Hair

It has been far too long since I have written an update and felt before I head in to my next leg of the journey I should get a little caught up. So warning you all right now, this is probably going to be wordy.

So what the heck have I been doing these last 2 months? Healing. Slowly.  Which as an inpatient person I have come to the conclusion that I am not a patient patient. In my defense, I have no frame of reference for how I should be healing.  And I guess that can be considered a good thing.  I’ve never been hospitalized before this whole wild ride, I’ve never had surgery, I’ve never broken a bone, I’ve never had anything removed from me (ie appendix, tonsils, babies, etc).  So it is hard for me to appreciate the time it takes for your body to recover. And I got spoiled with the lumpectomy as I had heard horror stories that it could take a week or more to recover and I was feeling fine in a day.  So the whole slicing off the girls and then gutting me like a pudgy deer from hip to hip to take my fat and shove it into my chest so that I can still look like a girl is quite traumatic and painful.  But the worst part of it all is how slow I move. When Brent is telling me to hurry up as we stroll around the mall a month after the surgery, you know I’m walking slowly! That and how my stomach feels like it has been twisted into a pretzel by the end of the day so that I find myself starting to hunch over and do the Tim Conway shuffle.  A few weeks ago I started walking again. The first week that I went out I “walked” (my friends would call it a stroll) at the highschool track.  Level and padded, unlike what you will find by my house (which is steep and gravelly or semi-paved), my first attempt to walk a mile saw me setting a record pace of a 24 minute mile! WTF? I was being lapped by 70 year old women. And this is 2 months post surgery! I’m happy to say I’m down to an 18 minute mile but considering I was walking around a 16 minute mile through hills prior to this whole cancer gig is extremely frustrating.  And now that I know that in a week I will be right back at the 24 minute mile pace I’m feeling even more frustrated. Such is the slow pace of recovery.

A couple weeks ago I went to meet with my plastic surgeon so I could set my next surgery and berate him on a few things.  For such a smart and cocky guy it is easy to get under his skin.  While in the hospital I discovered that I am allergic to oxycodone (again, no frame of reference for any drug allergies as I’ve never taken medicine).  Actually I didn’t discover this, but my plastic surgeon identified this when I was complaining how much I itched when he popped in to my hospital room post-surgery.  So when I went to see him for a follow-up appointment I asked for a refill of my pain medicine (he had changed me to hydro’s while in the hospital and it stopped the reaction).  Well being on literally 7 different medicines and not being able to keep track of their names and what exactly they did I grabbed the prescription without thinking.  You can only get narcotic prescriptions in person and so I took the slip, drove the 4 hours back home, got the script filled at the local pharmacy and thought nothing of it.  That is until a week later when I had overdone it and grabbed 2 pills to help get ahead of the pain and found myself itching and nauseous, so much so that I couldn’t sleep that night.  That is when I realized he gave me a prescription for the pain medicine that he identified as me being allergic to.  So when I saw him I made sure to point out his glaring mistake.  He had some valid reason but it was still fun to finally have one up on him.  At this point I also told him about how much discomfort I was still in at the end of every evening in my stomach.  The self-proclaimed candy man was quick to state he wasn’t going to give me any more pain pills (I wasn’t wanting any), and mentions 2 months after my surgery that wearing a compression garment will help with the discomfort as there is likely some lymphatic fluid build up in my stomach at the end of the night causing the swelling and discomfort.  My question is why the hell didn’t he mention this during one of my last, I don’t known, 2  appointments?? But I hate to give the guy credit (he has a big enough ego and if he ever stumbles on this blog I would hate for him to know that he is right from time to time), he mentioned that a lot of the issues are likely in my mind.  After he surprisingly nicely explained why this was the case, it was the first day I didn’t find myself aching.  Damn I hate it when he’s right!!! Again, goes back to no frame of reference so being overly focused on what my body is doing leading to an increase discomfort that sits more in my mind than my body.

After 2 months I am finally up and walking around, applying scar crème to the lines all over my body, returning to work almost full time, and my hair is growing back!!!

So lets talk about the hair thing.  All those folks that tell you your hair will grow back thicker, darker, maybe even a different texture (ie curly) – well let me tell you, THEY LIE!!! My hair is thin, grey and straight.  But I guess I should be happy that it is coming back at all. On the flip side it is growing back everywhere and I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed not shaving.  Now I notice that I am even getting face fuzz.  Again, WTF!!! And where it is growing in elsewhere, that is coming in nice and dark and thick,  Seriously, couldn’t be like that on my head, oh the struggles I go through.

So I am finally feeling good – just in time for the next set of surgeries.  So expect another blog quickly behind this one and I don’t say it enough, but thanks for the support, gifts, words of encouragement, and snarky comments to keep me centered!