Meet Frankenstein

My surgery was easy and uneventful and about 90-minutes long. The people at the hospital were so incredibly nice and friendly and thoughtful. And the last memory I have is of a nurse who got me ready to leave. It felt like I was being rushed out the door at the end there, but I was just groggy enough that the effect was lost on me until after the fact. She handed me my bag of clothes and helped me dress. She even hooked my bra, which cracks me up now. 

The doctor told my husband that she's 97% sure that there isn't going to be anything in my lymph nodes. Of course, if you know me at all, you know that I'm going to worry about that 3% possibility. That and that the guy from nuclear medicine marked a lymph node and she didn't cut there. I don't know why. So, I'll worry about that, too. 

The most depressing thing happened yesterday when I removed the bandages. The incision is two-and-a-half inches long and has blue ink all over it. And black stitches tied off at each entry so that it looks like a caterpillar. I feel like Frankenstein! The site is not smooth, but dips in the middle and puckers at the ends. Pure hideousness!

What cracks me up about this whole experience is how much vanity plays a part. If I'm cancer free, why should I care if I can't wear short sleeves? I can't even deny that vanity is what brought me in to the doctor's office in the first place. The site looked ugly and I really wanted to get rid of those skin tabs.

Right now I'm sore under my arm and my the top of my arm gets tingly if I don't lay down every now and then. This suits me because I like to nap. I have a prescription for Vicodin, but I don't have a lot of pain so I haven't been taking much. Another unfortunate side-effect is that I've gained back a couple/few of those hard lost pounds I've been working so hard on. AND, I can't work out hard for a while. I can't complain, this was serious and I'll be lucky to find out that this is all behind me - if that is, in fact, what I find out. 

I think I need something to distract me and ease me back into normal like a project of some sort. And working on living a good life with no regrets. 

I'm Fine

I'm recovering nicely. I'll have the results next week and I'll share then. Meanwhile, I'm off to sleep. Again.

The Eve Of

Tomorrow I will have surgery to cut out the melanoma. They will also be removing one to three lymph nodes to test to see if the cancer has spread, while I'm under general anesthesia. To listen to everyone I know, they will not find anything and there is nothing to worry about. I don't know how they know. They must have some psychic powers and I feel confident that they are right, as they must know what they're talking about.

Actually, my worries don't need to be alleviated. It's okay. I'm okay. I see this surgery as a necessary part of what I'm going through. As natural as me kicking my feet up on my coffee table to brace my laptop and seeing the dime-sized black spider crawling around. (No, I did not leave my feet there!)

This melanoma is a freak consequence of my exposure to the sun. I just happen to live in the best state in the country (sorry to all of you who do not live here, but thankfully your own state has brainwashed you to not even believe me) and we get a lot of sunshine here. The sunshine needs to be felt, adored, worshipped. It's like a god with a cult following. Unfortunately, my vanity only extended to my face and my religious daily application of sunscreen stopped at the chin. That's all it is.

I've lost sight of the spider and I hope it lost my scent. My laptop is hard to balance, but I'll continue. Okay, blah blah blah.

I'm a bit freaked out by getting sliced open. I'm just as afraid of contracting a staph infection as I am they'll find something in my lymph node. I'm nervous about being in the hospital because of all the germs. That's where the sick people go!

Actually, I'm sure I'm not fooling anyone. I'm worried they'll find the cancer has spread. I'm worried that I'll die before my girls graduate from high school. I'm worried that I'll spend my time fighting it and lose the battle. What else is there to really be afraid of? And how can I help but feel foolish for feeling afraid of these Big Issues when everyone around me diminishes the seriousness of the situation? I feel like I can't let anyone know how afraid I am of the possibilities when they're probably going to find nothing and I'll be free of all the cancer tomorrow? I'll be afraid of the mountain when it's just a little ol' mo hill.

