Perhaps I should have asked that the vibes and positive thoughts be concentrated on the visit to the surgeon rather than on chemo. Because on a scale of 1 to 10 on each visit, I'd have to give the surgeon a -80 billion.
Firstly, we waited. When we got to the clinic, the receptionist informed us that the surgeon had an emergency and that he was an hour behind. Really? They couldn't have called and told us to come a bit later? Anyway, that didn't happen so we sat down on the most comfortable chairs they had and waited, watched some Oprah, made snide comments about how someone could have called us. But we expected to go in, have the surgeon answer our questions, and get the "You're doing awesome!" speech.
That didn't happen either, not exactly. We did get our questions answered. The surgeon did look at my incisions. He looked at my butt stitches and informed us that they're not healing properly, that I most likely got an infection during surgery. So basically the wound is open and needs to either be packed with gauze twice a day, or I need to wear a wound vac and go get a dressing changed three times a week. And this could go on for 6 to 8 weeks. Talk about a downer.
I felt so awful finding this out. Angry, frustrated, disenheartened, sad. I was all, "Wow, who did I piss off so fucking bad that I have another thing to deal with?" You start feeling like someone is picking on you, like it's not fair at all. But you know, so far, all things considered, this has not been too rough a ride. Radiation and chemo? Not that fun, but it could have been worse. Surgery? Totally sucked, but I'm making it through. I have family and friends just circling around me to help in whatever ways they can. I have Eric who is doing so so much and is amazingly supportive. I have my kids who make me laugh and give me gentle hugs. This really could be a whole lot worse.
So you know, bad news. The challenge is to find the happy in the bad news, and I'm working on that. Keep on keepin' on.
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