cancer – day 83
Thayer told Mark the surgery went well, and now I have this lump an inch or two below my left collar bone and a tube from that port going pretty much all the way to my heart, as I understand it. It’s called a porta cath, and this port is where they’ll give me all my chemo treatments and do all the blood draws and stuff, which is really good because I was feeling all beat up from all the needles during the couple weeks with all the biopsies and tests back in April/May, and I get really queasy about blood now, ever since Artie’s motorcycle wreck. Gory movies and stuff never bothered me before, but now when something gross or bloody starts to happen in a movie I turn away. BTW, anyone who can’t stand needles should be careful about seeing The Incredible Hulk, there’s a scene where a guy gets a nasty injection into his spine. I didn’t see it, I happened to be wearing a cap and when I saw what was coming I quick lowered my head and didn’t see it happen. Which apparently was a good thing, because Mark even made grossed-out noises when the thing happened in the movie. Anyway. How did I get on that subject? Oh yeah, the porta cath. Surgery today.
Well, I did really well after the surgery this time, I was much better in post-op in terms of them controlling the pain much better (this wasn’t nearly as invasive a procedure as the lumpectomy and reconstructive surgery of course, and I wasn’t in pain beforehand, which I think helped a lot!), and I was chatting with the nurses and asking questions and stuff. Last time, I was a lump of pain, it was awful.
So after maybe 30 minutes in there with the nurse they took me back to the surgery ward and let Mark come in and he sat with me for an hour or so while they made sure I was stable and the pain was still controlled, and by 1:30PM we were back in the car heading home. We stopped and had burgers for lunch, then I dozed all afternoon in my office across from Mark while he worked. I tell ya, this is about the best home office set up for two work-from-home professionals doubling as cancer patient and caregiver that I could ever have dreamed up. I’m far enough away that we don’t bother each other or interrupt our work, but he can easily keep an eye on me when I’m resting on the LoveSac chair thing we put in my office. Around five Mark came over and sat with me for a while and I swear it was about the best (deepest sleeping) nap I’ve had in, like, forever.
And we even went to Corti Brothers and got advised on some wine for the wine club party tomorrow night, they have this goofy wine guy who looks like my cousin Dan but wears a bow tie with a plaid shirt, and he’s only in his twenties! But the guy definitely knows a heck of a lot about wines, and they have a ton of them, so that was a fun little excursion this evening. We had dinner at home, I made a chicken fiesta salad, but I couldn’t eat much, I got full almost right away, probably because we had a pretty big lunch this afternoon.
All in all I was doing pretty well until about 8:30PM tonight, when unfortunately I started heaving and lost my dinner and my lunch. Uck. Wow, I’ve never heard Mark hustle quite that fast before I think. First coming to the bathroom when he heard me, but I told him it was ok, I was being sick but I was ok, and then he rushed off and wet a washcloth and sat with me on the floor a minute while I caught my breath, and dusted me off from the floor when I was ok to get up. (Yeah, um, we’re going to have to sweep the bathrooms a little more frequently during chemo, especially if I’m going to be getting nauseous like this!)
Uff da. I got sick from anesthesia once before, and I told the anesthesiologist that before the surgery today and he said they’d give me some anti-nausea stuff before they woke me up so I wouldn’t get sick, but it either didn’t last or it didn’t work, because this was the same kind of nausea I had the other time I got sick after surgery. Hopefully that’s it, just the one bout so far. Now I’m having a slice of toast so I can have the pain medicine, because all that heaving really pulled on the muscles around the new porta cath. Sheesh, just when you think I’m going to have a simple surgery recovery, eh? Still, I’ll take this over the last surgery’s pain levels any day.
Kinda worries me a little though . . . if I’m getting nauseous now, how am I going to be next week after getting a chemo treatment? Oh well, I’ll just have to get through it. They gave me all kinds of medicines, so hopefully we’ll be able to keep the nausea manageable so I’m not throwing up all the time!
Mark’s gaming now while I’m journaling, but before I got sick he was online looking at chemo/cancer cookbooks and found a couple that he wants to get. One of my friends in Chicago who is a 5-year breast cancer survivor told me we absolutely had to get The Cancer Patient’s Cookbook, which she said really improved her nausea and I think even helped with fatigue once they started using it to prepare her foods during her chemo. I swear though, the biggest food issue we’re going to have during chemo, if we try to have meals together, is that we don’t’ seem to have any common tastes in vegetables! Too funny. The ones I like raw he only likes cooked. The ones I like cooked (steamed is actually my preference), he only likes cooked and doused in sauces because he doesn’t like the vegetables flavors that much. All this fuss about organic this and healthy that, and the guy hardly eats any vegetables!
All in all, a much better surgery day than the one a couple months ago. Of course, it wasn’t nearly as stressful either, since there weren’t any unknowns coming out of it. Last time there was so much stress and worry through it all, not knowing yet if the cancer had spread, today was totally relaxed in comparison.