The Latest from Cancer Central

2012-06-12, 5:37 a.m.

Okey doke, then. Ready for the latest from Cancer Central?

Have you got yerself a cup of tea and a bit of cereal bar? No? Then click back one, whip yourself up a batch and come back in a mo, fully caked-up and ready for reading�. We�ll wait��

Realised I hadn�t actually told you about the surgery I had on 14th May, only alluded to it in a cryptic and irritating way so, as Ive now had a SECOND bout of slicery (TWO! Count them!), best I fill you in on the gory details, hmm?

I dont know that I really want to rehash all the fucked-up ness of how I felt about the first bout of surgery so I�ll just do bullets of the slightly less tedious bits, til we�re up to speed, yeh?

The waiting room in the Surgery bit has mismatched chairs and is depressing. To the Nth degree. They took one look at my murderous scowling face and called me in straight away. I was first on the list. Yay!

When the surgeon turned up it was a different one, who I hadn�t seen before. She was a lady and she was SOOOOO nice. In fact she was so nice that if I had seen her a few weeks ago, I doubt I would have been quite as fucked up over the whole business. So there.

Having a drain tube/pump/crud collection bag attached to my armpit is one of the most crappy things I have ever had done. It hurts, its uncomfortable and it makes you feel like a patient. It is impossible to feel like you are getting better if you are attached to one of those bloody things. And emptying it would be pretty much impossible for anyone who is a bit squeamish, as its gross

Only on the NHS would you be given a funny little hand-knitted heather mixture shoulder bag in which to keep your horrid drain apparatus

Only in my household would a daughter (Treacle) covet the funny little knitted bag so blatantly that Mater had to scrounge up some wool and make her one � she couldn�t keep the one I had as the NHS is pretty strapped for cash and they made it pretty damn clear that they wanted it back

Staying in hospital overnight would be much nicer if they didn�t wake you up every hour to take your blood pressure. It would be INFINITELY nicer if they didn�t then leave the ward door open so the light from the nurses station (which is presumably directly sourced from a giant lump of magnesium. And a match) shines in my bloody eyes until I get out of bed in my compression socks and hospital gown with my bum sticking out the back and shut the damn thing. Again.

Compression stockings. Nothing more to say on those.

Further proof, if proof were needed, that the NHS sometimes needs a little slap � I had to have 3 district nurse appointments after the surgery, so they could a) change the dressing, b) check the drain and change the dressings again and c) take out the stitches. The first appointment, I had to go all the way down to the doctors office as they will only to home visits if you are housebound. I told them that I couldn�t drive and they gave me the telephone number for a taxi service! (L took me in the end). The second appointment had to be on the Saturday as it was 5 days after surgery. My doctors office doesn�t open on Saturday so they did a home visit. The 3rd visit I had to go back to the doctors office but when they went to take the stitches out I found that I was only stuck together with a bit of tape and I could easily have done that myself � even the nurse said so! DUH.

Once the stitches were out/off, the incision on my boob looked like a particularly nasty bramble scratch and I had high hopes that it would fade to �reasonably insignificant� once a bit more time has passed

There�s more, about post-op exercises and wearing the wrong bra and having hurty boobs and my mum and dad coming over and taking me out for a drive and my dad driving over EVERY SINGLE cattle grid in the New Forest and having to buy me an icecream cos I was getting a bit tearful with all the hurty joggling. In the interests of this entry not being 400 pages long, tho, I�ll just move on to Surgery the 2nd instead.

Had to have the second lot of surgery because although the histology from the first surgery found that they had removed all the invasive cancer cells (Yay! I don�t have cancer any more!) and it hadn�t spread to the lymph nodes they took from under my arm (double Yay!), there were still non-invasive, ie pre-cancerous, cells on one side of the periphery. So they had me back in to take a bit more just to make sure it has the least chance as possible of coming back as the radiotherapy that I�ll be having soon wouldn�t have gotten rid of pre-cancerous cells. (Boo. But a smallish boo).

Anyways, today I was back in the shabby mismatched waiting room, alone and looking murderous again cos its too bloody early to be doing that with NO COFFEE, and I must have looked just as scary as I did the last time �cos they gave me the first slot again and the same nice lady surgeon. Huzzah! Slightly tetchy moment when the nurse wanted me to take my ring off and I wouldn�t � in the end we compromised on a mile or so of surgical tape wound round it (I couldn�t bend my finger afterwards but, hey, nobody asked me to play the violin at all while I was there so all was not lost) and we were friends again.

As an experiment, I tried staying awake after they�d given me the anaesthetic and I thought I was doing pretty well as I was keeping an eye on the clock and chatting to the anaesthetist about this and that and then all of a sudden I was in the recovery room and it appears I must have fallen asleep after all, possibly mid-sentence. Anaesthetists must listen to an awful lot of bollocks being spoken as people drift off to bo-bo-land, huh? Not from me, obviously � I was being incisive and witty, natch.

As �lying around in bed, dozing� is quite a nice way to spend ones time, I milked it for all it was worth once I woke up, and kept my eyes resolutely shut long after they should probably have been open, but was then hoist by my own petard as I was desperate for a wee and they wouldn�t let me have one til Id had something to eat and I couldn�t have anything to eat as Id �just woken up�. Meh.

Eventually, a nurse pitched up with two slices of toast and a cup of coffee which I tried to deal with even though my bed wasn�t actually upright at the pillow end and there wasn�t anywhere to put the coffee down while I buttered the toast. There were two little foil-wrapped pats of butter which had clearly just come out of the fridge as they were rock hard. Or rather, they would have been, had the nurse not arranged them artistically on top of the slices of hot toast, thus rendering them rock hard on the top and runny on the bottom. This didnt really add to their spreadability, if Im honest. Ah well.

I ate my toast, drank my coffee, had a wee, got dressed and went home.

I can take the pressure dressing (aka folded up duvet and a whole roll of sellotape) off tomorrow and change the littler dressing (aka peep at the ~~damage~~ stitches) on Thursday so I might have a bit more to tell you then. I feel OK. A bit ouchy, but OK and Im off work for another two weeks. I am much more upset about missing the school cabaret evening and the Year 11 Leavers Day next week than I am about my carved up boobie. At the moment.

I will tell you about how I feel about the �corrective surgery� side of things in a few days once Ive got my head around it properly.

Later
S
x

PS in other news � Sissy is flooded out (or rather, flooded in as they have barricaded the house and are sitting it out). Here�s their garden at 9 this morning

and here�s their street at the same time.

its been raining in a monsoon styleee all day and so has got considerably worse since then. BiL�s office is flooded (outbuilding at the bottom of the garden) as is the garage (where they keep their freezer, fridge and tumble dryer).

Bumcakes.

PPS Look at the time Im posting this, dear readers. Can you tell Im not sleeping much at the moment?

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