Home sweet home

Hooray for home!

I love my mom (when she's not driving me crazy -- part of her job description, I know) but after a week away, I am glad to be back in my own apartment, revoltingly messy as it is, though it is brightened up greatly by the flowers which awaited me from my friends Sarah and Sam. (Thanks, guys! The arrangement is pretty and looks to bloom shortly, see?)

Actually, mom & I got along surprisingly well this past week. We watched lots of Food Network (and I could tell I wasn't feeling like myself because my reactions to the shows were along the lines of "that recipe looks interesting -- I'll have to try it sometime" rather than "Hungry! NOW!") and chatted about knitting, our family, my engineer, his family, and my upcoming treatment, when I wasn't sleeping for 8 or 9 hours at a stretch.

Speaking of sleeping, I plan to go get reacquainted with my fluffy flannel sheets shortly, but wanted to update y'all on recent events. (Apologies in advance to the guys who are reading this for the graphic boob discussions to follow -- will try to be at least somewhat discreet, since I'm not one of those let-it-all-hang-out chicks.)

My surgery Friday went well but it was a long, loooong day.

[Note: re-reading this post, it occurs to me that I should tell everyone now:
cancer go bye-bye! not in the sentinel lymph nodes -- hooray!]


7:50 am -
For once in my life I arrived VERY early (40 min. prior to my 8:30 check in), met my sweetie there, and changed into the oh-so-glam hospital gown, robe, and non-skid socks which I wore for the next 9 hours. (Soooo sexy, dunno how my engineer kept his hands off me -- not.)

My sister could not pick me up as planned, since the early appt. time would have left my brother-in-law alone in the house for 2 hours prior to his daily pick up by River House, and nobody wanted that. (My older niece & her younger son would go have dinner with him, since he would be home before my sister came back from the hospital.)

8:15 am -
Started reading my trashy paperback thriller from the library as I waited in the pre-surgery room to get my IV put in, blood pressure taken, etc. I think I was back in the waiting room by 9ish.

10:00 am -
The multiple morning mammograms were eventually eased by the arrival of lidocaine (YES! let's hear it for painkillers!) prior to the insertion of a wire to guide the surgeon. (Why can't we always get lido before a mammo, I ask you?! Imagine an extremely delicate part of one's anatomy being squashed like a panini sandwich. Repeatedly.) And no, I didn't look while I was being "threaded" which was just as well, since I discovered wire + mammo = bloody imprints on machine. Ick.

11:00 am -
The hospital called my engineer on his cell to let us know that my surgery was being pushed back from 1:00 to 2:15, at which point I told him and my sister to go to lunch at noon: there was no point in ALL of us being hungry. By this point I was 2/3 of the way through my trashy thriller, Bloodline.

2:15 pm -
After all of the waiting (in the mercifully TV-free waiting area) when the surgical nurse came to get me, I practically leapt into her arms and gave my glasses to my sweetie. Since this left me practically legally blind,
(a) I took her arm as we shuffled down the hall, and
(b) the surgeon was very amused when I informed him that all I could see was that he was some white guy.

I asked the 2 nurses whether the blue terrycloth socks (with non-skid rubber stripes) reminded them more of Grover or Cookie Monster, a thought I had been contemplating all day. They both promptly replied "Grover!" (Evidently I was not the only person to ask this question.) The anesthesiologist introduced himself and...

4:30 pm -
I woke up in the recovery room and thought:
(1) "Oh, I guess the surgery is done"
(2) "uh... thirsty" and
(3) "Ow! Want. Painkillers. NOW."

My doctor magically appeared, assured me that the cancer had NOT spread to the lymph nodes [HALLELUJAH!] smiled at me at left.

To be continued... I have a date with some pink flannel sheets.

For now, I leave you all with the pretty tulips my sweetie brought for me & my mom on Saturday. :-)