couch. If they come alone, they get to have the whole couch to them...

So, a few years ago Nell told me that the next frontier was learning to meditate.  She gave me a hardback book to read, called Mindfulness, and told me it was worth it.  Some in her family had learned to meditate and it was good. I tried to read the book and it just seemed like too much work, with too many exercises and you had to be so self-motivated. I decided it was not for me. But then a year ago at Thanksgiving I mentioned something to Alissa about meditating, and she said she was practicing and she had an app that she had learned about from Christi. I trust all of these people implicitly -- Nell, Alissa and Christi -- they are all intellectually trustworthy.  The app, called Headspace, had a free trial for a week. This method of learning to meditate is like having someone unwrap a popsicle for you and put it in your mouth. There is no work involved at all except to open your mouth and let the popsicle melt. And you don't have to be good at it because who is judg...

Just about exactly one year ago, we splurged and bought a small hot tub because Lani said she loves hers so much -- we both have bad knees. Her life is much more physically demanding than mine, but we both are heavy people who have never stopped doing a lot of things that use up your knees.  This hot tub turned out to be the joy of my life.  Per Lani's instructions, I went in twice a day whenever possible. It was heaven. On February 5 I had a biopsy (which led to all this new information) and my gynecologist told me very strictly that I was not to get in a swimming pool or a hot tub for two whole weeks. She was stern about it. I am a compliant patient, and I agree that getting an infection because I love to sit in the hot tub would be stupid. Then on Feb 19, two weeks after the biopsy, I had this surgery and now my timeline has been extended even further. Maybe 12 weeks.  But I have come to realize that my knees do not hurt a bit right now because of this incredible med...

Last night after sending Anna and Gordon off to use our theater tickets at 1st Stage, I took a big nap on the couch.  Maybe this was not the best idea because when I woke up at about 10:00 I had too much energy.  I told Jon I wanted him to think about how much gravel we really need to order to get the greenhouse floor done, and he is still doing pretty much what I ask, so he sat down and thought through the cubic yards and the weight and the cost of hauling and he came up with an answer.  Then when we went to bed I couldn't get my brain to stop working. It started to make lists of all the stuff we need to get started on in Loudoun, and who was going to do it, and how.  And I wanted to get up and start the farm blog right then but it was the middle of the night.  So I tried to settle down and stop keeping Jon awake, while still making lists.  It was not the best night, and I need to learn not to get my brain going right before bed.  But we slept late an...

Last night as Jon tried to get me to stop talking and go to sleep, he said I was still not acting like myself. I am too effusive, without a filter. I keep saying things that are possibly outsized, not precisely true.  Oh well, blame it on the drugs.  I have never had so many drugs in me so perhaps this is the drugged version of me. We came home last night.  As I expected, the ride home was the hardest part. I hate all those bumps and I complained relentlessly. Jon tried so hard to drive slowly and carefully and I was not appreciative enough.  We were going to come straight home but we got to a place where the road was stopped by an accident so we turned around and went to the Kaiser pharmacy for my latest antibiotics. That wasn't so bad. After getting out of the car like a really infirm old person, I went all the way up the stairs to our bedroom.  I can do stairs, hooray.  Brushed my teeth and got into bed. What a great bed.  It has always been a g...

I have to finish the 48 hours of IV antibiotics and then I can definitely go home. Predicted to be excused at 8 PM even if I never pass gas -- they have listened to my innards and they are satisfied that things are in motion.  All other indicators are good. I just finished my best walk so far -- I am learning which muscles to rely on and which ones are poked.  It is probably the pain meds but I feel the best I have felt since I walked into this hospital room on Tuesday night with my eyes just barely open because they wouldn't allow me to walk with my eyes closed.  I have been here longer than I expected, but what did I really know?  We are starting to think about the modifications that might be needed for our house but I think it won't be very long before I can get myself out of a chair or bed etc. so a walker feels like it might be sufficient. I cannot believe how many people have said the most laudatory, admiring, respectful things about Dr. Singh. The last per...