Thankfully, the waiting will be over tomorrow. I might not know the results of my lymph node biopsy tomorrow, but I'll be done with this step and ready to move on to the next one. They say that dogs can sense fear because my dog just let out a startling bark and made me jump. I've got to finish this and get to bed soon because I'm not allowed to eat or drink past midnight and I have less than 20-minutes to stuff my face for the rest of the day.

And on that note, I'll leave you with this. Toilet paper is supposed to roll OVER the bar. I only work with three other women. We share our bathroom with our customers, but we're in there more than they are, I'm sure. If the TP runs out, we refill it. I feel like it is always me, but that's the story of my life. Quite often, I find that a roll that I've replaced has been switched to roll UNDER. It happens enough that I suspect one of my co-workers is doing it. I'd hate to venture a guess as to which one, but if I have to I will. I just wish they'd trust me that I know what I'm doing and go with the OVER flow.

There are some interesting bird sounds - must be owls - this time of night. I never knew! Ten minutes and into the kitchen I go...

Tailored Shirts

After creating that skirt that didn't go so well, I haven't done any sewing - just mending. Which, I'd like to brag, that I'm pretty darned good at doing. I needed to repair the rear vent on a skirt and I sewed it so that you would never know it was repaired. Of course, I made an effort to do that - unlike the third repair I made on my favorite sweater. 

I have a black cashmere cardigan (crew neck) that I wear all the time. I shouldn't wear it all the time, though, because it's just got too far gone. It had a small hole in the elbow and I did a great job repairing that, but it has worn out so much that it's beyond repair at this point. I grabbed it once this winter, forgetting that I really have no business wearing it in public and when I got to work, remembered there was a hole. I ended up stapling it and then taping (with clear tape) the staples so they wouldn't rub. You can't see the hole, or the staples for that matter, but when I feel all the hub-bub in the elbow, I have to chuckle. I have got to stop wearing it. 

My sewing creativity has been stymied and I've been a bit distracted until I had my Eureka! moment. What I would like to sew  are tailored shirts. I have a hard time finding button-downs that fit me properly and I think after my surgery I'm going to be wearing longer sleeves. I'd really love to make something that I can wear that will fit the way it's supposed to, without having to drudge my way through stores looking for the impossible or falling back on knits. 

Now that I have the idea spark, I'm on my way to a new project. I'll keep you posted!

The Itchies

When I was in fourth grade, I think, I got lice. I'm not sure from whom I got them and I know that they didn't suddenly appear on my own head, they had to have been shared. It was traumatic, to say the least, because my grandmother cut my hair off so that I looked like a pixie - her words - or a boy - mine. I have pictures from that age that make me totally cringe. I got kicked out of school until I was cured.

Flash forward to when I was 19-years-old and just about to go into the Army. I was a couple of days away from getting on a bus and living temporarily with my friend and her family. I had just come back from visiting my mom and step-dad. They had just had a visit from his kids. I got a call from my mom telling me that my step-sisters had lice and I needed to check my own head. Sure enough, I had them.

My hair was in a cute little bob at the time, so no traumatic haircut for me. Unfortunately, that time my friend, with whom I was staying had just gotten a perm. I had to treat her head before she even got those two or three days for the chemicals to set. She was not happy. And I was mortified that I had left such a parting gift to such a hospitable family.

I had treated the lice, but felt the "itchies" for a very long time after that while in-processing into the Army without a hope of a friend to check me again and certainly not wanting to share this awful information, though now, as a more grown-up adult, I really should have because I was in such close quarters with so many people!

Flash forward to the present time. Our schools have had several lice-scares and I've been diligent to check my kids. I figure that if they get them, I will and if they don't, then I probably don't have them either. Unfortunately, because of my two previous experiences, any head itching on my part freaks me out. My scalp is very sensitive to soaps and stuff, which can create an itching that mimics the crawling feeling of critters.

But lately I have felt the horrible crawling feeling again. It's miserable and it means that I need to check my kids because I can't really check myself. So here goes...

Nope. Nothing. And my girls even checked my head. Phew. I'd better change shampoos again.