I had just about the perfect weekend.
Which is awesome because tomorrow is Chunk Two of my journey. Surgery.
My Mom and Dad came all the way up from Texas to spend some time with me and our visit was just delightful! Friday evening we had a sunset supper at Joe's Crab Shack and it was delicious, if cracked crab legs dipped in melted butter isn't pretty close to nirvana...I don't know what is! Afterwards I got to spend some celebratory time with my friend Jill at her bachelorette party...all my favorite girlfriends were there which just topped off the evening with happiness.
Saturday the whole huge crew, me, Kevin, Anne, Jason, Emma, my Mom and Dad and Emma's Dad and grandparents all descended on Miyako for Hibachi and yummy, yummy sushi. Their Pink Lady (Spicy tuna, topped off with white tuna and a surprise burst in your mouth paper thin slice of lemon) is pretty close to perfection as it gets.
Later that evening both Kevin and I got to play at the Southgate house.
I actually talked my Mom and Dad into going and I think one of my most happy moments was when every time Kevin would get done with a song my Mom would yell "Yay Kevin!!! And clap like crazy...it was awesome!!! She even wanted a CD...which Kevin gave her today. Seriously, seriously awesome.
Lovely Crash got to rock the ballroom and it was just wonderful. One of our better sets if I do say so...and a bunch of friends came out and my Mom and Dad actually liked it! That was just the BEST!. I'd have to say I think they had a pretty good time! :-)
Afterwards I brought them back home and Anne and I went back to catch Oso bear and some of the other folks at Southgate house, then finished up our evening with an unexpected surprise...the Lakota "Class of 80" were celebrating right behind SGH at Bart's and I got to see some wonderful folks I hadn't seen in a long long time...
Today? well...not quite as fun, seeing as I can't have anything but clear liquids and had to take some pretty nasty antibiotics to get rid of all the "bad bacteria" in my digestive tract...so today was a lot of nauseousness and nervousness and crying.
But I did it surrounded by the folks I love the best. And Anne and I even got in a half an hour of yoga and visualization. We also all set and watched the "holzer home movies" so I got to see my 4 year old self dancing like nobodies business...I guess some things don't change all that much do they?
And right now?
I am finishing up some loose ends...packing for the hospital and trying not to cry.
Please send positive energy tomorrow at 9:30 am when I head into surgery and send a HUGE amount to my surgeon Dr. Janice Rafferty. I've made peace with all that business...got a second opinion and now know she and I don't need to be the best of friends...she just needs to do the best job she can to make me well.
Tomorrow the bravest thing I will ever do so far in my life is get in the car to go to the hospital.
But again...I can rock anything...
Sending you all as much love and support that you've given me so far on this journey.
I love you all.
As soon as I can be up and about enough to type I'll give you all an update and a thorough rundown of my hospital stay.(expect scathing nurse commentary and no holds barred reviews of hospital food...)
Tomorrow afternoon I will be 2/3 done.
Let's do this thing!!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Monday, August 2, 2010
Control...
Ah Janet Jackson I know of what you speak...
And this is a real hard one for me to write.
In this multi chunked journey that is rectal cancer, I have done my best to deal with life and this situation one day, one chunk, sometimes one minute at a time...
So I dealt with chunk one...(rather extraordinarily if you ask me!! I mean Tumor GONE people!!) I took my meds on time...showed up for radiation, didn't eat or drink things they said I shouldn't and did everything, absolutely everything I could.
Now on to chunk two.
Surgery.
As many of you know although multi talented, a surgery degree is something that I do not have. Which means that someone other than myself is going to be doing this chunk for me...which SCARES the living bejeesuscrap out of me, but which my friend Lucia beautifully and helpfully pointed out the flipside...this time I don't have to do anything. Which for about 20 minutes made me feel better...until "Con-trooool!!!", (Janet's singing really loud right now can you hear her???) rears it's ugly head.
I have to tell you I don't much like my surgeon.
And that worries me...don't get me wrong she has impeccable credentials...too impeccable if you ask me, because if they were any less I'd have no problem ditching her and finding a new surgeon that didn't want to take quite so much out of my body and had a damn better bedside manner..
Everyone and I do mean EVERYONE lists her as the best...even other Dr's I've asked, websites I have feverishly researched and even my "Second opinion" benefit through P&G lists her as number one...(traitors!!!)
