It’s been one heck of a week around here. I feel like I’m being called to write a blog topic that’s very close to my heart, one about the Holy Spirit being the Abiding Comforter, and I will. I’ve had so many ask for progress reports, though, so we will start with that today. Hopefully, I can get the magical blog out tomorrow. And it will be magical! The Abiding Comforter always is, to me anyway.
Last Friday I had a ‘minor’ surgery that ended up being anything but. Dr. Barlogie wanted to excise an axillary (armpit) lymph node that has been plaguing me for years. I’ve already had TWO surgeries on this lymph node that were unsuccessful. It’s a slippery little sucker;) Seriously, it’s slippery! Every time they lift my arm on the operating table it slides under my chest muscle. Sooo, what does that mean? It means that they dug and dug and cut and cut and pulled and pulled and yanked and yanked until they finally got a good enough hold to get that lymph node out. That left me in super bad shape. Super. Super enough that I got to hang out in the hospital for two days getting intravenous Dilauded every hour. Not fun peeps.
During that surgery I was also given a fantastic permanent accessory called a Central Venous Line, or CVL for short. This is a direct line into my chest via 3 tubes. No more shots, no more IVs, no more blood draws for me! Seriously, this is AWESOME! It looks gnarly to have a hole in your chest, but it is AWESOME. They are over the top infection control with the CVL, though. I had to have the covering changed yesterday, and they wouldn’t even let me watch what they were doing because they didn’t want me breathing on the site! This makes mom a little nervous since she is the one that has to flush the line every once in a while. She took a class at the hospital yesterday so she wouldn’t accidentally kill me while doing it. Poor mom doesn’t much like my sense of humor;)
I met with Dr. Barlogie again on Monday. I was supposed to start my test dose of Velcade (chemo drug) on Monday afternoon, after our doctor’s appointment. Once again, I got the frustrating news that we would not, in fact, be starting that afternoon. His first reason was that my surgery was just too invasive. I needed time to heal, and while a test dose is very low chemo, he didn’t want to start me on anything until he was confident there would be no infection. His second reason was a bit more difficult to swallow. He found evidence of something ‘suspicious’ in the node they removed. This will require more testing, more sitting and waiting. What a bummer. We won’t have any more news on what the something suspicious is until next Wednesday, and my test dose of Velcade has been pushed to Tuesday.
The rest of this week has been plenty eventful. I move out of the apartment that I’m in at the end of this month, so we’ve been shopping for new living space. I think we’ve found a new place to live, and they should be able to accomodate us for the entire 9 months! This is a HUGE burden lifted. Speaking of places to live, I’ve been asked for my new address many times so I will add a new page to this blog with the information. We’ve also been spending this time applying for co-pay assistance through several charities and patient programs. I had no idea how many wonderful organizations there are out there. I think I’ll create a page on this blog that lists them for people wanting to donate to cancer charities. It’s so important, friends. The cost of being diagnosed with something like this is astronomical. Not only for me, but for my care giver as well.
Speaking of care giver, I’ve got an awesome one! She gets a little mini break this weekend while the hubby and kids come to visit me. Bill is coming up, too, so they will have a nice weekend getaway. It’s supposed to be a beautiful weekend so we will visit some of the local parks and museums, maybe even the Zoo. Then Lee gets to go with mom and me to the hospital to see how my CVL gets flushed and be there for my test dose of Velcade on Sunday. I’m sure he is SO excited! I’m just excited to see them…I miss my family.
That is all for this week. Sitting and waiting seems to happen quite a bit in the cancer world, but I would much rather sit and wait than jump into something that threatens my life just because I wanted things to hurry up. It’s time to be patient!
More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,’ Romans 5:3-4