Mind you, I  am not complaining. But there is a very sore dagger wound in my right side and it is making it hard to pop out of bed.  Once I get up, I am a little more normal in my movements, but I am moving very slowly. Not that I was ever a speedy walker, but there are so many things about me now that are out of character. The biggest one is that I am not hungry.  That is just so weird.  Luckily food tastes good and I am willing to eat it, but not very much.  It stretches my dagger wound.  So we order a meal that seems appealing, and then I eat some of it and make Jon finish the rest. He has been here the whole time (it's really because he is so frugal that he doesn't want to pay to park more than once. It is a flat fee of $5 for as long as you are here, and he doesn't see the point of going home and coming back.). But on to medical issues.  I am doing well.  Walking, peeing all by myself, still waiting for that dang gas to appear, sleeping, ...

I finally have all ten of my fingers free -- no more oxygen sensor thing. I can type! Doesn't mean I am thinking very clearly. Jon says that I am still loopy because I keep speaking in extremes. I don't sound quite like myself. Overly grateful. But maybe that is exactly what I am, super glad that this all turned out this way after going into that operation thinking that things could be kind of terrible.  Oh, phew, I might only have cancer in my uterus, not stuck to every nearby organ.  Just before going into surgery, Dr. Singh came in with a revised consent form that said I agree that I might lose part of my colon and I might come out with a colostomy bag. Of course I signed it but that idea seemed pretty dire.  Instead, I wake up to hear that I scared them all with some kind of a breathing issue (see, I was right to wonder whether it was a good idea to move ahead, given my breathing) and now they are spending as much time on breathing treatments as anything else. ...

This is Anna posting from the surgical waiting area, after having met with Hana's surgeon. Here is the brief report of good news - Hana will surely be back on line tomorrow sharing more relevant news with you. The punch line is that her uterine cancer did not appear to have spread beyond the handy uterine container ("no visible cancer outside the uterus") , and Dr. Singh did not have to remove any colon; she was able to complete the whole procedure laparoscopically. The longer version is that soon after Hana was tipped upside down she had a bit of an asthma attack which totally got the team's attention and made them very respectful of taking too much time or doing extra work. They took whole bunches of biopsies ("we collected a lot of data") and froze some of them for pathologists to play with, and looked at a few right away - which is how they know about the "no visible cancer" part. The part that was so confusing on MRI and by feel before sur...

Ever since Saturday I have had a cold developing. Usually this is not the slightest bit newsworthy but it made me a little anxious because the pre-op people told me not to come in if I was sick. But the definition of sick was vague to me.  I knew I wouldn't go in if I had a fever, but what if my breathing was impaired?  I asked my doctor friends who I absolutely trust and they said if you don't have a fever, you are good to go.  But this chest thing was getting kind of noisy, with coughing and wheezing. I really didn't want to arrive at the hospital, having done all my required prep, and be turned away. I would rather know now -- so we can start filling up the hot tub again. Before I took my first dose of antibiotics (ugh, this whole thing is going to get so out of control with the pills), I decided to call Kaiser and just make sure.  My description of my symptoms made the advice nurse call the surgeon and and urgent care doc. They said I should come in and get che...

Not going to do the long version -- I had mysterious stomach pain in early December, went to get checked, each test led to another test, there were symptoms that didn't link up, the last test was an endometrial biopsy.  This one revealed endometrial cancer.  I was surprised, but that's because I don't really know much about this topic.  Luckily lots of other people do, and there is a plan now to have surgery on Tuesday to have a full hysterectomy (I got the phone call with the diagnosis on Wednesday afternoon and already things are in motion for action).  The oncologist, who seemed just right for me and Jon (not too warm and fuzzy, very nice, very matter of fact, excellent at answering all questions, not making any predictions yet) said that the pathology report revealed that this version is aggressive and not the straightforward kind that stays in the uterine lining. Maybe, not sure about where it is, but it seems like it could be causing some trouble.  She nee...