Although I know ironically when I pull through I will want to thank her(i typed "feverishly" but decided to delete it, not calling that energy down!)...but it's tough for me because I don't like her...she is condescending, won't give me the information I seek and quite frankly is kind of a bitch...she's very dry and couldn't see why I was upset when I found out at my last visit that instead of the 2-5 inches I thought they'd be taking from what I understood to be my "rectum' (and I got this understanding from watching NUMEROUS people go through cancer surgery...they take the tumor (which in my case is gone) take an additional inch or two extra margins for safety's sake and you're done...) they'll be taking about 10 inches all the way to my large intestine..I essentially won't have a rectum any more...
This made me very upset. She used the same damn cartoon picture of your digestive insides to draw it out for me...where the hell were her drawing skills at my last visit Hmmm???
And seriously instead of saying in essence " well YOU misunderstood what part of the body is actually your rectum" and "Well rectal cancer is different" couldn't she have just given me a hug or something and told me everything was gonna be OK and that she was sorry it was scaring me...?
Plus I got ZERO info from her when asking how my life was going to be changed after surgery...do I have to be 2 ft from a bathroom from the rest of my life?...will I just have to forget about eating meat or skyline?? The only thing she could say was "it depends on the person" which somehow puts the onus back on me, as if the outcome is mine instead of hers...Which really at the end of the day I'm OK with but I want to KNOW NOW! The only thing she would say is there's a 20% chance I won't have any control over my bowels...fun huh? But I plan NOT to be in that percentage.
I will tell you it did not make me feel any better (and if one more person out there tells me to stop doing research on the net I am going to scream...) that out of the folks who had had this surgery about 85% wish they hadn't done it...they had things to say like "I just wish I had a colostomy bag" or "wish I'd never had the surgery done"...this does not instill confidence. Also I had a discussion with a nursing student last night that was telling me all about the class she takes to master saying nothing at all to the patient...when asked why this was necessary...she replied "because they don't want to scare the patient".
Ah news flash people...it isn't working!
I'm not a child and I deserve to know EXACTLY what all this means to me and my body as well as my emotional life.
At least than I can come to grips with it, or decide not to have the surgery or something...right now I am just left with having to deal with whatever the outcome is after surgery.
With the Dr. I don't like.
Having her slit me from navel to pubic bone, cutting out a large chunk of my body, taking the cautious side of removing more instead of less...in essence to cover her ass....leaving me with a life I don't know right now will be worth living. Which I KNOW in my heart of hearts will be considered barbaric in just 10-20 years...and I will be dealing with the aftermath for the REST OF MY LIFE.
Yeah, I'm crying right now people.
Not too mention surgery is risky. It's never 100%...and how many people die from an oops?? An oops done by a "brilliant surgeon with impeccable credentials" I have never wanted to die stupid...you know choking on a burger in Burger King restroom...or falling off of my high heels and cracking my head open on a street curb. OR being a damn "oops" statistic, that would just really piss me off...a comical end to an earnestly determined well lived life. Nobody wants their punctuation mark to their life be a joke...or a question mark. Or a laugh track or clown horn.
I just have to say this..if I do end up an oops...please sue the shit out of HER(yeah how does it feel not to have YOUR ass??) and give the money to Emma for college. It will make me feel infinitely better that some good will come from it.
Because in the world of control the bottom line is I don't want to die. I'm not ready, I haven't done enough. I haven't been to SXSW, or learned how to make stained glass, or made a souffle...or retired to a little village in Italy where Anne and I will live making dinner from the basil and tomatoes in our garden and drinking lot and lots of really good wine.
I am guessing unless you are dying from a terminal illness or are over the age of 100 you are not being brickwalled by your mortality at the moment like I am.
It does not feel good people :-(
I don't gamble...and what I am facing right now is a crapshoot..nothing more or less.
So please people, send me some positive energy, I think I need to be in a better frame of mind before I head into this surgery, because that's all I can do, that's all I can control.
Shut up Janet.
And this is a real hard one for me to write.
In this multi chunked journey that is rectal cancer, I have done my best to deal with life and this situation one day, one chunk, sometimes one minute at a time...
So I dealt with chunk one...(rather extraordinarily if you ask me!! I mean Tumor GONE people!!) I took my meds on time...showed up for radiation, didn't eat or drink things they said I shouldn't and did everything, absolutely everything I could.
Now on to chunk two.
Surgery.
As many of you know although multi talented, a surgery degree is something that I do not have. Which means that someone other than myself is going to be doing this chunk for me...which SCARES the living bejeesuscrap out of me, but which my friend Lucia beautifully and helpfully pointed out the flipside...this time I don't have to do anything. Which for about 20 minutes made me feel better...until "Con-trooool!!!", (Janet's singing really loud right now can you hear her???) rears it's ugly head.
