Post-surgery Days

Crawling from the chair I've been poured into since I came home....

First day back, good day. Actually did some laundry and cleaned the kitchen. Then bad days. Just a haze. One day spent on the phone. That was good, except I had pain and took pain meds and felt like crap and slept and couldn't eat and still felt like crap. I managed to lay in the bed on my side for a few hours last night. The drain in my side is right in the way and I'm afraid of pulling it accidentally. I know I'm not making much sense, but it's how I feel. They told me (the sources I have who have been here before) that this part was the easy part. They lied. Or maybe they meant radiation. That's Phase III. We're still in Phase II - surgery. Phase I was chemo.

I do remember this. Yesterday the surgeon called with the pathology report. It wasn't good. Three out of twenty-three nodes were positive. To quote the surgeon, "That's very good considering the size of the thing." Yes, but what of the margins? Positive. That's bad. It means he didn't get it all. He said he may have to go in again. Or, I don't know. He said he had to look at the slides himself and we'd talk about it when I went back in to see him, when the current incision stops draining so much. From the looks of things, that could take a while.

There's a volcano on Maui that people drive up early in the morning before the sun rises. Then everyone rides down at dawn on yellow bicycles. It's a beautiful thing to see and someday, I will do it myself.