Blogging has been really tough for me this past year, and I can’t put my finger on why. Maybe it is because some days I feel like I just don’t want to think about cancer anymore. Maybe a little bit because life is just busy. Maybe it is a little bit because the cancer-related events in my life lately keep turning out to be false alarms which makes me feel both happy (for good news) and silly (for worrying) at the same time. Continue reading
We are in Houston for another surgery. This one is elective for Jenny and strategically planned in time to recover before our summer vacation plans.
Why the surgery? It’s a revision to her reconstruction. Jenny will post in more detail in the days to come. I (and others) are encouraging her to post some of her thoughts and reconstruction details.
So she will, she says.
Alan and I have been walking three miles around the neighborhood in the evenings together. Each time, we go through the same back and forth about what time we will go. I want to go immediately after we finish dinner. He wants to wait 45 minutes, then go.
You see, Alan and I are a lot alike when it comes to structure and schedules in our lives. I think it is why we get along so well. But one major difference between us is my ridiculous inability to relax until all the work is done. I carry this habit into every part of my life – I can’t relax during the week until I feel like I have a handle on things at work. I can’t relax on the weekends until I feel like our house is at least somewhat picked up and clean and any errands have been run. And, each evening, I can’t relax until we have made, eaten and cleaned up after dinner and gone for our walk. Because, let’s face it, the walk is work.
Why am I telling you this?
It’s 9:22 a.m. as I start this post. We are waiting for surgery.
We’re in a common area on the third floor of the main MD Anderson building. Jenny is trying not think about food, but she’s already planned for us to order Pappasito’s takeout to the hotel this evening. Her appetite is currently much larger than the one she’ll have this evening, I think.
Pappasito’s is attached to the nice hotel we are staying at in downtown Houston, so it’s in her head. Priceline gave us a very good deal at that hotel much better than the prices for much lesser hotels in the medical district area.
Why are we waiting for surgery today? Especially after Jenny declared 2015 a surgery-free year?
So, I wrote a really long blog post the weekend after I got home from the hospital. Things got busy and hectic and I never posted it so I just posted it and back dated it. Sorry for cheating.
On Friday night – two days after I got home — Alan and I went to do my meds around 9:30 p.m. To add to all of the craziness and bad luck that has gone on lately, my line was clogged. Apparently your blood can tend to clot around the foreign object that you have in your body. We knew one side was clogged, but when the other side was clogged on Friday, the only option was to make a trip to the ER.
I cried.
We pulled in to our garage around 2:30 a.m. on Thursday morning after a looooong week at MD Anderson. We were beat.
(So was poor Krisan who was so kind and stayed with our kids until we got home even though she had to work the next day – I got lucky when she and I met almost 20 years ago.)
Before leaving, Alan took his PICC line test that allows him to give me my meds and clean and change my dressing. It is really important that we are very careful to keep it sterile so the process of changing my dressing is VERY tough. They require him to demonstrate his abilities while a nurse observes.
Here are some pics of him as he tested: