My time is limited these days, so I'm temporarily suspending fabulous quotes and the daily W. count. Sometimes you just have to make adjustments.
Back to the breast cancer fun. I was in so much pain all day that I'm probably forgetting some of the things they did to me. The next big event I remember occurred some time after the mammogram, when they sent me off to a cot to wait for the nuclear medicine guy to arrive. Nuclear medicine guys are like the rock stars of cancer pre-op. Everything stops until he gets there and he brings a small coterie of groupies with him. I'm sure they have some practical function other than to admire his dedication to detail, but I have no idea what it might be. My guy brought some very scary looking equipment to ensure no one else was exposed to highly carcinogenic materials. He injected radio isotopes into the area where those wires were sticking into my breast. He he pressed down hard and jiggled the skin several times to make sure the poisonous dye got spread around adequately, I suppose. That felt great. I had enough presence of mind to wonder whether introducing cancer-causing agents into an already cancer infested area was such a great idea. I wondered about how that will alter my future.
We had to wait a little while for some reason related to the radio isotopes. They need to get settled in or something. I was just glad for a break in the action centered around the needles. They shuffled me off to wait in yet another freezing room for the next leg of the adventure. I was cold and tired, but I'd ceased to be hungry long ago. By that time, I'd begun to feel a little like I imagine people felt after they arrived at concentration camps. I was stripped of everything that was personal--no clothes, a number instead of a name, no shoes, no food, no water, no one I knew to hold my hand. You get my drift.
Eventually, a young woman came to get me. She made me get up on an incredibly hard and cold table while she attempted to take some kind of pictures of the radio isotope saturated tissue. She took the pictures and sent me back to my little cell to wait while they made sure she did her job well. She didn't. We did two more rounds of photos. The second time I was bleeding from the wires, so we had to wait until that stopped before we could try again. By the time they got what they wanted, I was in so much pain from the needles and the jostling and the lying flat on my back on cold hard surfaces that I couldn't even think anymore. I was like a dumb animal, enduring the torture without thought. I was so worn down it didn't even occur to me to cry.
After about six hours of being shuffled from one cold place to another, with needles sticking out of my breast, they finally got around to operating on me. They removed about 1.3 cm of tissue and did a sentinel node biopsy. They are cleverly postponing sharing the results of the biopsy until I see them on Thursday. Will I have chemo or not? Just another wonderful surprise from One of the Best Cancer Hospitals In the Country. They will let me know on Thursday. That is, unless they change the appointment. They have this truly annoying habit of telling me I have an appointment at a certain time on a certain day, then telling me it's on another day and time when I call to confirm. God, I love it when they do that. People keep asking me if it doesn't stress me out to have this ever-changing appointment situation. Oh heavens no, I love being kept in the dark about these things. It's just so much more fun and interesting if, in addition to wondering whether I'll have chemo or another operation, I also get to wonder about when my appointment is actually going to occur.
I just went directly back to work last week, three days after surgery. No one required that I do that, I just thought I should. In the little paper they gave me after my operation, they told me I could just resume normal activities. So I did. My therapist, my psychiatrist and my mother would all like to know why I thought that was a good idea. Well, if they had said, for instance, "resume normal activities, but only for four hours a day," I would certainly have been sitting on my sofa instead of sitting in my office in front of the computer. It has become apparent that I wasn't supposed to resume my activities. Goddamn it. It's so annoying to know that I could have been hanging around my living room, eating bonbons instead of watching one of my co-workers have a serious case of the weepies all day.
As to why my co-worker was weeping at her desk every time I walked by, I was not much inclined to question her. She had already compared her sinus infection to my breast cancer...they're essentially the same in her mind. I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but I'm pretty sure that breast cancer trumps sinus infection every single time.
Another of my colleagues has decided that she is going to drive me to Houston and back on Thursday. Has she asked if that's what I'd like to do? No. Why bother to ask me. In fact, when I thought the appointment was last Thursday (see above), she wanted me to change the day specifically so that I could leave the driving to her. Oh, sure. Let me alter my breast cancer schedule to accommodate your needs.
I think I've complained enough for the day. Here's the deal. On Thursday, I find out what happens next. In the meantime, I'm continuing my friendly relationship with Xanax.