I have to tell you I don't much like my surgeon.
And that worries me...don't get me wrong she has impeccable credentials...too impeccable if you ask me, because if they were any less I'd have no problem ditching her and finding a new surgeon that didn't want to take quite so much out of my body and had a damn better bedside manner..
Everyone and I do mean EVERYONE lists her as the best...even other Dr's I've asked, websites I have feverishly researched and even my "Second opinion" benefit through P&G lists her as number one...(traitors!!!)
Although I know ironically when I pull through I will want to thank her(i typed "feverishly" but decided to delete it, not calling that energy down!)...but it's tough for me because I don't like her...she is condescending, won't give me the information I seek and quite frankly is kind of a bitch...she's very dry and couldn't see why I was upset when I found out at my last visit that instead of the 2-5 inches I thought they'd be taking from what I understood to be my "rectum' (and I got this understanding from watching NUMEROUS people go through cancer surgery...they take the tumor (which in my case is gone) take an additional inch or two extra margins for safety's sake and you're done...) they'll be taking about 10 inches all the way to my large intestine..I essentially won't have a rectum any more...
This made me very upset. She used the same damn cartoon picture of your digestive insides to draw it out for me...where the hell were her drawing skills at my last visit Hmmm???
And seriously instead of saying in essence " well YOU misunderstood what part of the body is actually your rectum" and "Well rectal cancer is different" couldn't she have just given me a hug or something and told me everything was gonna be OK and that she was sorry it was scaring me...?
Plus I got ZERO info from her when asking how my life was going to be changed after surgery...do I have to be 2 ft from a bathroom from the rest of my life?...will I just have to forget about eating meat or skyline?? The only thing she could say was "it depends on the person" which somehow puts the onus back on me, as if the outcome is mine instead of hers...Which really at the end of the day I'm OK with but I want to KNOW NOW! The only thing she would say is there's a 20% chance I won't have any control over my bowels...fun huh? But I plan NOT to be in that percentage.
I will tell you it did not make me feel any better (and if one more person out there tells me to stop doing research on the net I am going to scream...) that out of the folks who had had this surgery about 85% wish they hadn't done it...they had things to say like "I just wish I had a colostomy bag" or "wish I'd never had the surgery done"...this does not instill confidence. Also I had a discussion with a nursing student last night that was telling me all about the class she takes to master saying nothing at all to the patient...when asked why this was necessary...she replied "because they don't want to scare the patient".
Ah news flash people...it isn't working!
I'm not a child and I deserve to know EXACTLY what all this means to me and my body as well as my emotional life.
At least than I can come to grips with it, or decide not to have the surgery or something...right now I am just left with having to deal with whatever the outcome is after surgery.
With the Dr. I don't like.
Having her slit me from navel to pubic bone, cutting out a large chunk of my body, taking the cautious side of removing more instead of less...in essence to cover her ass....leaving me with a life I don't know right now will be worth living. Which I KNOW in my heart of hearts will be considered barbaric in just 10-20 years...and I will be dealing with the aftermath for the REST OF MY LIFE.
Yeah, I'm crying right now people.
Not too mention surgery is risky. It's never 100%...and how many people die from an oops?? An oops done by a "brilliant surgeon with impeccable credentials" I have never wanted to die stupid...you know choking on a burger in Burger King restroom...or falling off of my high heels and cracking my head open on a street curb. OR being a damn "oops" statistic, that would just really piss me off...a comical end to an earnestly determined well lived life. Nobody wants their punctuation mark to their life be a joke...or a question mark. Or a laugh track or clown horn.
I just have to say this..if I do end up an oops...please sue the shit out of HER(yeah how does it feel not to have YOUR ass??) and give the money to Emma for college. It will make me feel infinitely better that some good will come from it.
Because in the world of control the bottom line is I don't want to die. I'm not ready, I haven't done enough. I haven't been to SXSW, or learned how to make stained glass, or made a souffle...or retired to a little village in Italy where Anne and I will live making dinner from the basil and tomatoes in our garden and drinking lot and lots of really good wine.
I am guessing unless you are dying from a terminal illness or are over the age of 100 you are not being brickwalled by your mortality at the moment like I am.
It does not feel good people :-(
I don't gamble...and what I am facing right now is a crapshoot..nothing more or less.
So please people, send me some positive energy, I think I need to be in a better frame of mind before I head into this surgery, because that's all I can do, that's all I can control.
Shut up Janet.
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